DF Malan and the Rise of Afrikaner Nationalism. Lindie Koorts
of perseverance.[26] His admiration for Smuts was not unqualified, however. He was less than impressed when Smuts, who sometimes taught Sunday school to the younger children, told them about King Arthur and his knights. Smuts explained to his young wards that a knight was called a ‘Sir’, and that knights were still being appointed by Queen Victoria. Pointing to himself, he said, ‘When I grow up, she will make me Sir Jan.’[27] Malan used to mimic the way in which Smuts had apparently thumped on his breast in a manner that left little doubt that he thought the older boy’s self-proclaimed superiority to be arrogant – both socially and culturally.[28]
In later years their schoolmaster, reflecting on the two prime ministers he had taught, described the difference between them: ‘Smuts was like a Maxim gun and Malan like a Long Tom.’[29] The same schoolmaster also gave Malan the nickname ‘Tant Regina’, which meant ‘slowcoach’, because that was what he was: slow in his movements and slow to answer – but always meticulous. While Smuts was always the first with an answer, Malan would quietly ponder his until it was watertight. Their eventual parliamentary styles were the same as their classroom manner: Smuts was nimble-witted and quick to take a gap, while Malan steamed ahead like a locomotive, undeterred by interjections, building one argument on the other.[30]
The schoolmaster, Theunis Stoffberg, made a profound impression on the young Malan. In later years, he spoke more often of him than of his father.[31] Stoffberg was barely eighteen when he went to teach the Riebeek West children, initially lodging with the Malan family, and eventually marrying D.F. Malan Sr’s half-sister. D.F. Malan never forgot the young teacher, who was both thorough in his work and humane in his treatment of his young wards: a man who would play with the children in the schoolyard and, at the same time, maintain discipline and demand their very best in the classroom.[32] To fail was to let the school down. Malan took this to heart, and obtained a First Class Pass from Master Stoffberg’s school. Stoffberg inculcated his class with the motto ‘Anything worth doing, is worth doing well’.[33] These words stayed with Malan for the rest of his life, and he often repeated them to his children.
Like any normal young boy, Malan also got up to mischief – with his brother Fanie as his main partner in crime. Once, the two of them stole tobacco to smoke in secret – an experience that cured Malan of the desire to smoke for the rest of his life. He enjoyed taking part in pranks the children played on unsuspecting townspeople,[34] and spent endless hours in the veld, collecting tortoises and kukumakrankas, a wild plant that produces sweet and fragrant fruit.[35]
Politics played an important role in the Malan household. The farmers of the Swartland were one of the first groups in the Cape to become politically mobilised in order to defend their economic interests and, as mentioned before, D.F. Malan Sr was a member of ‘Onze’ Jan Hofmeyr’s Afrikaner Bond.[36] Hofmeyr originally established it as the Boeren Beschermings Vereeniging (BBV) in response to excise duties on spirits, an issue that affected the wine farmers of the western Cape. The party was initially driven by the farmers’ immediate concerns rather than by any particular political ideology.[37] The wine and wheat farmers regarded themselves as the backbone of western Cape society and, during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, became more and more politically organised in response to fluctuating economic conditions and their squabbles with merchants. They lobbied the Cape government incessantly to protect their interests through measures such as import tariffs and subsidies – and, at the same time, became exceedingly suspicious of the African franchise which, they believed, strengthened the English-speaking merchants’ hand against them.[38] It was in this context that an Afrikaner was defined as ‘a person of Dutch extraction, who believed in the advancement of the brandy market, protection to the corn farmer, and the repression of the native’.[39] The establishment of the BBV marked a transition in Cape politics: from regional tension between the eastern and western parts of the Cape Colony to ‘a period of ethnic Anglo-Boer antagonism’.[40]
Nevertheless, the Cape Afrikaners were also loyal Victorians – or at least, they admired the person of Queen Victoria. They participated enthusiastically in her annual birthday celebrations and regarded themselves as loyal British subjects.[41] The Victorian world-view that permeated the western Cape included, among other things, Social Darwinism. The Victorians appropriated Charles Darwin’s theories to affirm their hierarchical view of the world and its races – with themselves, obviously, at the top of the ladder. The science of the day was used to create a biological racism that confirmed the inherent inferiority of the subject races who, according to the British, lacked culture, while their own ‘institutions of civilisation’ served as shining examples of their superiority.[42] Malan received a thoroughly Victorian education, absorbing the Victorian world-view and manners to such an extent that his son later described him as a ‘Victorian gentleman’.[43]
As the public school at Riebeek West did not cater for matriculants, Malan had to leave his home in order to complete his secondary education at the Stellenbosch Gymnasium. On his arrival in Stellenbosch in 1891 he was fetched from the station by, among others, Jan Smuts.[44]
In Stellenbosch he lodged in a student boarding house named Tertia, which was situated on the southern bank of the Eerste River. The students of Stellenbosch dubbed Tertia the house of ‘Giants, Pigmies, Cavaliers, Round-heads and Bondsmen’.[45] Malan certainly belonged to the last category. At Tertia he shared in the camaraderie that typified the student boarding house experience: the ever-present Golden Syrup that left one feeling sticky inside and out, baths in the Eerste River, and attempts to identify one’s nightshirt by sniffing through the pile that had been thrown on the floor so callously by their owners that morning.[46]
In 1893, two years after his arrival in Stellenbosch, Malan’s mother died,[47] leaving his father to care for the three younger children, Fanie, Mimie and Koos. Cinie was in Wellington, where she had successfully completed her studies at the Huguenot Seminary. From an early age she had dreamed of becoming a missionary, and had practised by teaching Sunday school to the children of her parents’ coloured servants. After qualifying as a teacher, she became private secretary to the seminary’s principal, Miss A.P. Ferguson, and also taught Latin and mathematics. She also assisted the Reverend J.C. Pauw, one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the Mission Church for coloured congregants,[48] with his work among Wellington’s coloured community.[49]
A young man had expressed interest in her: the 29-year-old missionary A.A. (Andrew) Louw, from the mission station Morgenster in the erstwhile Mashonaland, which later became part of present-day Zimbabwe. Louw was looking for a companion, hopefully a wife, who could assist him in his work at the mission station. To this end, he wrote to his brothers who were studying at the Stellenbosch Theological Seminary, asking them if they knew of anyone with whom he could take up correspondence. They suggested Cinie Malan, a girl who was ‘beautiful and clever, someone who could just as easily cut apart a sheep’s carcass as solve a geometry problem’.[50]
At the end of 1892, Andrew Louw wrote to Cinie and asked her whether they could correspond. She agreed, but made it clear that he was not to regard the granting of his request as encouragement of any kind.[51] Upon her mother’s death, she was forced to return to Allesverloren to help her father look after her younger siblings. The father soon realised that this arrangement could only be temporary. His solution was to marry again, which would provide his children with a mother. Friends ‘recommended’ Esther Fourie of Beaufort West. She was the daughter of a prominent stock farmer in the area, and his junior by twenty-one years.[52]
In January 1894, after thirteen months of correspondence, Andrew Louw visited Allesverloren in order to meet Cinie. The two decided right away that they wanted to marry.[53] During that same month, D.F. Malan Sr asked Esther Fourie for her hand in marriage. They were married in March 1894,[54] followed a month later by Cinie and Andrew. Cinie accompanied Andrew back to Morgenster, where they worked together until her death in 1935.[55]
Esther Fourie fitted in well with the Malan family. She treated her husband’s children as her own, and soon after her marriage to D.F. Malan Sr gave birth to Essie, followed by Annie, and Stinie. A little boy was also born to the marriage, but he died at a very young age. When family gatherings were held and group photographs were taken, Esther insisted that a portrait of her stepchildren’s mother also be included.[56] One such photograph shows D.F. Malan Sr in the centre, surrounded by his children and grandchildren,