DF Malan and the Rise of Afrikaner Nationalism. Lindie Koorts
and, drawing on Herder’s assertion that language was an expression of the national soul and the basis for national unity, he called on the German nation to internalise their national spirit through education, and to free themselves from foreign oppression in the wake of the Napoleonic wars.[95] This rang true for a young man reading his words at the end of the nineteenth century, which was not only the era of nationalism in Europe, but also a time when Afrikaner nationalism was stirring.[96]
The final years of the nineteenth century were a difficult time for Queen Victoria’s loyal Afrikaners. Their main political party, the Afrikaner Bond, was generally tolerant in its thinking and was not always on good terms with Paul Kruger’s government in the Transvaal which, afraid of a loss of independence in the wake of the discovery of gold on its doorstep, tried to avoid extensive economic cooperation with the Cape. This drove the Afrikaner Bond closer to the arch-imperialist and Randlord Cecil John Rhodes. For a number of years, Rhodes and the Afrikaner Bond leader ‘Onze’ Jan Hofmeyr were able to maintain a mutually advantageous working relationship. The Bond supported Rhodes’s position as prime minister of the Cape Colony while Rhodes, in turn, supported their agricultural interests and shared their indignation at Kruger’s high railway tariffs, which had an adverse effect on the price of Cape agricultural products transported to the Rand’s lucrative gold fields.[97]
The Jameson Raid of December 1895 destroyed the relationship between Rhodes and the Afrikaner Bond. It left the Cape Afrikaners torn between their loyalty to Queen Victoria and their sympathy for their cousins in Paul Kruger’s Transvaal. Rhodes, frustrated by Kruger’s measures to exclude him and other Uitlanders from political power – which prevented them from shaping the Transvaal government’s policies according to their interests – conspired to create an Uitlander uprising in Johannesburg that would seize control of the Transvaal. Rhodes’s friend and admirer Dr Leander Starr Jameson would invade the Transvaal from Bechuanaland, using troops from Rhodes’s British South Africa Company. The raid turned into a fiasco after their cover was blown and a Transvaal commando ambushed them, forcing them to surrender.[98]
Rhodes was the only member of the Cape Cabinet who knew about the invasion. Hofmeyr – who found out about the raid a day later – was furious that he had been made a fool of, especially since his supporters now felt that he had erred in his judgement when he decided to work with Rhodes. He immediately repudiated Rhodes, who was forced to resign as prime minister.[99]
Naturally, this meant that Kruger was vindicated and could successfully portray himself as the legitimate leader of a wronged and threatened state. In the Cape, the newspaper Ons Land, under the editorship of F.S. Malan, began to write about the Afrikaners’ need for spiritual rebirth and the need to prevent contamination by the ‘spirit of materialism which flows in on us from Europe’. P.J.G. de Vos, one of Malan’s professors at the Stellenbosch seminary, published a series of articles in Ons Land under the title ‘Nationale Vraagstukken’ (National Questions). In these articles, he used the Jameson Raid as proof of the Englishman’s fundamental disrespect for the Afrikaner, and called on the Afrikaners to recover their self-respect, prize their language, and return to their Bibles.[100] All of this was lapped up by the young Malan in Stellenbosch during his daily reading of the newspapers.
Like those around him, Malan’s sympathy with the Afrikaners in the Transvaal was growing. As a boy, he had accompanied his maternal uncle on a trip to the Transvaal – and on this trip, he saw Paul Kruger from a distance. This made a life-long impression on him.[101] He also read the history books written by George McCall Theal.[102] Theal’s work must have been popular among the students in Stellenbosch, as it received a glowing review from the Stellenbosch Students’ Quarterly.[103] It was certainly very popular in the two Boer Republics, where it was translated into Dutch and used as school textbooks. The Canadian-born Theal was at first very critical of the Boers, but as he continued to collect archival materials and publish volume after volume on South African history, he ‘adopted a conservative, pro-white and in particular pro-Boer, anti-missionary and anti-black standpoint’.[104] The Great Trek received pride of place in his writings, and he glorified the Boers to such an extent that he was accused of being anti-imperialist. He portrayed people of colour as ‘fickle barbarians, prone to robbery and unscrupulous in shedding blood’.[105] To Theal, missionaries and British philanthropists who sided with the blacks were enemies of the whites, who were engaged in the noble task of opening up the untamed interior to civilisation and to Christianity.[106] Theal’s polarising depiction of the past would determine Malan’s interpretation of South Africa’s history for the rest of his life.
It was in 1896, in the aftermath of the Jameson Raid, that Malan wrote a contribution for the Union Debating Society’s journal, entitled ‘Our Situation’. He bemoaned the ‘motley crowd’ that was discharged onto South Africa’s shores month after month, with the single aim of seeking their own riches and bringing with them a spirit of materialism. ‘We live in time of transition, a period of danger,’ he wrote.[107] Hence, he asked the question:
How are we to be protected from contagion? In answer to this question of so mighty consequence to us, I find but one answer. Let us stand together, let us preserve our nationality and with our nationality our national character. In the preservation of nationality there are two factors which have an overwhelming influence. The first is the study of the history of the nation. No tie binds a nation so firmly to its own traditions as the study of its history … The other and equally important factor in the preservation of the nationality is the preservation of the language … To preserve then our nationality and national character it is absolutely necessary that we keep in honour our history and our language, holding to our own to the very last, struggling to get our rights acknowledged and granted to the full, not from any sense of race hatred or prejudice to which some will ascribe our activity, but from a true sense of patriotism.[108]
Malan’s ardent words reflected not only the Afrikaners’ growing sense of national awareness but also the Cape Afrikaners’ growing sense of defensiveness. It was not only Afrikaner nationalism that was on the rise in the Cape Colony. British nationalism, which was embodied by the South African League, was resurgent as well. Cape politics became increasingly polarised as the South African League became a potent force in Parliament. When the Afrikaner Bond baulked at the cost of building a new battleship as a gift to Queen Victoria, the South African League accused it of disloyalty to the Empire. This did not help the Bond’s relations with the Cape’s new high commissioner, Sir Alfred Milner, who was appointed in 1897. When the Bond assured Milner of its loyalty to the Empire and to the Queen, he lamented that he could not take their loyalty for granted. The 1898 election was the first in the Cape’s history where two recognisable parties, representing two different ethnic communities, fought each other.[109] The clouds of war began to gather over South Africa.
In Stellenbosch the young Malan, though appearing calm on the outside, was bursting with youthful idealism. He was not only concerned about the fate of the Afrikaner nation, but was also impassioned about the need for individuals to make a difference in the world, a passion that he transmitted to those around him.[110] He began making a name for himself among his fellow students as a formidable orator, which led at least one of his contemporaries to deplore the fact that someone with Malan’s gift of rhetoric was headed for the pulpit and not the courtroom.[111] Little did this contemporary know that this was precisely Malan’s unfulfilled wish – a wish that, had it been granted, would have made his entry into politics, which was where his true passion lay, so much easier. Instead, he was to take a longer route and his slow, but steady progress to the premiership would be compared unfavourably to that of his predecessor, Smuts, who had studied law and whose progress in politics, in keeping with his character, was stellar.[112]
Instead, Malan devoted himself to his preparations for a career in the church. He and his fellow theology students were gravely concerned about the theoretical nature of their courses that gave them no opportunity to prepare for the practical challenges of leading a congregation. Their solution was to obtain practical experience by doing as much ‘mission work’ as possible, which entailed preaching to the local coloured community. Malan succeeded in making an arrangement with one of the local farmers to preach to his coloured workers. Every Sunday, the farmer would drive his horse-drawn cart into town to collect Malan for the task. In this way, he acquired some much-needed preaching experience.[113]