There’s a big motif in Afrikaner history about being Israelites. It’s not just in the stony-faced Calvinism of their Dutch Reformed Church. Ever since the Great Trek, when ancestors on ox wagons rode into the hinterlands in search of a life free of British control, the cry of “Let My People Go” has been a Boer mantra. In recognition of Afrikaner pilgrimage, in the 1930s, the government built the massive Voortrekker Monument – a stuffily sacrosanct temple to this pseudo-Jewiness. Fifty years after the Voortrekkers, the Anglo-Boer War – a David & Goliath act, complete with its British-made concentration camps – only served to emphasise the parallel (and heighten the persecution complex). In this light, the high noon of Apartheid could be read as one more Afrikaans attempt to secure self-determination – to wish away the simple fact that, in the long term, history is demography.
Well, demography is now history. They fought. They lost. The end. Afrikaans – once the dominant language of state – is now a crab in the bucket with South Africa’s ten other official languages. No longer the brahmins of the civil service, police and army, Afrikaners now have to compete for jobs with the very people along whose backs they used to glide, handicapped further by a commonly held belief amongst the non-Afrikaner population that Afrikaners are a bunch of fucking dicks.
But in the early 90s, even as the walls were coming down on the old ways, a small cabal of true believers were gathering up the laws and scrolls, putting bubble-wrap around the Ark of the Covenant, and making plans to trek once more. This time, though, the plan would work. No doubts. No fuckups. This time they’d thought of everything.
They would start again. In their new world there would be no need for migrant-labour systems that had brought their downfall. Instead of having to deal with the tensions of a society that was economically integrated but socially segregated, Afrikaners would just go ahead and do all the hard graft themselves. They would simply cut The Black Man out of the loop altogether. Selfwerksaamheid – literally “working together for ourselves” – would be the watchword of the new order. Their new home would be a place where Afrikaners would be free to pursue their own cultural traditions, where they could speak Afrikaans to themselves all day if they so chose, and where there would be ice cream for dinner every night.
But if they were to establish this society of their own – the Volkstaat – first, they would need a place of their own. That’s where Orania comes in.
January 19th, 2010 @ 13:57
Reader Comments
January 19th, 2010
That was really long, but pretty interesting. Africaans are the worst people in the world, pretty much.
January 19th, 2010
This was pretty good. An old friend of my dad is an Afrikaner and the guy is deeply fucked up with all kinds of heinous psychological problems. I liked the pictures too, surreal.
January 19th, 2010
Really good read. More Articles like this please!
January 20th, 2010
I like this!
January 20th, 2010
Brilliantly written.
January 20th, 2010
Who wrote this?
January 20th, 2010
A fantastic piece of Journalism.
January 20th, 2010
This made me laugh:
“…they’re busts of former State Presidents and Prime Ministers, whom it’s no longer politically correct to acknowledge. So they give them to us and we find a use for them.”
January 20th, 2010
Afrikaans is a language, Afrikaners are a people.
January 20th, 2010
good stuff.
January 20th, 2010
TL;DR
January 21st, 2010
very good!
January 21st, 2010
It’s good to hear that the Afrikaners are dying out. What they did to the people of South Africa is difficult to imagine, even with so many examples before us of our cruelty to our fellow humans. Tom Sharpe does a beautiful job of caricaturing the idiots that ruled in that country before they forcibly booted him back to England. I forget, but believe Thomas Pynchon might also have written a searing description of some of the less appetizing exploits of these sorry people.
January 22nd, 2010
How very fucking bigoted of you. You begin by calling Afrikaners racists and then proceed with your own racist rant against a very small subset of the Afrikaner population.
You seek out the very worst examples and parade them as an example of an entire diverse population. It’s not very clever and it certainly isn’t fair. You can go to almost any country and find similar ghettos. My guess is that you went there to prove something to yourself. You could have focussed on so much more on a visit to Africa, yet you chose one small town.
Afrikaans itself is a stimulating, rich and diverse language and is probably spoken by more black people then white.
Anyway, ‘loop naai jouself’.
January 22nd, 2010
As an english speaking South Afircan now residing in London I found this article very interesting and well written. It was entertaining, I was not even aware that this sort of town was out there in the “new SA”.
However it definitely should be said that this is not a fair reflection of what the majority of Afrikaners are like. Most are as liberally minded & forward thinking or racist & close minded as their english speaking white and black counterparts.
I think most South Africans are striving towards a future where everything and everyone work/s well together. Well definitely the younger generation at least.
It must be nice to live in South Africa and not to have to endure crime as a fact of everyday life, at least Orania has that going for it.
January 22nd, 2010
I have absolutely no problem with racists of any colour or creed living on their own in the middle of fucking nowhere.
As for the vast majority of Afrikaners being racist - pretty much. Like the vast majority of the English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Nigerian, Indian, Pakistani, Palestinian, Chinese… the vast majority of the world is racist and would live with their own kind if they could.
January 22nd, 2010
Afrikaans is an excellent language to swear in. The bluntness of the way things are put, and the guttural sound of the language with the rolling of the “rrrrr”s is incredibly satisfying.
Just fbecause of that I hope it never dies out!
January 22nd, 2010
I liked this. Author had a good grasp of history and seemed to have a sense of the Afrikaaners. They’re basically good people but inward looking. If you meet them in their homes or at a braai they’ll be a the warmest and most polite people you’ll come across. All of that homeliness and inwardness seems to collectively express itself in random outbursts of hatred! They’re an odd people!
January 22nd, 2010
For fuck’s sake, what is it with some of the morons that read vice? “brilliantly written”? “a fantastic piece of journalism”? Please! Don’t get me wrong, it is pretty good and far better than your stock half-literate article about one modestly amusing sub-culture or another, but chill the fuck out!
As for Afrikaners, it’s pretty clear that the only experience the writer has of them is their visit detailed here and maybe Louis Theroux’ documentary on the Boer Separatist nut-jobs. Sadly for the writer and luckily for Afrikaners, these are but a small part of the wider sub-group.
January 22nd, 2010
this article is better than many of your other recent articles because the subject is interesting, but it is still incredibly biased. the purpose of journalism is to inform; your opinions are interesting but it turns the article turns it into a sort of polemic that is guaranteed to piss off your readers (well, me anyway). let your readers form their own conclusions.
that said, this is still miles better than most of the other shit vice churns out
January 22nd, 2010
‘OK’, the chump who made the first comment. Do you not see the irony in what you said? You generalising simpleton.
January 23rd, 2010
Right,
Not one did I read a comment about ALL Afrikaners sharing the same views as these people. To me is is well written and does not make any statements saying how bad these people are……apart form the title. I do not think that the writer was trying to be unbiased, it is a feature not a news story.
I actually have a problem with the definition of Racism myself. Now I would like to make a couple of staments:
People in power crap on others. People are wierdos. Meh.
January 23rd, 2010
oh and another one……
Was anyone thinking: Inbred?
January 23rd, 2010
@natty - “Not one did I read a comment about ALL Afrikaners sharing the same views as these people. ”
Not in so many words, no, though nothing in the article makes any distinction either - always referring to Afrikaners- so it’s effectively implied. Inferring that everyone believes that all Afrikaners are ‘dicks’ really isn’t on either.
“…commonly held belief amongst the non-Afrikaner population that Afrikaners are a bunch of fucking dicks.”
January 25th, 2010
“That was really long, but pretty interesting. Africaans [sic] are the worst people in the world, pretty much”
Not as bad as those nasty Israelis.
January 25th, 2010
You get gay communities, Moslem communities in Europe, black communities in America, china towns everywhere, you have not a 100 but one white town in Africa and they are racist scum of the world this is ridicules. They speak there own language, have there own culture so why aren’t they allowed to have there own community, If you want everybody in South Africa to be the same how can you call it a multicultural or multi racial society? If you want 1 language, 1 culture, 1 race, which of 15 or so are you going to rape and genocide first? This article is blatantly biased and in bad taste.
January 25th, 2010
I think its deeply unfair for people to make comments like “That was really long, but pretty interesting. Africaans (sp) are the worst people in the world, pretty much.”
In fact its disgusting and hugely unfair, I know a great many Afrikaans people who are wonderful. Most of them actually. I am an English speaking South African and I know a great many of my own kind who are bigoted and awful, AS WELL AS a great many “liberal” nations whose own and very common racism’s are barely hidden.
AND By the fucking way… Dr Chris Jooste is not dead you fucking morons/Liars. he is alive and well.
January 25th, 2010
i need a poo
January 29th, 2010
“So if you are English-speaking, or black, but totally committed to this goal, then you would qualify”
oh please… due to the circumstances you have a right to have a small community without blacks. it’s kind of racist, but there are also black communities where you wouldn’t be welcome. so why sugar coat it?
February 7th, 2010
Why do some black South Africans always complain about the “Afrikaner racists”, but without mentioning that it was the whites’ people arrival (with their know-how)which allowed SA to become the richest country in black Africa
February 8th, 2010
Um
that might have been because of the systematic abuse and intentional subjugation of the majority of the country by the minority.
Dont be a bloody idiot Alessandro, Who gives a shit how rich a country is, if most of their people will never gain anything from those riches.
Germany under Hitler was an economic powerhouse.
Spain flourished under Franco
Italy (and you being of Italian descent should bloody know this) that Mussolini was for a time hugely successful despite destroying his people.
Russia - Stalin
and on and on and on
and yet, these men (and there governments) are considered pure evil for killing and harming a relatively small -Stalin excepted- number of people to what Verwoed and his fucking cronies did.
AND you would defend them.
fuck off