Afrikaner Broederbond - Origins

Origins

Described later as an "inner sanctum", "an immense informal network of influence", and by Jan Smuts as a "dangerous, cunning, political fascist organization", in 1920 Jong Zuid Afrika now restyled as the Afrikaner Broederbond, was a grouping of 37 white men of Afrikaner ethnicity, Afrikaans language, and the Calvinist Dutch Reformed faith, who shared cultural, semi-religious, and deeply political objectives based on traditions and experiences dating back to the arrival of Dutch white settlers, French Huguenots, and Germans at the Cape in the 17th and 18th centuries and including the dramatic events of the Great Trek in the 1830s and 40's. Ivor Wilkins and Hans Strydom recount how, on the occasion of its 50th anniversary, a leading broeder (brother or member) said:

for understandable reasons it was difficult to explain aims…n the beginning people were allowed in…who thought it was just another cultural society (Wilkins & Strydom, 1980, 45).

The precise intentions of the founders are not clear. Was the group intended to counter the dominance of the British and the English language, or to redeem the Afrikaners after their defeat in the Second Anglo-Boer War? Perhaps it sought to protect a culture, build an economy and seize control of a government . The remarks of the organization's chairman in 1944 offer a slightly different, and possibly more accurate interpretation in the context of the post-Boer War and post- World War I era, when Afrikaners were suffering through a maelstrom of social and political changes:

The Afrikaner Broederbond was born out of the deep conviction that the Afrikaner volk has been planted in this country by the Hand of God, destined to survive as a separate volk with its own calling.

In other words, the traditional, deeply pious Calvinism of the Afrikaners, a pastoral people with a difficult history in South Africa since the mid-17th century, supplied an element of Christian predestination that led to a determination to wrest the country from the English-speaking British and place its future in the hands of the Afrikaans-speaking Afrikaners, whatever that might mean for the large black and mixed-race population. To the old thirst for sovereignty that had prompted the Great Trek into the interior from 1838 on, would be added a new thirst for total independence and Nationalism. These two threads merged to form a "Christian National" civil religion that would dominate South African life from 1948 to 1994.

This was the historical context in which the Broederbond emerged. The scorched earth policy of the British during the second Boer War devastated Boer (that is, rural Afrikaner farmer) lands. In British concentration camps, 27 000 Boer women and children had died. The Boer surrender at Vereeniging, though pragmatic, was deeply humiliating. Lord Milner's inflammatory policy of Anglicization simply rubbed salt into Afrikaner wounds, and a backlash was inevitable. The National Party and ultimately the Broederbond were the long-term and powerful results.

The National Party had been established in 1914 by Afrikaner nationalists. It first came to power in 1924. Ten years later, its leader J.B.M. Hertzog and Jan Smuts of the South African Party merged their parties to form the United Party. This angered a contingent of hardline nationalists under D.F. Malan, who broke away to form the ’’Purified National Party’’. By the time World War II broke out, resentment of the British had not subsided. Malan's party opposed South Africa's entry into the war on the side of the British; some of its members wanted to support Nazi Germany. Jan Smuts had commanded the British Army in East Africa and was understandably amenable to backing the Allies a second time. This was the spark Afrikaner nationalism needed. Herzog, who was in favour of neutrality, quit the United Party when a narrow majority in his cabinet backed Smuts. He started the Afrikaner Party which would amalgamate later with D.F. Malan's ’’Purified National Party’’ to become the force that would take over South African politics for the next 46 years, until majority rule and Nelson Mandela's election in 1994.