DF Malan and the Rise of Afrikaner Nationalism. Lindie Koorts
the danger and may he pilot our frail vessel in safety through the angry deep to the safe haven of our destination.’[9]
When the ship reached European waters the sea became stormy, but Malan was able to keep the ever-looming seasickness at bay and continued to admire more lighthouses that were beaming at him from the coast.[10] On Friday morning, 5 October 1900, the ship docked at Southampton.
The next twenty-four hours turned into a blur. They took the train from Southampton to London, where they arrived late that same afternoon. From there, they travelled to Liverpool Station, where Malan said farewell to Koos. Then Malan travelled with the Continental Express to the east coast port of Harwich. It was already dark when he boarded the Dresden, which sailed across the English Channel to Rotterdam. That night the sea was rough, and this time Malan became violently sick. The next morning, the ship docked at the Westerkade in Rotterdam, and Malan was in Utrecht before lunch.[11] As it became quiet around him and he was finally alone, he was overwhelmed by loneliness and once again turned to God for refuge: ‘“What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me?” Lord: guide my ways. I want to entrust my preparation for your work in your hands completely. Let me be a light to your glorification here as well. Amen.’[12]
His prayers evidently provided some consolation, as he wrote in his diary: ‘I am a stranger in a strange land, but the Lord is with me and shall support me.’[13] When he dared to venture out into the city for the first time, he was overwhelmed – not by wonder, but again by loneliness. Once back in the safety of his room, he recorded his first impressions:
As I walked through the streets and the thoroughfares of the City, I felt a sense of absolute loneliness creeping over me. Amid all the noise & activity of the streets, the endless stream of human beings sweeping through the streets, I felt as if I was alone and forsaken. As I scanned the faces as they hurriedly passed me, I knew none nor had I even the faintest hope to meet one I knew. No acquaintance, no home, no friend. Was it a wonder then that my thoughts were not here, but far away in the distant South.[14]
During his first week in Utrecht Malan stayed in the Hotel la Station, since his landlord, Professor Valeton, could not accommodate him immediately. He continued to explore his surroundings, and was gradually able to absorb more of what he saw. The city of Utrecht was completely different to anything he had ever seen before, and he tried his utmost to describe this new world to his parents:
Utrecht is a beautiful city. The streets are all paved with hardbricks and are kept very clean. There are also waterways, which people navigate with small boats. The city is big, a lot bigger than Cape Town; it counts over a hundred thousand inhabitants, and has beautiful buildings. The ‘Dom’ tower is the highest in the Netherlands. There are beautiful avenues and gardens, such as the ‘Maliebaan’ and the Wilhelmina Park. But here, and for that matter, all over the entire country, everything is even – no hillock that is even high enough to be called a ‘kopje’ … People here speak nothing but good Dutch. In order to be understood, I have to try and climb as high as I possibly can. Yes, sometimes I speak so high that I find it very difficult to understand myself. Here, even the small children speak high. And even the dogs and the horses understand only High Dutch.[15]
There was one comfort, though: in spite of the unfamiliar landscape, buildings and people, and difficulties with the language, Malan found that he was politically at home. ‘Our cause receives much sympathy here,’ he wrote to his parents. ‘Here there are no Jingoes or Jingo Newspapers. People here are even more heated than the Afrikaners themselves. Everyone knows the Transvaal’s national anthem and it is sung very frequently.’[16]
Malan now found himself in the most pro-Boer country in Europe where, unlike in the Cape Colony, there were no social sanctions on public displays of support for the Boers. Since the outbreak of the Transvaal’s first war with Great Britain in 1880, the Dutch had taken a great interest in the Afrikaners, whom they regarded as their stamverwanten (kinsmen). In hindsight, it is clear that this interest was not so much about feelings of kinship as about using the Boers’ military feats against a mightier power as a rallying symbol in an effort to revive flailing Dutch nationalism. Some even dreamed of the restoration of earlier imperial glory, and the expansion of the Dutch culture, in which the Transvaal would play its part by merging into a Nieuw Nederland (New Netherlands). These high hopes had waned somewhat by the 1890s, but the South African War unleashed a new outpouring of public emotion that far surpassed the enthusiasm of the early 1880s.[17]
Malan witnessed this at first hand. A few days after his arrival in Utrecht he decided to travel to Amsterdam, where Paul Kruger’s birthday was to be celebrated. As he entered the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, the sight that greeted him was one that he had never seen before: the enormous venue was filled beyond capacity after people had queued in the rain for more than three hours prior to the proceedings. Never before had the young man from small-town South Africa seen a church so full. To his astonishment, he also saw people fighting among each other for a place. He found the speeches inspirational, and fervently wished that he could write them all down. The enthusiasm that he witnessed filled him with hope. As he wrote to his parents, ‘It warms an Afrikaner’s heart to see so much enthusiasm for our cause.’[18]
Malan soon discovered that being an Afrikaner in the Netherlands resulted in special treatment. In general, the Dutch did not distinguish between Afrikaners from the Cape Colony and Afrikaners from the Boer Republics; they considered all of them to be Transvalers.[19] A chance encounter with a Belgian evangelist led to an excursion: the evangelist was so excited to meet an Afrikaner that he took Malan all over the city to introduce him to his friends, and promptly invited Malan to visit him in Brussels.[20] Malan also visited the elderly poet Nicolaas Beets. Beets, whose grandson was fighting on the Boers’ side, received him warmly, spoke enthusiastically about the Boers’ inevitable triumph in their cause, recited some of his poetry, and invited Malan to visit him again.[21]
Despite these warm and enthusiastic receptions, Malan still felt lonely. Even though the Dutch were very friendly towards him, he could not shake off his sense of alienation. ‘This is not my fatherland and these are not my people,’ he wrote to his parents.[22] The weather was also doing its part to depress him:
It is becoming terribly cold here. I am almost always wearing a thick coat. A few nights ago snow fell in the streets – and winter is only just beginning. If only I could have some of South Africa’s abundant warmth here … It rains here nearly all the time – I cannot stand it. The longing for our glorious climate and lovely sunshine is terrible. [23]
These feelings of loneliness and depression were compounded by his family’s slowness in answering his letters. By the end of October, they had not even acknowledged a letter that he had sent when the ship anchored in Madeira. Mimie was not much of a correspondent, Mother was too busy, and Fanie and Father were not in the habit of letter writing – or so he reasoned. He was elated when he finally received a letter from Cinie. Now, he hoped, he would receive more news from home.[24] But it was not only family news that Malan longed for. He was also hungry for news from South Africa. This problem was solved with far more ease than were his pleas for more letters from his family. He wrote to Cinie that:
I keep myself well up to date with regard to politics, especially that from South Africa. There is a nice library here, where, for 9 guilders a year, one can read all the local – and many foreign – newspapers, magazines and pamphlets. I have become a member, and regularly visit it every morning for an hour.[25]
In these newspapers he would inevitably have read reports and opinions about the war in South Africa, as it was a prominent issue in the Dutch press. In general, the Dutch press took clear sides in the South African conflict. The war was not treated as a mere military conflict, but rather as a colonial, and cultural, struggle between the two white races for ultimate control of the Transvaal. The Boers were given the moral high ground and were heralded as noble and heroic, while the British were condemned as war criminals. Any war crimes committed by the Boers were glossed over or justified.[26] Emily Hobhouse’s reports on the concentration camps were published as soon as they reached the Netherlands, and the shocking picture taken of a starving Boer girl, Lizzie van Zyl, was widely disseminated – including being printed on postcards. Concentration camp mortality rates were printed on large posters and pasted all over a number