The Political Mobilization of Dutch Afrikaners after 1870

The second major development stimulating growing ethnic awareness was the rise of Dutch-Afrikaner farmers' associations (boeren vereenigingen ). During the 1870s several were formed in the northeastern and eastern part of the colony. Like their English counterparts, they began as agricultural organizations but soon began to speak out on political issues. The Albert Boeren Vereeniging, where The Patriot found an avid readership, particularly demanded the right to speak Dutch in parliament and proposed a colony-wide Afrikaner Bond based on common interests and loyalties. In 1878 the wine producers of the Western Cape were aroused by an excise bill which threatened to injure them further, and, in response, Onze Jan Hofmeyr established the Zuid Afrikaansche Boeren Beschermings Vereeniging (BBV). It was initially an organization of wine producers established to oppose the new bill, which soon was watered down. It was also a Western Cape political formation against a government dominated by English-speaking politicians of the Eastern Cape. Most importantly, it was an ethnic movement that championed Dutch-Afrikaner interests in matters as diverse as farmers' control over labour and Dutch language rights. To broaden his political base Hofmeyr defined the group as one which included 'patriotic' English-speakers. Brown Afrikaans-speakers were, however, hardly mentioned and were usually treated as a separate category.

The BBV scored a remarkable success in the 1878–79 elections, winning nine of the twenty-one upper house seats and a third of those of the lower house. Soon after the elections, however, enthusiasm dwindled. The BBV failed to attract more than a thousand members and barely extended outside the Western Cape. Efforts to link up with the eastern farmers' associations were not successful, and those associations themselves failed to form their own coordinating body. In 1880 Du Toit seized the initiative by founding the Afrikaner Bond, which aimed at coordinating the activities of the GRA, BBV and eastern boeren vereengingen and linking them with Dutch-Afrikaners in the Boer republics. The Bond's principles represented a compromise between Du Toit's exclusive and Hofmeyr's inclusive strategies. On the one hand, there was Du Toit's attack on speculators, foreign banks and traitors in parliament, criticism of the education of the Dutch-Afrikaners while 'millions of pounds' were spent on the education of the English, and complaints about the sacrifice of 'Africa's interests to England, or those of the Farmer to the Merchant'. On the other hand, the Bond's definition of the 'Afrikaner' was the one favoured by Hofmeyr: all those who recognized Africa as their fatherland and wanted to work together for the good of a united South Africa.^[61]

In the Transvaal Dutch-Afrikaner ethnic awareness was politicized by the successful revolt in 1881 of the burghers against the British occupation of their state. As De Kiewiet aptly puts it: the unity of the Transvaal burghers when it finally came 'was not really proof of a slow cementing into consistency and durability of their opinions and practice, but a more rapid fusing in the heat of the clash with the British government'.^[62] The resistance of the Transvaal burghers indeed became a remarkably vigorous ethnic mobilization. Mass meetings were held where large numbers of burghers camped out for several days to listen to speeches by the leaders. Petitions against the annexation were signed by between one half and two-thirds of a total population of some 8000 burghers. In this mobilization all political divisions were temporarily transcended. The annexation had, as Judge Kotze put it, 'given birth to a strong national feeling among the Boers; it had united them and all were now for the state'.^[63]

After the war, the generals, using their new status as 'national leaders', appealed to the burghers to end the political and religious divisions. In Paul Kruger the Transvaal had a president who succeeded far better than Burgers had in becoming the focus of a Transvaal loyalty and in developing a sense of community. In his speeches and in several history books that appeared after the war a new basis for historical consciousness was propounded. This history was, as Van Jaarsveld notes, 'a tabulation of grievances and a story of clashes between Boer and Briton'. Its spirit was 'that of "wrong", "injustice" and "oppression"'. The Great Trek was interpreted as a 'sacred passion for freedom' and the Battle of Blood River, where the Voortrekkers in 1838 had won a major victory over the Zulu, began to occupy a central place in the historical mythology.^[64] After the war the commemoration of this battle became a truly national festive occasion for the first time. The five-yearly festivals at Paardekraal were great events. In 1881 a crowd estimated at between 12,000 and 15,000 listened with rapt attention to the patriotic speeches of Kruger and others.

These three developments—the founding of the GRA and the so-called First Afrikaans Language Movement, the establishment of the BBV and Bond, and the Transvaal revolt—are often considered by historians as constituting the 'awakening' of Afrikaner nationalism, and there is indeed some evidence to support this view. The writings of The Patriot encouraged the Transvaal burghers to resist actively, and their successful revolt in turn boosted ethnic initiatives in

the Western Cape and elsewhere. The Patriot had struggled to survive with a circulation of only 500 in 1877, but after the war of 1880–81 it jumped to 3000. Du Toit himself thought that the glorious Boer victory at Majuba gave birth to the Afrikaner nation. In 1881 a pan-Afrikaner ethnic movement really seemed to have taken off. In many places in the Cape Colony and Free State Dutch-Afrikaners expressed their solidarity with the Transvaal burghers. They saw the revolt as a struggle which affected everyone of Dutch and French descent with 'a true Afrikaans' spirit. In Hofmeyr's words it filled the 'Afrikanders, otherwise grovelling in the mud of materialism, with a national glow of sympathy for the brothers across the Transvaal'.^[65]

The Afrikaner Bond greatly benefited from this upsurge of ethnic emotions. At the end of 1880 it had only three branches, but after the revolt branches were founded in numerous places, particularly in the Eastern Cape, but also in the Orange Free State and Transvaal. In 1883 the BBV and Bond were merged after Hofmeyr outmanoeuvred the Du Toit faction, and the Bond emerged as the strongest bloc in the Cape Parliament, increasing the proportion of Dutch-Afrikaner representatives from approximately one-third in the years between 1854 and 1885 to just under one-half in the last sixteen years of the century. It easily secured formal approval for Dutch to be used in parliament, in the courts, and as medium of instruction in schools.