Heritage and identity of Provinces

 Map of the provinces of South Africa during apartheid. Source: www.fotw.net

The Union of South Africa (1910-1961)  (Video)

The homelands were :

Ciskei, Transkei, KwaZulu, Venda, Bophuthatswana, Gazankulu, KaNgwane, KwaNdebele, Lebowa and Quaqua.

After the Anglo-Boer War, there were six British colonies in South Africa. They were all separate, with their own governments. In 1910 four of the colonies were brought together as the Union of South Africa. The four old colonies became the provinces of the Union, namely the Cape Province, the Orange Free State, the Transvaal, and Natal.

In 1961 the Union of South Africa became independent from Britain. This means that it was not a British colony anymore. The name of the country changed to the Republic of South Africa. Today it is still the name, but everybody calls it South Africa.

In 1993 with the preparations for democracy, the country was divided into nine provinces. These provinces included the old homeland territories.

The other two colonies were the smaller kingdoms of Swaziland and Basotholand. Today, Basotholand is called Lesotho. These also became self ruling and independent from Britain as separate countries from South Africa.

Cape Province

The Cape Province’s official name was the Province of the Cape of Good Hope. It was the biggest of the four South African provinces.

Cape Town began as a small trading post run by the Dutch East India Company (DEIC) from the Netherlands. Sailing ships on their way to India could stop to rest, do repairs and restock. This trading post was started by Jan van Riebeeck, who arrived in 1652. At first most of the Europeans worked for the DEIC, but later, more and more Europeans chose to come to the Cape to settle. They moved away from Cape Town and started farms and little towns to the north and east. The Europeans included Dutch, French and German people. There were also slaves in the Cape, brought from Africa, Malaysia and other parts of the east, to serve the people from the DEIC. When the Europeans came to the Cape, they came into contact with the native Khoikhoi people. The two groups had very different ways of life, and there were many clashes between them.

In 1806 Britain took over the Cape from the Dutch East India Company. This caused unhappiness among the White farmers especially those on the eastern border of the Cape Colony. They were mostly Afrikaans, and did not want to be ruled by the British. The eastern border was very far from Cape Town, the capital. In those days, it was much more difficult to travel and it took a lot longer than today. This meant that the government did not have as much control over the places that were far away from Cape Town, so the farmers had to look after themselves and were basically free to do what they wanted. But when the British took over, they wanted more control over the eastern border.

When the British government of the Cape spread their control to the east, they also fought with the local Xhosa inhabitants. There were nine wars between the government and the Xhosa, called the frontier (pronounced ‘front-ear’) or border wars. The Dutch farmers also fought with the Xhosa over land. In the end, in about 1838, thousands of these farmers moved away from the Cape Colony to the north. This migration is called the Great Trek.

The Cape stayed a British colony until it became one of the four provinces of the Union of South Africa in 1910

Transvaal

When the Dutch or Afrikaner Boers left the Cape with the Great Trek, they moved north. They did not all move together. There were different groups, called trek parties, and the people who moved were called Voortrekkers. The Voortrekkers wanted their own land where they would not be controlled by the British and where they did not have to fight for land all the time, as they did with the Xhosa on the eastern border of the Cape. When they moved inland, some of the Voortrekker groups thought the land was uninhabited. There were big open spaces and they thought that they could take the land for themselves.

They got this idea possibly because many of the Black groups moved around. One reason for this was to flee from the Zulu king Shaka, who started wars with the groups around him. This was called the mfecane or difaqane, which means something like ‘to flee’ or ‘to break up’. Although the Voortrekkers thought that nobody lived there, some of the groups moved back after the mfecane. There were many clashes between them and the different Voortrekker parties. Black communities included the Ndebele, the Pedi and the Batlou. When the Voortrekkers won they took the land for themselves. The Voortrekkers founded towns, including Potchefstroom and Lydenburg, not far from the Vaal River. In 1852 the area that they had taken over became a republic, called the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek or ZAR (this is Dutch for South African Republic). The first president of the ZAR was Marthinus Wessel Pretorius.

In 1877 the British took control of the ZAR. But the Boers did not want to be controlled by the British again, and fought to get their freedom and independence back. This was the first Anglo-Boer War. The Boers won the war and their independence, but only for a little while. Soon another Anglo-Boer War would break out, and this time the Boers would lose.

In 1886, gold was discovered in the ZAR. People from all over the world came to Johannesburg, the new mining town, to find gold. The Boers did not want the foreigners to take their freedom away again and tried to control them very strictly. This angered the British government and they wanted to take over the republic and the gold. This led to the Second Anglo-Boer War or South African War between 1899-1902. The war started in the ZAR, but spread to the whole of South Africa. The other Boer republic, the Orange Free State, helped the ZAR. There were also people from the Cape Colony and even from Europe who came to help the Boers, and Blacks fought on both sides of the war. In the end, the Boers lost and the ZAR and the Orange Free State became British colonies, and the ZAR’s name changed to Transvaal, which means ‘across the Vaal River’.

In 1910 the Transvaal became one of the four provinces of the Union of South Africa.

The flag of the Zuid-Afrikaanshe Republiek, the Vierkleur (meaning 'four colour') Source: www.praag.co.za

Orange Free State

When the Voortrekkers moved away from the Cape Colony in the Great Trek, some of them settled just north of the Orange River, which formed the border between the Cape Colony and the rest of South Africa. There, they founded many towns and farms. They soon came into conflict with some of the native groups, especially the Basotho. The Basotho nation was founded by Moshoeshoe during the mfecane. Their capital was at Thaba Bosiu, which means Mountain of the Night in Sotho. In 1854 the Boers (as the Voortrekkers who had settled in the new republics were now called) declared the area the Orange Free State, a Boer republic like the ZAR. They fought against Moshoeshoe many times, mostly over who owned what land and the border between the OFS and the Basotho kingdom. In 1868 the Basotho lost the war against the Boers. Moshoeshoe did not want to lose his kingdom, and asked the British for protection. This meant that the Boers could not take over his kingdom, but it also meant that the British could have control over his land. After Moshoeshoe died in 1870, the British made the kingdom a colony and called it Basotholand. In 1966 Basotholand became independent, and the name was changed to Lesotho.

When the Second Anglo-Boer War broke out in 1899, the Orange Free State helped the ZAR to fight against the British. But in 1902 the Boers lost the war and their republics became British colonies. The name of the Orange Free State was changed to the Orange River Colony. In 1910, it became one of the provinces of the new Union of South Africa, and the name was changed back to the Orange Free State.

Natal

The first people who came to live in Natal were the San and later many Black groups collectively called the Nguni, followed. The Nguni was not one big group or kingdom, but rather small, separate tribes, each one with its own chief. One of these small groups was the Zulu. In 1816 a young man, Shaka became the chief of the Zulu. Shaka was a very good warrior and taught the Zulu army to fight very well. The army, or impis, fought and won many wars against other Nguni and Sotho groups with their skilful military tactics. Shaka included the groups that the impis beat in the Zulu kingdom, so that the Zulus became a very big and strong nation. Not all of the other groups were beaten. Some moved away from Shaka’s area to form their own kingdoms. One such kingdom was the Ndebele under king Mzilikazi, who settled in northern Transvaal and Zimbabwe. Another is the Basotho, who formed their own kingdom in Lesotho under King Moshoeshoe (pronounced Moe-shwe-shwe).

In 1824 British ivory traders came to the shore of Shaka’s kingdom and, with Shaka’s permission, formed a small settlement. In time the settlement grew and became a small town, which they called D’Urban, after the Governor of the Cape Colony. There were about 30 men in this village.

To find out more about the history of Durban, visit SAHO feature.

In 1828 Shaka was killed by his half-brothers and one of them, Dingane, became the new Zulu-king. When one of the Voortrekker parties arrived in Zululand and wanted to settle there, they first had to negotiate with Dingane to get some of his land to live on. The Voortrekker party’s leader, Piet Retief, made an agreement with Dingane, and the Voortrekkers believed that they had Dingane’s permission to move over the Drakensberg into his land. But when Retief went to sign the papers at Dingane’s kraal on 6 February 1838, he and the men who went with him were killed. The impis then attacked and killed hundreds of the Voortrekkers, and also attacked the village of D’Urban.

On 16 December 1838 the impis attacked a Voortrekker laager at Blood River. There were thousands of Zulu-warriors and only a few Voortrekkers, but the Voortrekkers won the battle. The day became a very important day for Afrikaners. Before 1994, it was a public holiday called the Day of the Covenant, because the Voortrekkers had promised God that if He helped them in the battle against the impis, they would keep 16 December as a special day. Today, it is still a holiday, but it is called Day of Reconciliation. After the Battle of Blood River (or Ncome River), Dingane lost a lot of his power. The Voortrekkers moved into the land, and began to form towns and districts. It became a Boer republic, called Natalia, which means Christmas. The capital of Natalia was called Pietermaritzburg, a mixture of the names of Piet Retief and Gerrit Maritz, two Voortrekker leaders.

But in 1842 British troops annexed the Republic of Natalia. It became a British colony called Natal. The Voortrekkers (or Boers, as the Afrikaner farmers were called) did not want to be ruled by the British as they had been in the Cape, and most of them left Natal to go and live in one of the other two Boer Republics, the South African Republic (ZAR) or the Orange Free State. In 1879 the British attacked Zululand after years of fights over land. This was the beginning of the Anglo-Zulu War. The captured the Zulu king, Cetshwayo, and sent him into exile. In 1887 they annexed Zululand, and it became part of the Natal Colony.

Natal remained a British colony until 1910, when it became one of the four provinces of the Union of South Africa.

The Homelands

After South Africa became a Union, the government wanted Black and White people to live separately, so they created certain areas, or reserves for Black people. Before the Union they were rural areas ruled by local chiefs. They came to be called ‘Native Locations’ and Black South Africans lost their land through the 1913 Land Act. Later, under apartheid the division of races and control of black people became tighter and these reserved areas were extended to be called bantustans or homelands. The idea was that the homelands would be like countries where Black people could live and vote for their own governments, led by chiefs who were controlled by the apartheid Government. There was a homeland for different language groups like Venda and Xhosa in South Africa. These groups were called nations, and all Black South Africans were made citizens of one of these ‘homeland’ ‘countries’, without any consideration for where they were born or where they lived. This meant forcing millions of people, who became non-citizens of South Africa, to these far off places.

Many people had never even been to the place which they were now supposed to call home. They now had to get permission to come and work in South Africa as if they were foreigners. These ‘homelands’ were home to the workers and regarded as a pool of cheap black labour. They were small making up less than a tenth of the whole country but accomodating almost 90 percent of the people. The land could not support all these people and was of the worst quality so that people were forced to work on mines and in factories in the towns to earn an income. This separated families as fathers left for long periods to work far away from home.

Each homeland had its own leader, installed by the apartheid government. They depended on South Africa for economic survival and so could never challenge the Government. The world refused to recognise the homelands as independent countries.

Activity  1 Map of the provinces of South Africa during apartheid. Source:http://www.fotw.net/misc/za(old.gif Fill in the names of the old provinces on the map. a. In which province do you live? b. What is the capital of your province? c. Of which province was it a part before 1993? On the maps, there are pieces of land that have different colours. What were these places called? What were they? Activity 2 Do you know anybody who lived in a homeland? (Like a family member, neighbour, friend or maybe somebody that works for your family.) Ask them about life in the homeland. Ask questions like – •Were they born there? •If not, were they forced to move there? •How was life in the homelands different from life in the rest of South Africa? •How were their lives in the homeland different from what it is today? •Did they like living in the homeland? •Why/why not? Write their story down in a paragraph or two.

“We condemn in the strongest terms possible this horrendous act which has left us cold with shock."

SKOK MOORD - HOU ASB JULLE OPMERKINGS EN TAAL BESKAAFD
HIERDIE IS SIEK EN GRUSAAM IN SY ERGSTE VORM

Murder of Jenelee van Rooyen, 22, her unborn baby and her toddler, Blydeville Lichtenburg - condemned by NW premier Thandi Modise: SAPS arrested 32-yo Samuel Ndlvovu. Her womb was cut to remove the foetus, its throat was slit with a knife... her toddler and the woman also were stabbed to death:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Office-of-the-Premier-North-West-Province-South-Africa/109011622471498North West Premier Thandi Modise has expressed shock and condemned the murder of a pregnant woman, her unborn baby and her toddler in Blydeville outside Lichtenburg.

“We condemn in the strongest terms possible this horrendous act which has left us cold with shock. No amount of anger justifies this heinous act. The heartless person responsible needs to be permanently removed from society,” said the angered Premier Modise.

The Premier who expressed concern about escalating incidents of gender based violence called for united action against the scourge and for real men to stand up to protect women and children.

“Men who are experiencing pressure should seek counselling and professional help before matters get out of hand to avoid such incidents,” added Modise.

According to police, the 32 year old Zimbabwean national, Samuel Ndlvovu was arrested after allegedly stabling Jenelee van Rooyen on Saturday night.

“The police were called to the scene, where on arrival they found the bodies of the 22-year-old woman and her daughter with blood all over them. The woman was pregnant and her womb was cut to remove the foetus and its throat was slit with a knife. Charges of murder are being investigated,” said Colonel Sabata Mokgwabone.

Ndlovu was remanded in police custody when he appeared briefly in the Lichtenburg Magistrates court on Tuesday. He is expected to appear again in court on January 22.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Office-of-the-Premier-North-West-Province-South-Africa/10901162247149

facebook.com

THIS IS WHAT JULIUS MALEMA IS SPREADING WITH HIS NEW EFF PARTY - HIDDEN FOR THEWORLD

Hierdie word vir ons weggesteek in SA, maar dit het nou via Australie by ons uitgekom.

Moet dus onder geen illusies wees omtrent Malema se doelwitte nie!!

 AND WE WONDER WHETHER WE NEED TO WORRY ABOUT OUR FUTURE HERE IN SA??

 

  EFF - Julius Malema's new political party philosophy 

The Afrikaner Domination of the Boers & how it was constructed.

The following I hope will be an informative explanation contrasting & outlining the difference between the once notable historical differences between the two main White Afrikaans speaking groups as I have discerned from spending time examining the history of the groups & region in question.

The term Afrikaner & the term Boer once denoted two distinct groups in the not so distant past. While it is easy for many people of Boer descent to not realize the difference due to the fact that they were often brought up to think of themselves as Afrikaners: the fact of the matter is that there is indeed a valid & poignant difference between the two terms since it relates to two distinct cultural groups. The Afrikaners conditioned the Boers to view themselves as Afrikaners as well in the wake of the devastation of the Anglo-Boer War when most Boers were destitute & looking for work in the cities. This left them rather vulnerable to the Cape based Afrikaners political maneuvering which ultimately would co-opt the Boers in a political context.

The Boers are the descendants of those semi nomadic early migrating farmers who were known as the 
The Boers are the descendants of those semi nomadic early migrating farmers who were known as the The Boers are the descendants of those semi nomadic early migrating farmers who were known as the While all this was happening among the Boer communities on the frontier most the the White community at the Cape had remained in the Western Cape & were often known as the Cape Dutch & were loyal to the colonial powers & often ridiculed the frontier Boers whom they had little affinity for viewing them as semi-barbaric [2] ruffians. The Cape Dutch (the forerunners to the Afrikaners) often attempted to exert nominal control over the Trekboers notably with the establishment of the frontier towns of Swellendam & Graaff-Reinet. [3] It was in these two towns that the Boers declared their first republics in 1795 whereupon they adopted the red white & blue horizontal tri colour flag taken from the Batavian Republic flag. [4] This motif would later be found in numerous other Boer republic flags. While the orange white & blue horizontal tri colour flag of the Cape Dutch run VOC Cape would later find its way into the South African flag in 1927 under the Prime Ministership of the Western Cape born -ie Cape Dutch- Afrikaner JBM Hertzog.
The first freedom struggle the Boers ever had was against the administration of the Cape Dutch ie: the proto Afrikaners. Or rather the people who would later coin the term Afrikaner & used it in a political context. This is most significant since it demonstrates that the Cape Dutch / Afrikaners have never wanted freedom - in contrast to the Boers who have always wanted freedom in Africa- & often fought or worked against the freedom of the Boers. Just as they would again later do during the second Anglo-Boer War when numerous Western Cape Afrikaners fought against the Boers on the side of the British. [5]
Now there might even be some Boers who think that all this is in the past & that they are now all one big "Afrikaner" group [6] but this is wrong on a number of fronts. First let's consider where the term Afrikaner came from & what purpose it served. The term Afrikaner was first loosely used in 1707 when Hendrik Biebouw a member of the local White proto Afrikaans speaking community at the Cape- was in court & declared that he was an "Afrikaner" meaning that he was an African & was no longer from Europe. During this time all of the White settlers & mixed race persons in Africa were referred to Afrikanders & later Afrikaners -but this was simply a GEOGRAPHICAL label as it was applied to White people in general who were born in Africa regardless of which cultural group they were apart of. How it came to be used to denote a specific cultural group (s) & become politicized occurred much later in 1875 when a group of Cape Dutch intellectuals in the Western Cape decided to start a language rights group [7] aimed at getting official recognition for their language which they began to call Afrikaans after the African continent. Remember that at this exact same time the Boers were independent in their own republics in the north & spoke their OWN dialect of this language which they called "die Taal" or Boer Taal which historians have classified as Eastern Border Afrikaans [8] since the Boers' dialect of Afrikaans developed on the northern & eastern frontier AWAY FROM the Western Cape Afrikaners & their dialect. The term Afrikaner was first used in a political context by these Western Cape people who began to call themselves Afrikaners after the language they spoke -all at a time when the Boer people HAD LONG SINCE BEEN ESTABLISHED & were mainly living in their own independent world recognized republics in the north. Therefore in the late 19th cent & into the 20th cent -& as early as the 1700s when the Boers ancestors trekked out of the Western Cape- there were two distinct & identifiable White Afrikaans speaking (different dialects) groups [9] in Southern Africa: one in the Western Cape (& some who moved northwards after the gold rush) who called themselves Afrikaners & were the descendants of the pro colonial Cape Dutch / & the other group: the anti colonial / republican / independent oriented Boers living in the northern & eastern Cape frontier & within their own independent republics in the north -descendants of the Trekboers / Grensboere & the Voortrekkers.
President Paul Kruger of the Transvaal Republic -who referred to himself as a Boer- was wary of the Cape Afrikaners & did not want them coming to his republic as he viewed them as being too pro British. [10] He would often recruit people from Holland to fill certain government positions as he felt that they would be more loyal to the Transvaal Republic than the Afrikaners. The Cape Afrikaners were often influenced by the British colonial power.
After the Boers were conquered by the British & incorporated into the British created macro state of South Africa: a number of these Boers even attempted to restore their former Republics by force of arms in 1914 when General De Wet & some other notable Boer Generals (including it is believed General De La Rey) staged a rebellion to the South Africa government during World War 1. [11] This rebellion was triggered when Prime Minister Louis Botha's government decided to enter on the side of the British during the war. The lead to an outrage among many Boers since it was less than 15 years after the British killed close to 50 % of the total Boer child population in the concentration camps. The rebellion wasThis rebellion was triggered when Prime Minister Louis Botha's government decided to enter on the side of the British during the war. The lead to an outrage among many Boers since it was less than 15 years after the British killed close to 50 % of the total Boer child population in the concentration camps. The rebellion was put down by force & its leaders were jailed & banned from participating in politics.
So how in the world did the Boers become conditioned to also later view themselves as Afrikaners too you might be asking? In a short 3 word response: war / propaganda & politics. After the devastation of the Anglo-Boer War -of which a number of Afrikaners fought against the Boers on the side of the British- when many Boers had to move to the cities to find work they often encountered Afrikaners [12] who would exert their political influence over the poorer Boers -but many Boers still remained culturally intact & even had their own organizations. This is where the disastrous effects of Afrikaner Nationalism comes in.
During the 1930s the Broederbond & the Afrikaner Nationalists -which were one & the same [13] - worked hard to incorporate the Boers into the Afrikaner fold [14] as the Afrikaner Nationalists viewed the Boers as a political threat to their planned hegemony in South Africa. After the Boer led Rand Rebellion was put down by violent force (even complete with the South African Party government bombing Johannesburg) [15] in 1922: the Afrikaner Nationalists worked overtime to politically incorporate the Boers under the Afrikaner banner of which the Cape based Afrikaners would control. One of the first things they did was to create the Colour bar laws [16] which reserved certain jobs for White people as the main grievance of the Boer mine workers was that they did not like having their wages being under cut with the importation of cheap Bantu labour. This effectively started to acclimatize the Boers to the Afrikaner Nationalists by getting them hooked onto a dimension of the Apartheid platform. Though it should be noted that Apartheid was started by the British Colonial administrations [17] -particularly the horizontal oppressive features- & was only expanded upon by the Afrikaner Nationalists in which they also envisioned & attempted to turn the Bantu reserves into independent states. [18] Four were in fact granted outright independence [19] but were only ever recognized by South Africa & each other but not by the world. Another more effective method the Afrikaners used to co-opt the Boers was by invoking Boer history most notably the Great Trek. Notice how the Western Cape born Cape Dutch / Afrikaner D F Malan: the National Party Prime Minister was able to do this to great effect -notably during the Great Trek reenactment ceremonies & at the Voortrekker Monument inauguration. This single event alone was definitely one of the convenient tools that the Afrikaner Nationalists used to co-opt the republican Boers which in turn let the Boers' guard down thinking (erroneously as it would turn out) that their (Boers) interests were looked after by teaming up with the Cape based Afrikaners under the banner of Afrikaner Nationalism. Which was an extension of British Imperialism in many ways as the macro State set up by the British with the South Africa Act of 1909 was now being run by a Cape based Afrikaans speaking regime which was recruited as a surrogate Colonial power.
D F Malan was nothing more than a political opportunist (interesting how Jacob Zuma -a political opportunist himself- is attempting to do a similar thing in modern times by attempting to appeal to the Boers & Afrikaners just as Malan was able to successfully do) who used the centennial of the Great Trek to promote his political agenda & the establishment of Afrikaner Nationalism which sought -as part of its goal- to expropriate & subjugate the Boer Nation under the tutelage of the anti-republican Cape based Afrikaners. Malan was even opposed to the republican aspirations of the Boers even attempting to prevent the Boer descended Hans Strijdom from succeeding him as Prime Minister as he favoured N C Havenga [20] the former leader of the Afrikaner Party which joined the National Party in 1951. According to one of the past guests of the Hello Afrika segment of the Right Perspective radio program: Theuns Cloete of Boervolk Radio: Strijdom was even talking about restoring the Boer Republics as there was considerable support among the Boers [21] during the 1940s & 1950s for this. Strijdom interestingly later died in office under mysterious circumstances & was followed by none other than Hendrik Verwoerd: the Dutch born architect of Grand Apartheid & who would later turn South Africa into a nominal republic which would further offset & blunt Boer aspirations for independence within their own republics.
Therefore by the 1950s most White Afrikaans speaking people were conditioned to view themselves as Afrikaners even though this is technically wrong since for Boers to do so they are basically giving up their own unique identity & allowing themselves to be represented & dominated by the numerically larger Afrikaners [22] who have often historically worked against the interests of the Boers. This is the main reason why it is wrong for Boers to think of themselves as Afrikaners. Consider the following related examples. In Canada there are Quebecois & Acadians: both are French speaking Canadians but no one would ever call the Acadians: French Canadians since this is a term which is applied to the French speakers in Quebec & Ontario. Similarly there are distinctions between the Croats & the Serbs in Europe even though both groups speak the same language -though different dialects of Serbo-Croatian: Croats speaking a dialect called Croatian & Serbs speaking a dialect called Serbian - just as the Boers & Afrikaners speak (or at least used to to a larger extent) different dialects of what came to be called Afrikaans. The difference between the Romanian & Moldovan is another example of different cultural / ethnic groups speaking different dialects of a similar or closely related language. The problem among the White Afrikaans speakers is that the Afrikaners were able to effectively dominate & overshadow the Boers. Perhaps not too unlike how the Serbs once did in the former Yugoslavia -but it appears that the Afrikaners were much better at conditioning Boer identity out of the public sphere -only to be used as a convenient political prop to bolster & advance the agenda of the Cape based Afrikaner Nationalists.
This is why many Boers do not want to be viewed as Afrikaners since this makes them a minority within the Afrikaner designation. It makes the Cape based Afrikaners the center of power. The Afrikaners of Cape Dutch descent outnumber the Afrikaners of Boer descent. Making any union between Afrikaner & Boer always coming to the detriment of the Boers. This means that anti-Boer Afrikaners could (& often do) represent the entire Afrikaner group making decisions which could be inimical to the Boers. Rather like what often happened in Apartheid era South Africa when Boers were outvoted by the Afrikaners. Sort of like how liberal leaning states often make decisions inimical to the local conservatives because the given state's left of center leadership makes the political decisions affecting the entire population of the state marginalizing persons with right of center inclinations.
The Western Cape based Broederbond -which was the driving force behind Afrikaner Nationalism / The National Party / Apartheid rewrote the history of the Boers turning them into "Afrikaners" [23] retroactively as part of a rhetorical device in order to co-opt the Boers / their history & inheritance. Therefore the history they wrote would often refer to Afrikaners instead of Boers -which is a common error still copied by contemporary authors -without realizing that they are promoting the Afrikaner Nationalists propaganda & skewed version of the past. The well known Afrikaans historian Hermann Giliomee was one of those who played an integral part in the continued perpetuation of this myth by covering up or derisively down playing the distinct & separate history of the Boer nation.
The late Boer patriot Robert van Tonder of the Boerestaat Party was one of those who was most insistent that the Boers are a different nation to the Cape based Afrikaners & was calling for the restoration of the Boer Republics as early as 1961 [24] the same year that Hendrik Verwoerd turned South Africa into a republic.
Furthermore: TRP caller Henry Pinkham is exactly right when he points out that the Boers can only achieve freedom as a nation since if they try to do it while still attached to the Cape based Afrikaners the Boers will (obviously) get nowhere. The Cape based Afrikaners -particularly its leadership- still to this day like nothing better than to keep the Boers on their Afrikaner reservation.
Also: the world remembers the neo colonial role that the Afrikaners played (at the behest of the British who put them in control in the first place) & their disastrous (though often exaggerated) legacy while the Boers played only a marginal role as they had hardly anything to do with the implementation of Apartheid & were not as high in the ranks of the political order. Therefore going forward as Boers will only help their cause even more particularly among the rest of the world since the Boers were recognized the world over during the Anglo-Boer War. The Boer Republics themselves were recognized by the European governments & American government [25] & the cause of Boer independence was supported the world over.
Now it would be one thing if the difference between Afrikaner & Boer was just semantics (as one guest erroneously & ignorantly put it) being different terms referring to the same people. This could even be true to an extent vis a vis those Boers or Boer descendants who also refer to themselves as Afrikaners -due to conditioning- but the fact of the matter is that most Afrikaners are of Cape Dutch descent since people of Boer descent compromise only about not much more than a third of the total White Afrikaans speaking population.
Furthermore the term Afrikaner originally referred to those colonial Cape Dutch people who often worked against Boer interests & as such these two terms in fact refer to two different & distinct peoples. One poster on a forum once said that the Cape based Afrikaners -ie: the former Cape Dutch- are nothing more than Afrikaans speaking English people. Rather poignant observation since the Cape based Afrikaners have virtually the same cosmopolitan neo colonial liberal outlook as most of the English speakers have which is in sharp contrast to the more rustic / rural / anti colonial & conservative outlook of the Boers.
Therefore even if the Boers & Afrikaners were to achieve independence in a common state (as they had in Apartheid era South Africa along with the English speakers) -which the notion of dismissing the differences between Afrikaner & Boer would lead to- the Boer people will still not have the full self determination that they most seek as they would STILL be under the political control & suzerainty of the Cape based Afrikaners WHO OFTEN do not share their political outlook / culture nor even the same history ie: the trekking themed past / the various freedom struggles nor the frontier origins which shaped & defined the Boer Volk.While all this was happening among the Boer communities on the frontier most the the White community at the Cape had remained in the Western Cape & were often known as the Cape Dutch & were loyal to the colonial powers & often ridiculed the frontier Boers whom they had little affinity for viewing them as semi-barbaric [2] ruffians. The Cape Dutch (the forerunners to the Afrikaners) often attempted to exert nominal control over the Trekboers notably with the establishment of the frontier towns of Swellendam & Graaff-Reinet. [3] It was in these two towns that the Boers declared their first republics in 1795 whereupon they adopted the red white & blue horizontal tri colour flag taken from the Batavian Republic flag. [4] This motif would later be found in numerous other Boer republic flags. While the orange white & blue horizontal tri colour flag of the Cape Dutch run VOC Cape would later find its way into the South African flag in 1927 under the Prime Ministership of the Western Cape born -ie Cape Dutch- Afrikaner JBM Hertzog.The first freedom struggle the Boers ever had was against the administration of the Cape Dutch ie: the proto Afrikaners. Or rather the people who would later coin the term Afrikaner & used it in a political context. This is most significant since it demonstrates that the Cape Dutch / Afrikaners have never wanted freedom - in contrast to the Boers who have always wanted freedom in Africa- & often fought or worked against the freedom of the Boers. Just as they would again later do during the second Anglo-Boer War when numerous Western Cape Afrikaners fought against the Boers on the side of the British. [5]
Now there might even be some Boers who think that all this is in the past & that they are now all one big "Afrikaner" group [6] but this is wrong on a number of fronts. First let's consider where the term Afrikaner came from & what purpose it served. The term Afrikaner was first loosely used in 1707 when Hendrik Biebouw a member of the local White proto Afrikaans speaking community at the Cape- was in court & declared that he was an "Afrikaner" meaning that he was an African & was no longer from Europe. During this time all of the White settlers & mixed race persons in Africa were referred to Afrikanders & later Afrikaners -but this was simply a GEOGRAPHICAL label as it was applied to White people in general who were born in Africa regardless of which cultural group they were apart of. How it came to be used to denote a specific cultural group (s) & become politicized occurred much later in 1875 when a group of Cape Dutch intellectuals in the Western Cape decided to start a language rights group [7] aimed at getting official recognition for their language which they began to call Afrikaans after the African continent. Remember that at this exact same time the Boers were independent in their own republics in the north & spoke their OWN dialect of this language which they called "die Taal" or Boer Taal which historians have classified as Eastern Border Afrikaans [8] since the Boers' dialect of Afrikaans developed on the northern & eastern frontier AWAY FROM the Western Cape Afrikaners & their dialect. The term Afrikaner was first used in a political context by these Western Cape people who began to call themselves Afrikaners after the language they spoke -all at a time when the Boer people HAD LONG SINCE BEEN ESTABLISHED & were mainly living in their own independent world recognized republics in the north. Therefore in the late 19th cent & into the 20th cent -& as early as the 1700s when the Boers ancestors trekked out of the Western Cape- there were two distinct & identifiable White Afrikaans speaking (different dialects) groups [9] in Southern Africa: one in the Western Cape (& some who moved northwards after the gold rush) who called themselves Afrikaners & were the descendants of the pro colonial Cape Dutch / & the other group: the anti colonial / republican / independent oriented Boers living in the northern & eastern Cape frontier & within their own independent republics in the north -descendants of the Trekboers / Grensboere & the Voortrekkers.
President Paul Kruger of the Transvaal Republic -who referred to himself as a Boer- was wary of the Cape Afrikaners & did not want them coming to his republic as he viewed them as being too pro British. [10] He would often recruit people from Holland to fill certain government positions as he felt that they would be more loyal to the Transvaal Republic than the Afrikaners. The Cape Afrikaners were often influenced by the British colonial power.
After the Boers were conquered by the British & incorporated into the British created macro state of South Africa: a number of these Boers even attempted to restore their former Republics by force of arms in 1914 when General De Wet & some other notable Boer Generals (including it is believed General De La Rey) staged a rebellion to the South Africa government during World War 1. [11] This rebellion was triggered when Prime Minister Louis Botha's government decided to enter on the side of the British during the war. The lead to an outrage among many Boers since it was less than 15 years after the British killed close to 50 % of the total Boer child population in the concentration camps. The rebellion wasThis rebellion was triggered when Prime Minister Louis Botha's government decided to enter on the side of the British during the war. The lead to an outrage among many Boers since it was less than 15 years after the British killed close to 50 % of the total Boer child population in the concentration camps. The rebellion was put down by force & its leaders were jailed & banned from participating in politics.
So how in the world did the Boers become conditioned to also later view themselves as Afrikaners too you might be asking? In a short 3 word response: war / propaganda & politics. After the devastation of the Anglo-Boer War -of which a number of Afrikaners fought against the Boers on the side of the British- when many Boers had to move to the cities to find work they often encountered Afrikaners [12] who would exert their political influence over the poorer Boers -but many Boers still remained culturally intact & even had their own organizations. This is where the disastrous effects of Afrikaner Nationalism comes in.
During the 1930s the Broederbond & the Afrikaner Nationalists -which were one & the same [13] - worked hard to incorporate the Boers into the Afrikaner fold [14] as the Afrikaner Nationalists viewed the Boers as a political threat to their planned hegemony in South Africa. After the Boer led Rand Rebellion was put down by violent force (even complete with the South African Party government bombing Johannesburg) [15] in 1922: the Afrikaner Nationalists worked overtime to politically incorporate the Boers under the Afrikaner banner of which the Cape based Afrikaners would control. One of the first things they did was to create the Colour bar laws [16] which reserved certain jobs for White people as the main grievance of the Boer mine workers was that they did not like having their wages being under cut with the importation of cheap Bantu labour. This effectively started to acclimatize the Boers to the Afrikaner Nationalists by getting them hooked onto a dimension of the Apartheid platform. Though it should be noted that Apartheid was started by the British Colonial administrations [17] -particularly the horizontal oppressive features- & was only expanded upon by the Afrikaner Nationalists in which they also envisioned & attempted to turn the Bantu reserves into independent states. [18] Four were in fact granted outright independence [19] but were only ever recognized by South Africa & each other but not by the world. Another more effective method the Afrikaners used to co-opt the Boers was by invoking Boer history most notably the Great Trek. Notice how the Western Cape born Cape Dutch / Afrikaner D F Malan: the National Party Prime Minister was able to do this to great effect -notably during the Great Trek reenactment ceremonies & at the Voortrekker Monument inauguration. This single event alone was definitely one of the convenient tools that the Afrikaner Nationalists used to co-opt the republican Boers which in turn let the Boers' guard down thinking (erroneously as it would turn out) that their (Boers) interests were looked after by teaming up with the Cape based Afrikaners under the banner of Afrikaner Nationalism. Which was an extension of British Imperialism in many ways as the macro State set up by the British with the South Africa Act of 1909 was now being run by a Cape based Afrikaans speaking regime which was recruited as a surrogate Colonial power.
D F Malan was nothing more than a political opportunist (interesting how Jacob Zuma -a political opportunist himself- is attempting to do a similar thing in modern times by attempting to appeal to the Boers & Afrikaners just as Malan was able to successfully do) who used the centennial of the Great Trek to promote his political agenda & the establishment of Afrikaner Nationalism which sought -as part of its goal- to expropriate & subjugate the Boer Nation under the tutelage of the anti-republican Cape based Afrikaners. Malan was even opposed to the republican aspirations of the Boers even attempting to prevent the Boer descended Hans Strijdom from succeeding him as Prime Minister as he favoured N C Havenga [20] the former leader of the Afrikaner Party which joined the National Party in 1951. According to one of the past guests of the Hello Afrika segment of the Right Perspective radio program: Theuns Cloete of Boervolk Radio: Strijdom was even talking about restoring the Boer Republics as there was considerable support among the Boers [21] during the 1940s & 1950s for this. Strijdom interestingly later died in office under mysterious circumstances & was followed by none other than Hendrik Verwoerd: the Dutch born architect of Grand Apartheid & who would later turn South Africa into a nominal republic which would further offset & blunt Boer aspirations for independence within their own republics.
Therefore by the 1950s most White Afrikaans speaking people were conditioned to view themselves as Afrikaners even though this is technically wrong since for Boers to do so they are basically giving up their own unique identity & allowing themselves to be represented & dominated by the numerically larger Afrikaners [22] who have often historically worked against the interests of the Boers. This is the main reason why it is wrong for Boers to think of themselves as Afrikaners. Consider the following related examples. In Canada there are Quebecois & Acadians: both are French speaking Canadians but no one would ever call the Acadians: French Canadians since this is a term which is applied to the French speakers in Quebec & Ontario. Similarly there are distinctions between the Croats & the Serbs in Europe even though both groups speak the same language -though different dialects of Serbo-Croatian: Croats speaking a dialect called Croatian & Serbs speaking a dialect called Serbian - just as the Boers & Afrikaners speak (or at least used to to a larger extent) different dialects of what came to be called Afrikaans. The difference between the Romanian & Moldovan is another example of different cultural / ethnic groups speaking different dialects of a similar or closely related language. The problem among the White Afrikaans speakers is that the Afrikaners were able to effectively dominate & overshadow the Boers. Perhaps not too unlike how the Serbs once did in the former Yugoslavia -but it appears that the Afrikaners were much better at conditioning Boer identity out of the public sphere -only to be used as a convenient political prop to bolster & advance the agenda of the Cape based Afrikaner Nationalists.
This is why many Boers do not want to be viewed as Afrikaners since this makes them a minority within the Afrikaner designation. It makes the Cape based Afrikaners the center of power. The Afrikaners of Cape Dutch descent outnumber the Afrikaners of Boer descent. Making any union between Afrikaner & Boer always coming to the detriment of the Boers. This means that anti-Boer Afrikaners could (& often do) represent the entire Afrikaner group making decisions which could be inimical to the Boers. Rather like what often happened in Apartheid era South Africa when Boers were outvoted by the Afrikaners. Sort of like how liberal leaning states often make decisions inimical to the local conservatives because the given state's left of center leadership makes the political decisions affecting the entire population of the state marginalizing persons with right of center inclinations.
The Western Cape based Broederbond -which was the driving force behind Afrikaner Nationalism / The National Party / Apartheid rewrote the history of the Boers turning them into "Afrikaners" [23] retroactively as part of a rhetorical device in order to co-opt the Boers / their history & inheritance. Therefore the history they wrote would often refer to Afrikaners instead of Boers -which is a common error still copied by contemporary authors -without realizing that they are promoting the Afrikaner Nationalists propaganda & skewed version of the past. The well known Afrikaans historian Hermann Giliomee was one of those who played an integral part in the continued perpetuation of this myth by covering up or derisively down playing the distinct & separate history of the Boer nation.
The late Boer patriot Robert van Tonder of the Boerestaat Party was one of those who was most insistent that the Boers are a different nation to the Cape based Afrikaners & was calling for the restoration of the Boer Republics as early as 1961 [24] the same year that Hendrik Verwoerd turned South Africa into a republic.
Furthermore: TRP caller Henry Pinkham is exactly right when he points out that the Boers can only achieve freedom as a nation since if they try to do it while still attached to the Cape based Afrikaners the Boers will (obviously) get nowhere. The Cape based Afrikaners -particularly its leadership- still to this day like nothing better than to keep the Boers on their Afrikaner reservation.
Also: the world remembers the neo colonial role that the Afrikaners played (at the behest of the British who put them in control in the first place) & their disastrous (though often exaggerated) legacy while the Boers played only a marginal role as they had hardly anything to do with the implementation of Apartheid & were not as high in the ranks of the political order. Therefore going forward as Boers will only help their cause even more particularly among the rest of the world since the Boers were recognized the world over during the Anglo-Boer War. The Boer Republics themselves were recognized by the European governments & American government [25] & the cause of Boer independence was supported the world over.
Now it would be one thing if the difference between Afrikaner & Boer was just semantics (as one guest erroneously & ignorantly put it) being different terms referring to the same people. This could even be true to an extent vis a vis those Boers or Boer descendants who also refer to themselves as Afrikaners -due to conditioning- but the fact of the matter is that most Afrikaners are of Cape Dutch descent since people of Boer descent compromise only about not much more than a third of the total White Afrikaans speaking population.
Furthermore the term Afrikaner originally referred to those colonial Cape Dutch people who often worked against Boer interests & as such these two terms in fact refer to two different & distinct peoples. One poster on a forum once said that the Cape based Afrikaners -ie: the former Cape Dutch- are nothing more than Afrikaans speaking English people. Rather poignant observation since the Cape based Afrikaners have virtually the same cosmopolitan neo colonial liberal outlook as most of the English speakers have which is in sharp contrast to the more rustic / rural / anti colonial & conservative outlook of the Boers.
Therefore even if the Boers & Afrikaners were to achieve independence in a common state (as they had in Apartheid era South Africa along with the English speakers) -which the notion of dismissing the differences between Afrikaner & Boer would lead to- the Boer people will still not have the full self determination that they most seek as they would STILL be under the political control & suzerainty of the Cape based Afrikaners WHO OFTEN do not share their political outlook / culture nor even the same history ie: the trekking themed past / the various freedom struggles nor the frontier origins which shaped & defined the Boer Volk.The first freedom struggle the Boers ever had was against the administration of the Cape Dutch ie: the proto Afrikaners. Or rather the people who would later coin the term Afrikaner & used it in a political context. This is most significant since it demonstrates that the Cape Dutch / Afrikaners have never wanted freedom - in contrast to the Boers who have always wanted freedom in Africa- & often fought or worked against the freedom of the Boers. Just as they would again later do during the second Anglo-Boer War when numerous Western Cape Afrikaners fought against the Boers on the side of the British. [5]Now there might even be some Boers who think that all this is in the past & that they are now all one big "Afrikaner" group [6] but this is wrong on a number of fronts. First let's consider where the term Afrikaner came from & what purpose it served. The term Afrikaner was first loosely used in 1707 when Hendrik Biebouw a member of the local White proto Afrikaans speaking community at the Cape- was in court & declared that he was an "Afrikaner" meaning that he was an African & was no longer from Europe. During this time all of the White settlers & mixed race persons in Africa were referred to Afrikanders & later Afrikaners -but this was simply a GEOGRAPHICAL label as it was applied to White people in general who were born in Africa regardless of which cultural group they were apart of. How it came to be used to denote a specific cultural group (s) & become politicized occurred much later in 1875 when a group of Cape Dutch intellectuals in the Western Cape decided to start a language rights group [7] aimed at getting official recognition for their language which they began to call Afrikaans after the African continent. Remember that at this exact same time the Boers were independent in their own republics in the north & spoke their OWN dialect of this language which they called "die Taal" or Boer Taal which historians have classified as Eastern Border Afrikaans [8] since the Boers' dialect of Afrikaans developed on the northern & eastern frontier AWAY FROM the Western Cape Afrikaners & their dialect. The term Afrikaner was first used in a political context by these Western Cape people who began to call themselves Afrikaners after the language they spoke -all at a time when the Boer people HAD LONG SINCE BEEN ESTABLISHED & were mainly living in their own independent world recognized republics in the north. Therefore in the late 19th cent & into the 20th cent -& as early as the 1700s when the Boers ancestors trekked out of the Western Cape- there were two distinct & identifiable White Afrikaans speaking (different dialects) groups [9] in Southern Africa: one in the Western Cape (& some who moved northwards after the gold rush) who called themselves Afrikaners & were the descendants of the pro colonial Cape Dutch / & the other group: the anti colonial / republican / independent oriented Boers living in the northern & eastern Cape frontier & within their own independent republics in the north -descendants of the Trekboers / Grensboere & the Voortrekkers.
President Paul Kruger of the Transvaal Republic -who referred to himself as a Boer- was wary of the Cape Afrikaners & did not want them coming to his republic as he viewed them as being too pro British. [10] He would often recruit people from Holland to fill certain government positions as he felt that they would be more loyal to the Transvaal Republic than the Afrikaners. The Cape Afrikaners were often influenced by the British colonial power.
After the Boers were conquered by the British & incorporated into the British created macro state of South Africa: a number of these Boers even attempted to restore their former Republics by force of arms in 1914 when General De Wet & some other notable Boer Generals (including it is believed General De La Rey) staged a rebellion to the South Africa government during World War 1. [11] This rebellion was triggered when Prime Minister Louis Botha's government decided to enter on the side of the British during the war. The lead to an outrage among many Boers since it was less than 15 years after the British killed close to 50 % of the total Boer child population in the concentration camps. The rebellion wasThis rebellion was triggered when Prime Minister Louis Botha's government decided to enter on the side of the British during the war. The lead to an outrage among many Boers since it was less than 15 years after the British killed close to 50 % of the total Boer child population in the concentration camps. The rebellion was put down by force & its leaders were jailed & banned from participating in politics.
So how in the world did the Boers become conditioned to also later view themselves as Afrikaners too you might be asking? In a short 3 word response: war / propaganda & politics. After the devastation of the Anglo-Boer War -of which a number of Afrikaners fought against the Boers on the side of the British- when many Boers had to move to the cities to find work they often encountered Afrikaners [12] who would exert their political influence over the poorer Boers -but many Boers still remained culturally intact & even had their own organizations. This is where the disastrous effects of Afrikaner Nationalism comes in.
During the 1930s the Broederbond & the Afrikaner Nationalists -which were one & the same [13] - worked hard to incorporate the Boers into the Afrikaner fold [14] as the Afrikaner Nationalists viewed the Boers as a political threat to their planned hegemony in South Africa. After the Boer led Rand Rebellion was put down by violent force (even complete with the South African Party government bombing Johannesburg) [15] in 1922: the Afrikaner Nationalists worked overtime to politically incorporate the Boers under the Afrikaner banner of which the Cape based Afrikaners would control. One of the first things they did was to create the Colour bar laws [16] which reserved certain jobs for White people as the main grievance of the Boer mine workers was that they did not like having their wages being under cut with the importation of cheap Bantu labour. This effectively started to acclimatize the Boers to the Afrikaner Nationalists by getting them hooked onto a dimension of the Apartheid platform. Though it should be noted that Apartheid was started by the British Colonial administrations [17] -particularly the horizontal oppressive features- & was only expanded upon by the Afrikaner Nationalists in which they also envisioned & attempted to turn the Bantu reserves into independent states. [18] Four were in fact granted outright independence [19] but were only ever recognized by South Africa & each other but not by the world. Another more effective method the Afrikaners used to co-opt the Boers was by invoking Boer history most notably the Great Trek. Notice how the Western Cape born Cape Dutch / Afrikaner D F Malan: the National Party Prime Minister was able to do this to great effect -notably during the Great Trek reenactment ceremonies & at the Voortrekker Monument inauguration. This single event alone was definitely one of the convenient tools that the Afrikaner Nationalists used to co-opt the republican Boers which in turn let the Boers' guard down thinking (erroneously as it would turn out) that their (Boers) interests were looked after by teaming up with the Cape based Afrikaners under the banner of Afrikaner Nationalism. Which was an extension of British Imperialism in many ways as the macro State set up by the British with the South Africa Act of 1909 was now being run by a Cape based Afrikaans speaking regime which was recruited as a surrogate Colonial power.
D F Malan was nothing more than a political opportunist (interesting how Jacob Zuma -a political opportunist himself- is attempting to do a similar thing in modern times by attempting to appeal to the Boers & Afrikaners just as Malan was able to successfully do) who used the centennial of the Great Trek to promote his political agenda & the establishment of Afrikaner Nationalism which sought -as part of its goal- to expropriate & subjugate the Boer Nation under the tutelage of the anti-republican Cape based Afrikaners. Malan was even opposed to the republican aspirations of the Boers even attempting to prevent the Boer descended Hans Strijdom from succeeding him as Prime Minister as he favoured N C Havenga [20] the former leader of the Afrikaner Party which joined the National Party in 1951. According to one of the past guests of the Hello Afrika segment of the Right Perspective radio program: Theuns Cloete of Boervolk Radio: Strijdom was even talking about restoring the Boer Republics as there was considerable support among the Boers [21] during the 1940s & 1950s for this. Strijdom interestingly later died in office under mysterious circumstances & was followed by none other than Hendrik Verwoerd: the Dutch born architect of Grand Apartheid & who would later turn South Africa into a nominal republic which would further offset & blunt Boer aspirations for independence within their own republics.
Therefore by the 1950s most White Afrikaans speaking people were conditioned to view themselves as Afrikaners even though this is technically wrong since for Boers to do so they are basically giving up their own unique identity & allowing themselves to be represented & dominated by the numerically larger Afrikaners [22] who have often historically worked against the interests of the Boers. This is the main reason why it is wrong for Boers to think of themselves as Afrikaners. Consider the following related examples. In Canada there are Quebecois & Acadians: both are French speaking Canadians but no one would ever call the Acadians: French Canadians since this is a term which is applied to the French speakers in Quebec & Ontario. Similarly there are distinctions between the Croats & the Serbs in Europe even though both groups speak the same language -though different dialects of Serbo-Croatian: Croats speaking a dialect called Croatian & Serbs speaking a dialect called Serbian - just as the Boers & Afrikaners speak (or at least used to to a larger extent) different dialects of what came to be called Afrikaans. The difference between the Romanian & Moldovan is another example of different cultural / ethnic groups speaking different dialects of a similar or closely related language. The problem among the White Afrikaans speakers is that the Afrikaners were able to effectively dominate & overshadow the Boers. Perhaps not too unlike how the Serbs once did in the former Yugoslavia -but it appears that the Afrikaners were much better at conditioning Boer identity out of the public sphere -only to be used as a convenient political prop to bolster & advance the agenda of the Cape based Afrikaner Nationalists.
This is why many Boers do not want to be viewed as Afrikaners since this makes them a minority within the Afrikaner designation. It makes the Cape based Afrikaners the center of power. The Afrikaners of Cape Dutch descent outnumber the Afrikaners of Boer descent. Making any union between Afrikaner & Boer always coming to the detriment of the Boers. This means that anti-Boer Afrikaners could (& often do) represent the entire Afrikaner group making decisions which could be inimical to the Boers. Rather like what often happened in Apartheid era South Africa when Boers were outvoted by the Afrikaners. Sort of like how liberal leaning states often make decisions inimical to the local conservatives because the given state's left of center leadership makes the political decisions affecting the entire population of the state marginalizing persons with right of center inclinations.
The Western Cape based Broederbond -which was the driving force behind Afrikaner Nationalism / The National Party / Apartheid rewrote the history of the Boers turning them into "Afrikaners" [23] retroactively as part of a rhetorical device in order to co-opt the Boers / their history & inheritance. Therefore the history they wrote would often refer to Afrikaners instead of Boers -which is a common error still copied by contemporary authors -without realizing that they are promoting the Afrikaner Nationalists propaganda & skewed version of the past. The well known Afrikaans historian Hermann Giliomee was one of those who played an integral part in the continued perpetuation of this myth by covering up or derisively down playing the distinct & separate history of the Boer nation.
The late Boer patriot Robert van Tonder of the Boerestaat Party was one of those who was most insistent that the Boers are a different nation to the Cape based Afrikaners & was calling for the restoration of the Boer Republics as early as 1961 [24] the same year that Hendrik Verwoerd turned South Africa into a republic.
Furthermore: TRP caller Henry Pinkham is exactly right when he points out that the Boers can only achieve freedom as a nation since if they try to do it while still attached to the Cape based Afrikaners the Boers will (obviously) get nowhere. The Cape based Afrikaners -particularly its leadership- still to this day like nothing better than to keep the Boers on their Afrikaner reservation.
Also: the world remembers the neo colonial role that the Afrikaners played (at the behest of the British who put them in control in the first place) & their disastrous (though often exaggerated) legacy while the Boers played only a marginal role as they had hardly anything to do with the implementation of Apartheid & were not as high in the ranks of the political order. Therefore going forward as Boers will only help their cause even more particularly among the rest of the world since the Boers were recognized the world over during the Anglo-Boer War. The Boer Republics themselves were recognized by the European governments & American government [25] & the cause of Boer independence was supported the world over.
Now it would be one thing if the difference between Afrikaner & Boer was just semantics (as one guest erroneously & ignorantly put it) being different terms referring to the same people. This could even be true to an extent vis a vis those Boers or Boer descendants who also refer to themselves as Afrikaners -due to conditioning- but the fact of the matter is that most Afrikaners are of Cape Dutch descent since people of Boer descent compromise only about not much more than a third of the total White Afrikaans speaking population.
Furthermore the term Afrikaner originally referred to those colonial Cape Dutch people who often worked against Boer interests & as such these two terms in fact refer to two different & distinct peoples. One poster on a forum once said that the Cape based Afrikaners -ie: the former Cape Dutch- are nothing more than Afrikaans speaking English people. Rather poignant observation since the Cape based Afrikaners have virtually the same cosmopolitan neo colonial liberal outlook as most of the English speakers have which is in sharp contrast to the more rustic / rural / anti colonial & conservative outlook of the Boers.
Therefore even if the Boers & Afrikaners were to achieve independence in a common state (as they had in Apartheid era South Africa along with the English speakers) -which the notion of dismissing the differences between Afrikaner & Boer would lead to- the Boer people will still not have the full self determination that they most seek as they would STILL be under the political control & suzerainty of the Cape based Afrikaners WHO OFTEN do not share their political outlook / culture nor even the same history ie: the trekking themed past / the various freedom struggles nor the frontier origins which shaped & defined the Boer Volk.Now there might even be some Boers who think that all this is in the past & that they are now all one big "Afrikaner" group [6] but this is wrong on a number of fronts. First let's consider where the term Afrikaner came from & what purpose it served. The term Afrikaner was first loosely used in 1707 when Hendrik Biebouw a member of the local White proto Afrikaans speaking community at the Cape- was in court & declared that he was an "Afrikaner" meaning that he was an African & was no longer from Europe. During this time all of the White settlers & mixed race persons in Africa were referred to Afrikanders & later Afrikaners -but this was simply a GEOGRAPHICAL label as it was applied to White people in general who were born in Africa regardless of which cultural group they were apart of. How it came to be used to denote a specific cultural group (s) & become politicized occurred much later in 1875 when a group of Cape Dutch intellectuals in the Western Cape decided to start a language rights group [7] aimed at getting official recognition for their language which they began to call Afrikaans after the African continent. Remember that at this exact same time the Boers were independent in their own republics in the north & spoke their OWN dialect of this language which they called "die Taal" or Boer Taal which historians have classified as Eastern Border Afrikaans [8] since the Boers' dialect of Afrikaans developed on the northern & eastern frontier AWAY FROM the Western Cape Afrikaners & their dialect. The term Afrikaner was first used in a political context by these Western Cape people who began to call themselves Afrikaners after the language they spoke -all at a time when the Boer people HAD LONG SINCE BEEN ESTABLISHED & were mainly living in their own independent world recognized republics in the north. Therefore in the late 19th cent & into the 20th cent -& as early as the 1700s when the Boers ancestors trekked out of the Western Cape- there were two distinct & identifiable White Afrikaans speaking (different dialects) groups [9] in Southern Africa: one in the Western Cape (& some who moved northwards after the gold rush) who called themselves Afrikaners & were the descendants of the pro colonial Cape Dutch / & the other group: the anti colonial / republican / independent oriented Boers living in the northern & eastern Cape frontier & within their own independent republics in the north -descendants of the Trekboers / Grensboere & the Voortrekkers.President Paul Kruger of the Transvaal Republic -who referred to himself as a Boer- was wary of the Cape Afrikaners & did not want them coming to his republic as he viewed them as being too pro British. [10] He would often recruit people from Holland to fill certain government positions as he felt that they would be more loyal to the Transvaal Republic than the Afrikaners. The Cape Afrikaners were often influenced by the British colonial power.
After the Boers were conquered by the British & incorporated into the British created macro state of South Africa: a number of these Boers even attempted to restore their former Republics by force of arms in 1914 when General De Wet & some other notable Boer Generals (including it is believed General De La Rey) staged a rebellion to the South Africa government during World War 1. [11] This rebellion was triggered when Prime Minister Louis Botha's government decided to enter on the side of the British during the war. The lead to an outrage among many Boers since it was less than 15 years after the British killed close to 50 % of the total Boer child population in the concentration camps. The rebellion wasThis rebellion was triggered when Prime Minister Louis Botha's government decided to enter on the side of the British during the war. The lead to an outrage among many Boers since it was less than 15 years after the British killed close to 50 % of the total Boer child population in the concentration camps. The rebellion was put down by force & its leaders were jailed & banned from participating in politics.
So how in the world did the Boers become conditioned to also later view themselves as Afrikaners too you might be asking? In a short 3 word response: war / propaganda & politics. After the devastation of the Anglo-Boer War -of which a number of Afrikaners fought against the Boers on the side of the British- when many Boers had to move to the cities to find work they often encountered Afrikaners [12] who would exert their political influence over the poorer Boers -but many Boers still remained culturally intact & even had their own organizations. This is where the disastrous effects of Afrikaner Nationalism comes in.
During the 1930s the Broederbond & the Afrikaner Nationalists -which were one & the same [13] - worked hard to incorporate the Boers into the Afrikaner fold [14] as the Afrikaner Nationalists viewed the Boers as a political threat to their planned hegemony in South Africa. After the Boer led Rand Rebellion was put down by violent force (even complete with the South African Party government bombing Johannesburg) [15] in 1922: the Afrikaner Nationalists worked overtime to politically incorporate the Boers under the Afrikaner banner of which the Cape based Afrikaners would control. One of the first things they did was to create the Colour bar laws [16] which reserved certain jobs for White people as the main grievance of the Boer mine workers was that they did not like having their wages being under cut with the importation of cheap Bantu labour. This effectively started to acclimatize the Boers to the Afrikaner Nationalists by getting them hooked onto a dimension of the Apartheid platform. Though it should be noted that Apartheid was started by the British Colonial administrations [17] -particularly the horizontal oppressive features- & was only expanded upon by the Afrikaner Nationalists in which they also envisioned & attempted to turn the Bantu reserves into independent states. [18] Four were in fact granted outright independence [19] but were only ever recognized by South Africa & each other but not by the world. Another more effective method the Afrikaners used to co-opt the Boers was by invoking Boer history most notably the Great Trek. Notice how the Western Cape born Cape Dutch / Afrikaner D F Malan: the National Party Prime Minister was able to do this to great effect -notably during the Great Trek reenactment ceremonies & at the Voortrekker Monument inauguration. This single event alone was definitely one of the convenient tools that the Afrikaner Nationalists used to co-opt the republican Boers which in turn let the Boers' guard down thinking (erroneously as it would turn out) that their (Boers) interests were looked after by teaming up with the Cape based Afrikaners under the banner of Afrikaner Nationalism. Which was an extension of British Imperialism in many ways as the macro State set up by the British with the South Africa Act of 1909 was now being run by a Cape based Afrikaans speaking regime which was recruited as a surrogate Colonial power.
D F Malan was nothing more than a political opportunist (interesting how Jacob Zuma -a political opportunist himself- is attempting to do a similar thing in modern times by attempting to appeal to the Boers & Afrikaners just as Malan was able to successfully do) who used the centennial of the Great Trek to promote his political agenda & the establishment of Afrikaner Nationalism which sought -as part of its goal- to expropriate & subjugate the Boer Nation under the tutelage of the anti-republican Cape based Afrikaners. Malan was even opposed to the republican aspirations of the Boers even attempting to prevent the Boer descended Hans Strijdom from succeeding him as Prime Minister as he favoured N C Havenga [20] the former leader of the Afrikaner Party which joined the National Party in 1951. According to one of the past guests of the Hello Afrika segment of the Right Perspective radio program: Theuns Cloete of Boervolk Radio: Strijdom was even talking about restoring the Boer Republics as there was considerable support among the Boers [21] during the 1940s & 1950s for this. Strijdom interestingly later died in office under mysterious circumstances & was followed by none other than Hendrik Verwoerd: the Dutch born architect of Grand Apartheid & who would later turn South Africa into a nominal republic which would further offset & blunt Boer aspirations for independence within their own republics.
Therefore by the 1950s most White Afrikaans speaking people were conditioned to view themselves as Afrikaners even though this is technically wrong since for Boers to do so they are basically giving up their own unique identity & allowing themselves to be represented & dominated by the numerically larger Afrikaners [22] who have often historically worked against the interests of the Boers. This is the main reason why it is wrong for Boers to think of themselves as Afrikaners. Consider the following related examples. In Canada there are Quebecois & Acadians: both are French speaking Canadians but no one would ever call the Acadians: French Canadians since this is a term which is applied to the French speakers in Quebec & Ontario. Similarly there are distinctions between the Croats & the Serbs in Europe even though both groups speak the same language -though different dialects of Serbo-Croatian: Croats speaking a dialect called Croatian & Serbs speaking a dialect called Serbian - just as the Boers & Afrikaners speak (or at least used to to a larger extent) different dialects of what came to be called Afrikaans. The difference between the Romanian & Moldovan is another example of different cultural / ethnic groups speaking different dialects of a similar or closely related language. The problem among the White Afrikaans speakers is that the Afrikaners were able to effectively dominate & overshadow the Boers. Perhaps not too unlike how the Serbs once did in the former Yugoslavia -but it appears that the Afrikaners were much better at conditioning Boer identity out of the public sphere -only to be used as a convenient political prop to bolster & advance the agenda of the Cape based Afrikaner Nationalists.
This is why many Boers do not want to be viewed as Afrikaners since this makes them a minority within the Afrikaner designation. It makes the Cape based Afrikaners the center of power. The Afrikaners of Cape Dutch descent outnumber the Afrikaners of Boer descent. Making any union between Afrikaner & Boer always coming to the detriment of the Boers. This means that anti-Boer Afrikaners could (& often do) represent the entire Afrikaner group making decisions which could be inimical to the Boers. Rather like what often happened in Apartheid era South Africa when Boers were outvoted by the Afrikaners. Sort of like how liberal leaning states often make decisions inimical to the local conservatives because the given state's left of center leadership makes the political decisions affecting the entire population of the state marginalizing persons with right of center inclinations.
The Western Cape based Broederbond -which was the driving force behind Afrikaner Nationalism / The National Party / Apartheid rewrote the history of the Boers turning them into "Afrikaners" [23] retroactively as part of a rhetorical device in order to co-opt the Boers / their history & inheritance. Therefore the history they wrote would often refer to Afrikaners instead of Boers -which is a common error still copied by contemporary authors -without realizing that they are promoting the Afrikaner Nationalists propaganda & skewed version of the past. The well known Afrikaans historian Hermann Giliomee was one of those who played an integral part in the continued perpetuation of this myth by covering up or derisively down playing the distinct & separate history of the Boer nation.
The late Boer patriot Robert van Tonder of the Boerestaat Party was one of those who was most insistent that the Boers are a different nation to the Cape based Afrikaners & was calling for the restoration of the Boer Republics as early as 1961 [24] the same year that Hendrik Verwoerd turned South Africa into a republic.
Furthermore: TRP caller Henry Pinkham is exactly right when he points out that the Boers can only achieve freedom as a nation since if they try to do it while still attached to the Cape based Afrikaners the Boers will (obviously) get nowhere. The Cape based Afrikaners -particularly its leadership- still to this day like nothing better than to keep the Boers on their Afrikaner reservation.
Also: the world remembers the neo colonial role that the Afrikaners played (at the behest of the British who put them in control in the first place) & their disastrous (though often exaggerated) legacy while the Boers played only a marginal role as they had hardly anything to do with the implementation of Apartheid & were not as high in the ranks of the political order. Therefore going forward as Boers will only help their cause even more particularly among the rest of the world since the Boers were recognized the world over during the Anglo-Boer War. The Boer Republics themselves were recognized by the European governments & American government [25] & the cause of Boer independence was supported the world over.
Now it would be one thing if the difference between Afrikaner & Boer was just semantics (as one guest erroneously & ignorantly put it) being different terms referring to the same people. This could even be true to an extent vis a vis those Boers or Boer descendants who also refer to themselves as Afrikaners -due to conditioning- but the fact of the matter is that most Afrikaners are of Cape Dutch descent since people of Boer descent compromise only about not much more than a third of the total White Afrikaans speaking population.
Furthermore the term Afrikaner originally referred to those colonial Cape Dutch people who often worked against Boer interests & as such these two terms in fact refer to two different & distinct peoples. One poster on a forum once said that the Cape based Afrikaners -ie: the former Cape Dutch- are nothing more than Afrikaans speaking English people. Rather poignant observation since the Cape based Afrikaners have virtually the same cosmopolitan neo colonial liberal outlook as most of the English speakers have which is in sharp contrast to the more rustic / rural / anti colonial & conservative outlook of the Boers.
Therefore even if the Boers & Afrikaners were to achieve independence in a common state (as they had in Apartheid era South Africa along with the English speakers) -which the notion of dismissing the differences between Afrikaner & Boer would lead to- the Boer people will still not have the full self determination that they most seek as they would STILL be under the political control & suzerainty of the Cape based Afrikaners WHO OFTEN do not share their political outlook / culture nor even the same history ie: the trekking themed past / the various freedom struggles nor the frontier origins which shaped & defined the Boer Volk.President Paul Kruger of the Transvaal Republic -who referred to himself as a Boer- was wary of the Cape Afrikaners & did not want them coming to his republic as he viewed them as being too pro British. [10] He would often recruit people from Holland to fill certain government positions as he felt that they would be more loyal to the Transvaal Republic than the Afrikaners. The Cape Afrikaners were often influenced by the British colonial power.After the Boers were conquered by the British & incorporated into the British created macro state of South Africa: a number of these Boers even attempted to restore their former Republics by force of arms in 1914 when General De Wet & some other notable Boer Generals (including it is believed General De La Rey) staged a rebellion to the South Africa government during World War 1. [11] This rebellion was triggered when Prime Minister Louis Botha's government decided to enter on the side of the British during the war. The lead to an outrage among many Boers since it was less than 15 years after the British killed close to 50 % of the total Boer child population in the concentration camps. The rebellion wasThis rebellion was triggered when Prime Minister Louis Botha's government decided to enter on the side of the British during the war. The lead to an outrage among many Boers since it was less than 15 years after the British killed close to 50 % of the total Boer child population in the concentration camps. The rebellion was put down by force & its leaders were jailed & banned from participating in politics.
So how in the world did the Boers become conditioned to also later view themselves as Afrikaners too you might be asking? In a short 3 word response: war / propaganda & politics. After the devastation of the Anglo-Boer War -of which a number of Afrikaners fought against the Boers on the side of the British- when many Boers had to move to the cities to find work they often encountered Afrikaners [12] who would exert their political influence over the poorer Boers -but many Boers still remained culturally intact & even had their own organizations. This is where the disastrous effects of Afrikaner Nationalism comes in.
During the 1930s the Broederbond & the Afrikaner Nationalists -which were one & the same [13] - worked hard to incorporate the Boers into the Afrikaner fold [14] as the Afrikaner Nationalists viewed the Boers as a political threat to their planned hegemony in South Africa. After the Boer led Rand Rebellion was put down by violent force (even complete with the South African Party government bombing Johannesburg) [15] in 1922: the Afrikaner Nationalists worked overtime to politically incorporate the Boers under the Afrikaner banner of which the Cape based Afrikaners would control. One of the first things they did was to create the Colour bar laws [16] which reserved certain jobs for White people as the main grievance of the Boer mine workers was that they did not like having their wages being under cut with the importation of cheap Bantu labour. This effectively started to acclimatize the Boers to the Afrikaner Nationalists by getting them hooked onto a dimension of the Apartheid platform. Though it should be noted that Apartheid was started by the British Colonial administrations [17] -particularly the horizontal oppressive features- & was only expanded upon by the Afrikaner Nationalists in which they also envisioned & attempted to turn the Bantu reserves into independent states. [18] Four were in fact granted outright independence [19] but were only ever recognized by South Africa & each other but not by the world. Another more effective method the Afrikaners used to co-opt the Boers was by invoking Boer history most notably the Great Trek. Notice how the Western Cape born Cape Dutch / Afrikaner D F Malan: the National Party Prime Minister was able to do this to great effect -notably during the Great Trek reenactment ceremonies & at the Voortrekker Monument inauguration. This single event alone was definitely one of the convenient tools that the Afrikaner Nationalists used to co-opt the republican Boers which in turn let the Boers' guard down thinking (erroneously as it would turn out) that their (Boers) interests were looked after by teaming up with the Cape based Afrikaners under the banner of Afrikaner Nationalism. Which was an extension of British Imperialism in many ways as the macro State set up by the British with the South Africa Act of 1909 was now being run by a Cape based Afrikaans speaking regime which was recruited as a surrogate Colonial power.
D F Malan was nothing more than a political opportunist (interesting how Jacob Zuma -a political opportunist himself- is attempting to do a similar thing in modern times by attempting to appeal to the Boers & Afrikaners just as Malan was able to successfully do) who used the centennial of the Great Trek to promote his political agenda & the establishment of Afrikaner Nationalism which sought -as part of its goal- to expropriate & subjugate the Boer Nation under the tutelage of the anti-republican Cape based Afrikaners. Malan was even opposed to the republican aspirations of the Boers even attempting to prevent the Boer descended Hans Strijdom from succeeding him as Prime Minister as he favoured N C Havenga [20] the former leader of the Afrikaner Party which joined the National Party in 1951. According to one of the past guests of the Hello Afrika segment of the Right Perspective radio program: Theuns Cloete of Boervolk Radio: Strijdom was even talking about restoring the Boer Republics as there was considerable support among the Boers [21] during the 1940s & 1950s for this. Strijdom interestingly later died in office under mysterious circumstances & was followed by none other than Hendrik Verwoerd: the Dutch born architect of Grand Apartheid & who would later turn South Africa into a nominal republic which would further offset & blunt Boer aspirations for independence within their own republics.
Therefore by the 1950s most White Afrikaans speaking people were conditioned to view themselves as Afrikaners even though this is technically wrong since for Boers to do so they are basically giving up their own unique identity & allowing themselves to be represented & dominated by the numerically larger Afrikaners [22] who have often historically worked against the interests of the Boers. This is the main reason why it is wrong for Boers to think of themselves as Afrikaners. Consider the following related examples. In Canada there are Quebecois & Acadians: both are French speaking Canadians but no one would ever call the Acadians: French Canadians since this is a term which is applied to the French speakers in Quebec & Ontario. Similarly there are distinctions between the Croats & the Serbs in Europe even though both groups speak the same language -though different dialects of Serbo-Croatian: Croats speaking a dialect called Croatian & Serbs speaking a dialect called Serbian - just as the Boers & Afrikaners speak (or at least used to to a larger extent) different dialects of what came to be called Afrikaans. The difference between the Romanian & Moldovan is another example of different cultural / ethnic groups speaking different dialects of a similar or closely related language. The problem among the White Afrikaans speakers is that the Afrikaners were able to effectively dominate & overshadow the Boers. Perhaps not too unlike how the Serbs once did in the former Yugoslavia -but it appears that the Afrikaners were much better at conditioning Boer identity out of the public sphere -only to be used as a convenient political prop to bolster & advance the agenda of the Cape based Afrikaner Nationalists.
This is why many Boers do not want to be viewed as Afrikaners since this makes them a minority within the Afrikaner designation. It makes the Cape based Afrikaners the center of power. The Afrikaners of Cape Dutch descent outnumber the Afrikaners of Boer descent. Making any union between Afrikaner & Boer always coming to the detriment of the Boers. This means that anti-Boer Afrikaners could (& often do) represent the entire Afrikaner group making decisions which could be inimical to the Boers. Rather like what often happened in Apartheid era South Africa when Boers were outvoted by the Afrikaners. Sort of like how liberal leaning states often make decisions inimical to the local conservatives because the given state's left of center leadership makes the political decisions affecting the entire population of the state marginalizing persons with right of center inclinations.
The Western Cape based Broederbond -which was the driving force behind Afrikaner Nationalism / The National Party / Apartheid rewrote the history of the Boers turning them into "Afrikaners" [23] retroactively as part of a rhetorical device in order to co-opt the Boers / their history & inheritance. Therefore the history they wrote would often refer to Afrikaners instead of Boers -which is a common error still copied by contemporary authors -without realizing that they are promoting the Afrikaner Nationalists propaganda & skewed version of the past. The well known Afrikaans historian Hermann Giliomee was one of those who played an integral part in the continued perpetuation of this myth by covering up or derisively down playing the distinct & separate history of the Boer nation.
The late Boer patriot Robert van Tonder of the Boerestaat Party was one of those who was most insistent that the Boers are a different nation to the Cape based Afrikaners & was calling for the restoration of the Boer Republics as early as 1961 [24] the same year that Hendrik Verwoerd turned South Africa into a republic.
Furthermore: TRP caller Henry Pinkham is exactly right when he points out that the Boers can only achieve freedom as a nation since if they try to do it while still attached to the Cape based Afrikaners the Boers will (obviously) get nowhere. The Cape based Afrikaners -particularly its leadership- still to this day like nothing better than to keep the Boers on their Afrikaner reservation.
Also: the world remembers the neo colonial role that the Afrikaners played (at the behest of the British who put them in control in the first place) & their disastrous (though often exaggerated) legacy while the Boers played only a marginal role as they had hardly anything to do with the implementation of Apartheid & were not as high in the ranks of the political order. Therefore going forward as Boers will only help their cause even more particularly among the rest of the world since the Boers were recognized the world over during the Anglo-Boer War. The Boer Republics themselves were recognized by the European governments & American government [25] & the cause of Boer independence was supported the world over.
Now it would be one thing if the difference between Afrikaner & Boer was just semantics (as one guest erroneously & ignorantly put it) being different terms referring to the same people. This could even be true to an extent vis a vis those Boers or Boer descendants who also refer to themselves as Afrikaners -due to conditioning- but the fact of the matter is that most Afrikaners are of Cape Dutch descent since people of Boer descent compromise only about not much more than a third of the total White Afrikaans speaking population.
Furthermore the term Afrikaner originally referred to those colonial Cape Dutch people who often worked against Boer interests & as such these two terms in fact refer to two different & distinct peoples. One poster on a forum once said that the Cape based Afrikaners -ie: the former Cape Dutch- are nothing more than Afrikaans speaking English people. Rather poignant observation since the Cape based Afrikaners have virtually the same cosmopolitan neo colonial liberal outlook as most of the English speakers have which is in sharp contrast to the more rustic / rural / anti colonial & conservative outlook of the Boers.
Therefore even if the Boers & Afrikaners were to achieve independence in a common state (as they had in Apartheid era South Africa along with the English speakers) -which the notion of dismissing the differences between Afrikaner & Boer would lead to- the Boer people will still not have the full self determination that they most seek as they would STILL be under the political control & suzerainty of the Cape based Afrikaners WHO OFTEN do not share their political outlook / culture nor even the same history ie: the trekking themed past / the various freedom struggles nor the frontier origins which shaped & defined the Boer Volk.After the Boers were conquered by the British & incorporated into the British created macro state of South Africa: a number of these Boers even attempted to restore their former Republics by force of arms in 1914 when General De Wet & some other notable Boer Generals (including it is believed General De La Rey) staged a rebellion to the South Africa government during World War 1. [11] This rebellion was triggered when Prime Minister Louis Botha's government decided to enter on the side of the British during the war. The lead to an outrage among many Boers since it was less than 15 years after the British killed close to 50 % of the total Boer child population in the concentration camps. The rebellion wasThis rebellion was triggered when Prime Minister Louis Botha's government decided to enter on the side of the British during the war. The lead to an outrage among many Boers since it was less than 15 years after the British killed close to 50 % of the total Boer child population in the concentration camps. The rebellion was put down by force & its leaders were jailed & banned from participating in politics.So how in the world did the Boers become conditioned to also later view themselves as Afrikaners too you might be asking? In a short 3 word response: war / propaganda & politics. After the devastation of the Anglo-Boer War -of which a number of Afrikaners fought against the Boers on the side of the British- when many Boers had to move to the cities to find work they often encountered Afrikaners [12] who would exert their political influence over the poorer Boers -but many Boers still remained culturally intact & even had their own organizations. This is where the disastrous effects of Afrikaner Nationalism comes in.
During the 1930s the Broederbond & the Afrikaner Nationalists -which were one & the same [13] - worked hard to incorporate the Boers into the Afrikaner fold [14] as the Afrikaner Nationalists viewed the Boers as a political threat to their planned hegemony in South Africa. After the Boer led Rand Rebellion was put down by violent force (even complete with the South African Party government bombing Johannesburg) [15] in 1922: the Afrikaner Nationalists worked overtime to politically incorporate the Boers under the Afrikaner banner of which the Cape based Afrikaners would control. One of the first things they did was to create the Colour bar laws [16] which reserved certain jobs for White people as the main grievance of the Boer mine workers was that they did not like having their wages being under cut with the importation of cheap Bantu labour. This effectively started to acclimatize the Boers to the Afrikaner Nationalists by getting them hooked onto a dimension of the Apartheid platform. Though it should be noted that Apartheid was started by the British Colonial administrations [17] -particularly the horizontal oppressive features- & was only expanded upon by the Afrikaner Nationalists in which they also envisioned & attempted to turn the Bantu reserves into independent states. [18] Four were in fact granted outright independence [19] but were only ever recognized by South Africa & each other but not by the world. Another more effective method the Afrikaners used to co-opt the Boers was by invoking Boer history most notably the Great Trek. Notice how the Western Cape born Cape Dutch / Afrikaner D F Malan: the National Party Prime Minister was able to do this to great effect -notably during the Great Trek reenactment ceremonies & at the Voortrekker Monument inauguration. This single event alone was definitely one of the convenient tools that the Afrikaner Nationalists used to co-opt the republican Boers which in turn let the Boers' guard down thinking (erroneously as it would turn out) that their (Boers) interests were looked after by teaming up with the Cape based Afrikaners under the banner of Afrikaner Nationalism. Which was an extension of British Imperialism in many ways as the macro State set up by the British with the South Africa Act of 1909 was now being run by a Cape based Afrikaans speaking regime which was recruited as a surrogate Colonial power.
D F Malan was nothing more than a political opportunist (interesting how Jacob Zuma -a political opportunist himself- is attempting to do a similar thing in modern times by attempting to appeal to the Boers & Afrikaners just as Malan was able to successfully do) who used the centennial of the Great Trek to promote his political agenda & the establishment of Afrikaner Nationalism which sought -as part of its goal- to expropriate & subjugate the Boer Nation under the tutelage of the anti-republican Cape based Afrikaners. Malan was even opposed to the republican aspirations of the Boers even attempting to prevent the Boer descended Hans Strijdom from succeeding him as Prime Minister as he favoured N C Havenga [20] the former leader of the Afrikaner Party which joined the National Party in 1951. According to one of the past guests of the Hello Afrika segment of the Right Perspective radio program: Theuns Cloete of Boervolk Radio: Strijdom was even talking about restoring the Boer Republics as there was considerable support among the Boers [21] during the 1940s & 1950s for this. Strijdom interestingly later died in office under mysterious circumstances & was followed by none other than Hendrik Verwoerd: the Dutch born architect of Grand Apartheid & who would later turn South Africa into a nominal republic which would further offset & blunt Boer aspirations for independence within their own republics.
Therefore by the 1950s most White Afrikaans speaking people were conditioned to view themselves as Afrikaners even though this is technically wrong since for Boers to do so they are basically giving up their own unique identity & allowing themselves to be represented & dominated by the numerically larger Afrikaners [22] who have often historically worked against the interests of the Boers. This is the main reason why it is wrong for Boers to think of themselves as Afrikaners. Consider the following related examples. In Canada there are Quebecois & Acadians: both are French speaking Canadians but no one would ever call the Acadians: French Canadians since this is a term which is applied to the French speakers in Quebec & Ontario. Similarly there are distinctions between the Croats & the Serbs in Europe even though both groups speak the same language -though different dialects of Serbo-Croatian: Croats speaking a dialect called Croatian & Serbs speaking a dialect called Serbian - just as the Boers & Afrikaners speak (or at least used to to a larger extent) different dialects of what came to be called Afrikaans. The difference between the Romanian & Moldovan is another example of different cultural / ethnic groups speaking different dialects of a similar or closely related language. The problem among the White Afrikaans speakers is that the Afrikaners were able to effectively dominate & overshadow the Boers. Perhaps not too unlike how the Serbs once did in the former Yugoslavia -but it appears that the Afrikaners were much better at conditioning Boer identity out of the public sphere -only to be used as a convenient political prop to bolster & advance the agenda of the Cape based Afrikaner Nationalists.
This is why many Boers do not want to be viewed as Afrikaners since this makes them a minority within the Afrikaner designation. It makes the Cape based Afrikaners the center of power. The Afrikaners of Cape Dutch descent outnumber the Afrikaners of Boer descent. Making any union between Afrikaner & Boer always coming to the detriment of the Boers. This means that anti-Boer Afrikaners could (& often do) represent the entire Afrikaner group making decisions which could be inimical to the Boers. Rather like what often happened in Apartheid era South Africa when Boers were outvoted by the Afrikaners. Sort of like how liberal leaning states often make decisions inimical to the local conservatives because the given state's left of center leadership makes the political decisions affecting the entire population of the state marginalizing persons with right of center inclinations.
The Western Cape based Broederbond -which was the driving force behind Afrikaner Nationalism / The National Party / Apartheid rewrote the history of the Boers turning them into "Afrikaners" [23] retroactively as part of a rhetorical device in order to co-opt the Boers / their history & inheritance. Therefore the history they wrote would often refer to Afrikaners instead of Boers -which is a common error still copied by contemporary authors -without realizing that they are promoting the Afrikaner Nationalists propaganda & skewed version of the past. The well known Afrikaans historian Hermann Giliomee was one of those who played an integral part in the continued perpetuation of this myth by covering up or derisively down playing the distinct & separate history of the Boer nation.
The late Boer patriot Robert van Tonder of the Boerestaat Party was one of those who was most insistent that the Boers are a different nation to the Cape based Afrikaners & was calling for the restoration of the Boer Republics as early as 1961 [24] the same year that Hendrik Verwoerd turned South Africa into a republic.
Furthermore: TRP caller Henry Pinkham is exactly right when he points out that the Boers can only achieve freedom as a nation since if they try to do it while still attached to the Cape based Afrikaners the Boers will (obviously) get nowhere. The Cape based Afrikaners -particularly its leadership- still to this day like nothing better than to keep the Boers on their Afrikaner reservation.
Also: the world remembers the neo colonial role that the Afrikaners played (at the behest of the British who put them in control in the first place) & their disastrous (though often exaggerated) legacy while the Boers played only a marginal role as they had hardly anything to do with the implementation of Apartheid & were not as high in the ranks of the political order. Therefore going forward as Boers will only help their cause even more particularly among the rest of the world since the Boers were recognized the world over during the Anglo-Boer War. The Boer Republics themselves were recognized by the European governments & American government [25] & the cause of Boer independence was supported the world over.
Now it would be one thing if the difference between Afrikaner & Boer was just semantics (as one guest erroneously & ignorantly put it) being different terms referring to the same people. This could even be true to an extent vis a vis those Boers or Boer descendants who also refer to themselves as Afrikaners -due to conditioning- but the fact of the matter is that most Afrikaners are of Cape Dutch descent since people of Boer descent compromise only about not much more than a third of the total White Afrikaans speaking population.
Furthermore the term Afrikaner originally referred to those colonial Cape Dutch people who often worked against Boer interests & as such these two terms in fact refer to two different & distinct peoples. One poster on a forum once said that the Cape based Afrikaners -ie: the former Cape Dutch- are nothing more than Afrikaans speaking English people. Rather poignant observation since the Cape based Afrikaners have virtually the same cosmopolitan neo colonial liberal outlook as most of the English speakers have which is in sharp contrast to the more rustic / rural / anti colonial & conservative outlook of the Boers.
Therefore even if the Boers & Afrikaners were to achieve independence in a common state (as they had in Apartheid era South Africa along with the English speakers) -which the notion of dismissing the differences between Afrikaner & Boer would lead to- the Boer people will still not have the full self determination that they most seek as they would STILL be under the political control & suzerainty of the Cape based Afrikaners WHO OFTEN do not share their political outlook / culture nor even the same history ie: the trekking themed past / the various freedom struggles nor the frontier origins which shaped & defined the Boer Volk.So how in the world did the Boers become conditioned to also later view themselves as Afrikaners too you might be asking? In a short 3 word response: war / propaganda & politics. After the devastation of the Anglo-Boer War -of which a number of Afrikaners fought against the Boers on the side of the British- when many Boers had to move to the cities to find work they often encountered Afrikaners [12] who would exert their political influence over the poorer Boers -but many Boers still remained culturally intact & even had their own organizations. This is where the disastrous effects of Afrikaner Nationalism comes in.During the 1930s the Broederbond & the Afrikaner Nationalists -which were one & the same [13] - worked hard to incorporate the Boers into the Afrikaner fold [14] as the Afrikaner Nationalists viewed the Boers as a political threat to their planned hegemony in South Africa. After the Boer led Rand Rebellion was put down by violent force (even complete with the South African Party government bombing Johannesburg) [15] in 1922: the Afrikaner Nationalists worked overtime to politically incorporate the Boers under the Afrikaner banner of which the Cape based Afrikaners would control. One of the first things they did was to create the Colour bar laws [16] which reserved certain jobs for White people as the main grievance of the Boer mine workers was that they did not like having their wages being under cut with the importation of cheap Bantu labour. This effectively started to acclimatize the Boers to the Afrikaner Nationalists by getting them hooked onto a dimension of the Apartheid platform. Though it should be noted that Apartheid was started by the British Colonial administrations [17] -particularly the horizontal oppressive features- & was only expanded upon by the Afrikaner Nationalists in which they also envisioned & attempted to turn the Bantu reserves into independent states. [18] Four were in fact granted outright independence [19] but were only ever recognized by South Africa & each other but not by the world. Another more effective method the Afrikaners used to co-opt the Boers was by invoking Boer history most notably the Great Trek. Notice how the Western Cape born Cape Dutch / Afrikaner D F Malan: the National Party Prime Minister was able to do this to great effect -notably during the Great Trek reenactment ceremonies & at the Voortrekker Monument inauguration. This single event alone was definitely one of the convenient tools that the Afrikaner Nationalists used to co-opt the republican Boers which in turn let the Boers' guard down thinking (erroneously as it would turn out) that their (Boers) interests were looked after by teaming up with the Cape based Afrikaners under the banner of Afrikaner Nationalism. Which was an extension of British Imperialism in many ways as the macro State set up by the British with the South Africa Act of 1909 was now being run by a Cape based Afrikaans speaking regime which was recruited as a surrogate Colonial power.
D F Malan was nothing more than a political opportunist (interesting how Jacob Zuma -a political opportunist himself- is attempting to do a similar thing in modern times by attempting to appeal to the Boers & Afrikaners just as Malan was able to successfully do) who used the centennial of the Great Trek to promote his political agenda & the establishment of Afrikaner Nationalism which sought -as part of its goal- to expropriate & subjugate the Boer Nation under the tutelage of the anti-republican Cape based Afrikaners. Malan was even opposed to the republican aspirations of the Boers even attempting to prevent the Boer descended Hans Strijdom from succeeding him as Prime Minister as he favoured N C Havenga [20] the former leader of the Afrikaner Party which joined the National Party in 1951. According to one of the past guests of the Hello Afrika segment of the Right Perspective radio program: Theuns Cloete of Boervolk Radio: Strijdom was even talking about restoring the Boer Republics as there was considerable support among the Boers [21] during the 1940s & 1950s for this. Strijdom interestingly later died in office under mysterious circumstances & was followed by none other than Hendrik Verwoerd: the Dutch born architect of Grand Apartheid & who would later turn South Africa into a nominal republic which would further offset & blunt Boer aspirations for independence within their own republics.
Therefore by the 1950s most White Afrikaans speaking people were conditioned to view themselves as Afrikaners even though this is technically wrong since for Boers to do so they are basically giving up their own unique identity & allowing themselves to be represented & dominated by the numerically larger Afrikaners [22] who have often historically worked against the interests of the Boers. This is the main reason why it is wrong for Boers to think of themselves as Afrikaners. Consider the following related examples. In Canada there are Quebecois & Acadians: both are French speaking Canadians but no one would ever call the Acadians: French Canadians since this is a term which is applied to the French speakers in Quebec & Ontario. Similarly there are distinctions between the Croats & the Serbs in Europe even though both groups speak the same language -though different dialects of Serbo-Croatian: Croats speaking a dialect called Croatian & Serbs speaking a dialect called Serbian - just as the Boers & Afrikaners speak (or at least used to to a larger extent) different dialects of what came to be called Afrikaans. The difference between the Romanian & Moldovan is another example of different cultural / ethnic groups speaking different dialects of a similar or closely related language. The problem among the White Afrikaans speakers is that the Afrikaners were able to effectively dominate & overshadow the Boers. Perhaps not too unlike how the Serbs once did in the former Yugoslavia -but it appears that the Afrikaners were much better at conditioning Boer identity out of the public sphere -only to be used as a convenient political prop to bolster & advance the agenda of the Cape based Afrikaner Nationalists.
This is why many Boers do not want to be viewed as Afrikaners since this makes them a minority within the Afrikaner designation. It makes the Cape based Afrikaners the center of power. The Afrikaners of Cape Dutch descent outnumber the Afrikaners of Boer descent. Making any union between Afrikaner & Boer always coming to the detriment of the Boers. This means that anti-Boer Afrikaners could (& often do) represent the entire Afrikaner group making decisions which could be inimical to the Boers. Rather like what often happened in Apartheid era South Africa when Boers were outvoted by the Afrikaners. Sort of like how liberal leaning states often make decisions inimical to the local conservatives because the given state's left of center leadership makes the political decisions affecting the entire population of the state marginalizing persons with right of center inclinations.
The Western Cape based Broederbond -which was the driving force behind Afrikaner Nationalism / The National Party / Apartheid rewrote the history of the Boers turning them into "Afrikaners" [23] retroactively as part of a rhetorical device in order to co-opt the Boers / their history & inheritance. Therefore the history they wrote would often refer to Afrikaners instead of Boers -which is a common error still copied by contemporary authors -without realizing that they are promoting the Afrikaner Nationalists propaganda & skewed version of the past. The well known Afrikaans historian Hermann Giliomee was one of those who played an integral part in the continued perpetuation of this myth by covering up or derisively down playing the distinct & separate history of the Boer nation.
The late Boer patriot Robert van Tonder of the Boerestaat Party was one of those who was most insistent that the Boers are a different nation to the Cape based Afrikaners & was calling for the restoration of the Boer Republics as early as 1961 [24] the same year that Hendrik Verwoerd turned South Africa into a republic.
Furthermore: TRP caller Henry Pinkham is exactly right when he points out that the Boers can only achieve freedom as a nation since if they try to do it while still attached to the Cape based Afrikaners the Boers will (obviously) get nowhere. The Cape based Afrikaners -particularly its leadership- still to this day like nothing better than to keep the Boers on their Afrikaner reservation.
Also: the world remembers the neo colonial role that the Afrikaners played (at the behest of the British who put them in control in the first place) & their disastrous (though often exaggerated) legacy while the Boers played only a marginal role as they had hardly anything to do with the implementation of Apartheid & were not as high in the ranks of the political order. Therefore going forward as Boers will only help their cause even more particularly among the rest of the world since the Boers were recognized the world over during the Anglo-Boer War. The Boer Republics themselves were recognized by the European governments & American government [25] & the cause of Boer independence was supported the world over.
Now it would be one thing if the difference between Afrikaner & Boer was just semantics (as one guest erroneously & ignorantly put it) being different terms referring to the same people. This could even be true to an extent vis a vis those Boers or Boer descendants who also refer to themselves as Afrikaners -due to conditioning- but the fact of the matter is that most Afrikaners are of Cape Dutch descent since people of Boer descent compromise only about not much more than a third of the total White Afrikaans speaking population.
Furthermore the term Afrikaner originally referred to those colonial Cape Dutch people who often worked against Boer interests & as such these two terms in fact refer to two different & distinct peoples. One poster on a forum once said that the Cape based Afrikaners -ie: the former Cape Dutch- are nothing more than Afrikaans speaking English people. Rather poignant observation since the Cape based Afrikaners have virtually the same cosmopolitan neo colonial liberal outlook as most of the English speakers have which is in sharp contrast to the more rustic / rural / anti colonial & conservative outlook of the Boers.
Therefore even if the Boers & Afrikaners were to achieve independence in a common state (as they had in Apartheid era South Africa along with the English speakers) -which the notion of dismissing the differences between Afrikaner & Boer would lead to- the Boer people will still not have the full self determination that they most seek as they would STILL be under the political control & suzerainty of the Cape based Afrikaners WHO OFTEN do not share their political outlook / culture nor even the same history ie: the trekking themed past / the various freedom struggles nor the frontier origins which shaped & defined the Boer Volk.During the 1930s the Broederbond & the Afrikaner Nationalists -which were one & the same [13] - worked hard to incorporate the Boers into the Afrikaner fold [14] as the Afrikaner Nationalists viewed the Boers as a political threat to their planned hegemony in South Africa. After the Boer led Rand Rebellion was put down by violent force (even complete with the South African Party government bombing Johannesburg) [15] in 1922: the Afrikaner Nationalists worked overtime to politically incorporate the Boers under the Afrikaner banner of which the Cape based Afrikaners would control. One of the first things they did was to create the Colour bar laws [16] which reserved certain jobs for White people as the main grievance of the Boer mine workers was that they did not like having their wages being under cut with the importation of cheap Bantu labour. This effectively started to acclimatize the Boers to the Afrikaner Nationalists by getting them hooked onto a dimension of the Apartheid platform. Though it should be noted that Apartheid was started by the British Colonial administrations [17] -particularly the horizontal oppressive features- & was only expanded upon by the Afrikaner Nationalists in which they also envisioned & attempted to turn the Bantu reserves into independent states. [18] Four were in fact granted outright independence [19] but were only ever recognized by South Africa & each other but not by the world. Another more effective method the Afrikaners used to co-opt the Boers was by invoking Boer history most notably the Great Trek. Notice how the Western Cape born Cape Dutch / Afrikaner D F Malan: the National Party Prime Minister was able to do this to great effect -notably during the Great Trek reenactment ceremonies & at the Voortrekker Monument inauguration. This single event alone was definitely one of the convenient tools that the Afrikaner Nationalists used to co-opt the republican Boers which in turn let the Boers' guard down thinking (erroneously as it would turn out) that their (Boers) interests were looked after by teaming up with the Cape based Afrikaners under the banner of Afrikaner Nationalism. Which was an extension of British Imperialism in many ways as the macro State set up by the British with the South Africa Act of 1909 was now being run by a Cape based Afrikaans speaking regime which was recruited as a surrogate Colonial power.D F Malan was nothing more than a political opportunist (interesting how Jacob Zuma -a political opportunist himself- is attempting to do a similar thing in modern times by attempting to appeal to the Boers & Afrikaners just as Malan was able to successfully do) who used the centennial of the Great Trek to promote his political agenda & the establishment of Afrikaner Nationalism which sought -as part of its goal- to expropriate & subjugate the Boer Nation under the tutelage of the anti-republican Cape based Afrikaners. Malan was even opposed to the republican aspirations of the Boers even attempting to prevent the Boer descended Hans Strijdom from succeeding him as Prime Minister as he favoured N C Havenga [20] the former leader of the Afrikaner Party which joined the National Party in 1951. According to one of the past guests of the Hello Afrika segment of the Right Perspective radio program: Theuns Cloete of Boervolk Radio: Strijdom was even talking about restoring the Boer Republics as there was considerable support among the Boers [21] during the 1940s & 1950s for this. Strijdom interestingly later died in office under mysterious circumstances & was followed by none other than Hendrik Verwoerd: the Dutch born architect of Grand Apartheid & who would later turn South Africa into a nominal republic which would further offset & blunt Boer aspirations for independence within their own republics.
Therefore by the 1950s most White Afrikaans speaking people were conditioned to view themselves as Afrikaners even though this is technically wrong since for Boers to do so they are basically giving up their own unique identity & allowing themselves to be represented & dominated by the numerically larger Afrikaners [22] who have often historically worked against the interests of the Boers. This is the main reason why it is wrong for Boers to think of themselves as Afrikaners. Consider the following related examples. In Canada there are Quebecois & Acadians: both are French speaking Canadians but no one would ever call the Acadians: French Canadians since this is a term which is applied to the French speakers in Quebec & Ontario. Similarly there are distinctions between the Croats & the Serbs in Europe even though both groups speak the same language -though different dialects of Serbo-Croatian: Croats speaking a dialect called Croatian & Serbs speaking a dialect called Serbian - just as the Boers & Afrikaners speak (or at least used to to a larger extent) different dialects of what came to be called Afrikaans. The difference between the Romanian & Moldovan is another example of different cultural / ethnic groups speaking different dialects of a similar or closely related language. The problem among the White Afrikaans speakers is that the Afrikaners were able to effectively dominate & overshadow the Boers. Perhaps not too unlike how the Serbs once did in the former Yugoslavia -but it appears that the Afrikaners were much better at conditioning Boer identity out of the public sphere -only to be used as a convenient political prop to bolster & advance the agenda of the Cape based Afrikaner Nationalists.
This is why many Boers do not want to be viewed as Afrikaners since this makes them a minority within the Afrikaner designation. It makes the Cape based Afrikaners the center of power. The Afrikaners of Cape Dutch descent outnumber the Afrikaners of Boer descent. Making any union between Afrikaner & Boer always coming to the detriment of the Boers. This means that anti-Boer Afrikaners could (& often do) represent the entire Afrikaner group making decisions which could be inimical to the Boers. Rather like what often happened in Apartheid era South Africa when Boers were outvoted by the Afrikaners. Sort of like how liberal leaning states often make decisions inimical to the local conservatives because the given state's left of center leadership makes the political decisions affecting the entire population of the state marginalizing persons with right of center inclinations.
The Western Cape based Broederbond -which was the driving force behind Afrikaner Nationalism / The National Party / Apartheid rewrote the history of the Boers turning them into "Afrikaners" [23] retroactively as part of a rhetorical device in order to co-opt the Boers / their history & inheritance. Therefore the history they wrote would often refer to Afrikaners instead of Boers -which is a common error still copied by contemporary authors -without realizing that they are promoting the Afrikaner Nationalists propaganda & skewed version of the past. The well known Afrikaans historian Hermann Giliomee was one of those who played an integral part in the continued perpetuation of this myth by covering up or derisively down playing the distinct & separate history of the Boer nation.
The late Boer patriot Robert van Tonder of the Boerestaat Party was one of those who was most insistent that the Boers are a different nation to the Cape based Afrikaners & was calling for the restoration of the Boer Republics as early as 1961 [24] the same year that Hendrik Verwoerd turned South Africa into a republic.
Furthermore: TRP caller Henry Pinkham is exactly right when he points out that the Boers can only achieve freedom as a nation since if they try to do it while still attached to the Cape based Afrikaners the Boers will (obviously) get nowhere. The Cape based Afrikaners -particularly its leadership- still to this day like nothing better than to keep the Boers on their Afrikaner reservation.
Also: the world remembers the neo colonial role that the Afrikaners played (at the behest of the British who put them in control in the first place) & their disastrous (though often exaggerated) legacy while the Boers played only a marginal role as they had hardly anything to do with the implementation of Apartheid & were not as high in the ranks of the political order. Therefore going forward as Boers will only help their cause even more particularly among the rest of the world since the Boers were recognized the world over during the Anglo-Boer War. The Boer Republics themselves were recognized by the European governments & American government [25] & the cause of Boer independence was supported the world over.
Now it would be one thing if the difference between Afrikaner & Boer was just semantics (as one guest erroneously & ignorantly put it) being different terms referring to the same people. This could even be true to an extent vis a vis those Boers or Boer descendants who also refer to themselves as Afrikaners -due to conditioning- but the fact of the matter is that most Afrikaners are of Cape Dutch descent since people of Boer descent compromise only about not much more than a third of the total White Afrikaans speaking population.
Furthermore the term Afrikaner originally referred to those colonial Cape Dutch people who often worked against Boer interests & as such these two terms in fact refer to two different & distinct peoples. One poster on a forum once said that the Cape based Afrikaners -ie: the former Cape Dutch- are nothing more than Afrikaans speaking English people. Rather poignant observation since the Cape based Afrikaners have virtually the same cosmopolitan neo colonial liberal outlook as most of the English speakers have which is in sharp contrast to the more rustic / rural / anti colonial & conservative outlook of the Boers.
Therefore even if the Boers & Afrikaners were to achieve independence in a common state (as they had in Apartheid era South Africa along with the English speakers) -which the notion of dismissing the differences between Afrikaner & Boer would lead to- the Boer people will still not have the full self determination that they most seek as they would STILL be under the political control & suzerainty of the Cape based Afrikaners WHO OFTEN do not share their political outlook / culture nor even the same history ie: the trekking themed past / the various freedom struggles nor the frontier origins which shaped & defined the Boer Volk.D F Malan was nothing more than a political opportunist (interesting how Jacob Zuma -a political opportunist himself- is attempting to do a similar thing in modern times by attempting to appeal to the Boers & Afrikaners just as Malan was able to successfully do) who used the centennial of the Great Trek to promote his political agenda & the establishment of Afrikaner Nationalism which sought -as part of its goal- to expropriate & subjugate the Boer Nation under the tutelage of the anti-republican Cape based Afrikaners. Malan was even opposed to the republican aspirations of the Boers even attempting to prevent the Boer descended Hans Strijdom from succeeding him as Prime Minister as he favoured N C Havenga [20] the former leader of the Afrikaner Party which joined the National Party in 1951. According to one of the past guests of the Hello Afrika segment of the Right Perspective radio program: Theuns Cloete of Boervolk Radio: Strijdom was even talking about restoring the Boer Republics as there was considerable support among the Boers [21] during the 1940s & 1950s for this. Strijdom interestingly later died in office under mysterious circumstances & was followed by none other than Hendrik Verwoerd: the Dutch born architect of Grand Apartheid & who would later turn South Africa into a nominal republic which would further offset & blunt Boer aspirations for independence within their own republics.Therefore by the 1950s most White Afrikaans speaking people were conditioned to view themselves as Afrikaners even though this is technically wrong since for Boers to do so they are basically giving up their own unique identity & allowing themselves to be represented & dominated by the numerically larger Afrikaners [22] who have often historically worked against the interests of the Boers. This is the main reason why it is wrong for Boers to think of themselves as Afrikaners. Consider the following related examples. In Canada there are Quebecois & Acadians: both are French speaking Canadians but no one would ever call the Acadians: French Canadians since this is a term which is applied to the French speakers in Quebec & Ontario. Similarly there are distinctions between the Croats & the Serbs in Europe even though both groups speak the same language -though different dialects of Serbo-Croatian: Croats speaking a dialect called Croatian & Serbs speaking a dialect called Serbian - just as the Boers & Afrikaners speak (or at least used to to a larger extent) different dialects of what came to be called Afrikaans. The difference between the Romanian & Moldovan is another example of different cultural / ethnic groups speaking different dialects of a similar or closely related language. The problem among the White Afrikaans speakers is that the Afrikaners were able to effectively dominate & overshadow the Boers. Perhaps not too unlike how the Serbs once did in the former Yugoslavia -but it appears that the Afrikaners were much better at conditioning Boer identity out of the public sphere -only to be used as a convenient political prop to bolster & advance the agenda of the Cape based Afrikaner Nationalists.
This is why many Boers do not want to be viewed as Afrikaners since this makes them a minority within the Afrikaner designation. It makes the Cape based Afrikaners the center of power. The Afrikaners of Cape Dutch descent outnumber the Afrikaners of Boer descent. Making any union between Afrikaner & Boer always coming to the detriment of the Boers. This means that anti-Boer Afrikaners could (& often do) represent the entire Afrikaner group making decisions which could be inimical to the Boers. Rather like what often happened in Apartheid era South Africa when Boers were outvoted by the Afrikaners. Sort of like how liberal leaning states often make decisions inimical to the local conservatives because the given state's left of center leadership makes the political decisions affecting the entire population of the state marginalizing persons with right of center inclinations.
The Western Cape based Broederbond -which was the driving force behind Afrikaner Nationalism / The National Party / Apartheid rewrote the history of the Boers turning them into "Afrikaners" [23] retroactively as part of a rhetorical device in order to co-opt the Boers / their history & inheritance. Therefore the history they wrote would often refer to Afrikaners instead of Boers -which is a common error still copied by contemporary authors -without realizing that they are promoting the Afrikaner Nationalists propaganda & skewed version of the past. The well known Afrikaans historian Hermann Giliomee was one of those who played an integral part in the continued perpetuation of this myth by covering up or derisively down playing the distinct & separate history of the Boer nation.
The late Boer patriot Robert van Tonder of the Boerestaat Party was one of those who was most insistent that the Boers are a different nation to the Cape based Afrikaners & was calling for the restoration of the Boer Republics as early as 1961 [24] the same year that Hendrik Verwoerd turned South Africa into a republic.
Furthermore: TRP caller Henry Pinkham is exactly right when he points out that the Boers can only achieve freedom as a nation since if they try to do it while still attached to the Cape based Afrikaners the Boers will (obviously) get nowhere. The Cape based Afrikaners -particularly its leadership- still to this day like nothing better than to keep the Boers on their Afrikaner reservation.
Also: the world remembers the neo colonial role that the Afrikaners played (at the behest of the British who put them in control in the first place) & their disastrous (though often exaggerated) legacy while the Boers played only a marginal role as they had hardly anything to do with the implementation of Apartheid & were not as high in the ranks of the political order. Therefore going forward as Boers will only help their cause even more particularly among the rest of the world since the Boers were recognized the world over during the Anglo-Boer War. The Boer Republics themselves were recognized by the European governments & American government [25] & the cause of Boer independence was supported the world over.
Now it would be one thing if the difference between Afrikaner & Boer was just semantics (as one guest erroneously & ignorantly put it) being different terms referring to the same people. This could even be true to an extent vis a vis those Boers or Boer descendants who also refer to themselves as Afrikaners -due to conditioning- but the fact of the matter is that most Afrikaners are of Cape Dutch descent since people of Boer descent compromise only about not much more than a third of the total White Afrikaans speaking population.
Furthermore the term Afrikaner originally referred to those colonial Cape Dutch people who often worked against Boer interests & as such these two terms in fact refer to two different & distinct peoples. One poster on a forum once said that the Cape based Afrikaners -ie: the former Cape Dutch- are nothing more than Afrikaans speaking English people. Rather poignant observation since the Cape based Afrikaners have virtually the same cosmopolitan neo colonial liberal outlook as most of the English speakers have which is in sharp contrast to the more rustic / rural / anti colonial & conservative outlook of the Boers.
Therefore even if the Boers & Afrikaners were to achieve independence in a common state (as they had in Apartheid era South Africa along with the English speakers) -which the notion of dismissing the differences between Afrikaner & Boer would lead to- the Boer people will still not have the full self determination that they most seek as they would STILL be under the political control & suzerainty of the Cape based Afrikaners WHO OFTEN do not share their political outlook / culture nor even the same history ie: the trekking themed past / the various freedom struggles nor the frontier origins which shaped & defined the Boer Volk.Therefore by the 1950s most White Afrikaans speaking people were conditioned to view themselves as Afrikaners even though this is technically wrong since for Boers to do so they are basically giving up their own unique identity & allowing themselves to be represented & dominated by the numerically larger Afrikaners [22] who have often historically worked against the interests of the Boers. This is the main reason why it is wrong for Boers to think of themselves as Afrikaners. Consider the following related examples. In Canada there are Quebecois & Acadians: both are French speaking Canadians but no one would ever call the Acadians: French Canadians since this is a term which is applied to the French speakers in Quebec & Ontario. Similarly there are distinctions between the Croats & the Serbs in Europe even though both groups speak the same language -though different dialects of Serbo-Croatian: Croats speaking a dialect called Croatian & Serbs speaking a dialect called Serbian - just as the Boers & Afrikaners speak (or at least used to to a larger extent) different dialects of what came to be called Afrikaans. The difference between the Romanian & Moldovan is another example of different cultural / ethnic groups speaking different dialects of a similar or closely related language. The problem among the White Afrikaans speakers is that the Afrikaners were able to effectively dominate & overshadow the Boers. Perhaps not too unlike how the Serbs once did in the former Yugoslavia -but it appears that the Afrikaners were much better at conditioning Boer identity out of the public sphere -only to be used as a convenient political prop to bolster & advance the agenda of the Cape based Afrikaner Nationalists.This is why many Boers do not want to be viewed as Afrikaners since this makes them a minority within the Afrikaner designation. It makes the Cape based Afrikaners the center of power. The Afrikaners of Cape Dutch descent outnumber the Afrikaners of Boer descent. Making any union between Afrikaner & Boer always coming to the detriment of the Boers. This means that anti-Boer Afrikaners could (& often do) represent the entire Afrikaner group making decisions which could be inimical to the Boers. Rather like what often happened in Apartheid era South Africa when Boers were outvoted by the Afrikaners. Sort of like how liberal leaning states often make decisions inimical to the local conservatives because the given state's left of center leadership makes the political decisions affecting the entire population of the state marginalizing persons with right of center inclinations.
The Western Cape based Broederbond -which was the driving force behind Afrikaner Nationalism / The National Party / Apartheid rewrote the history of the Boers turning them into "Afrikaners" [23] retroactively as part of a rhetorical device in order to co-opt the Boers / their history & inheritance. Therefore the history they wrote would often refer to Afrikaners instead of Boers -which is a common error still copied by contemporary authors -without realizing that they are promoting the Afrikaner Nationalists propaganda & skewed version of the past. The well known Afrikaans historian Hermann Giliomee was one of those who played an integral part in the continued perpetuation of this myth by covering up or derisively down playing the distinct & separate history of the Boer nation.
The late Boer patriot Robert van Tonder of the Boerestaat Party was one of those who was most insistent that the Boers are a different nation to the Cape based Afrikaners & was calling for the restoration of the Boer Republics as early as 1961 [24] the same year that Hendrik Verwoerd turned South Africa into a republic.
Furthermore: TRP caller Henry Pinkham is exactly right when he points out that the Boers can only achieve freedom as a nation since if they try to do it while still attached to the Cape based Afrikaners the Boers will (obviously) get nowhere. The Cape based Afrikaners -particularly its leadership- still to this day like nothing better than to keep the Boers on their Afrikaner reservation.
Also: the world remembers the neo colonial role that the Afrikaners played (at the behest of the British who put them in control in the first place) & their disastrous (though often exaggerated) legacy while the Boers played only a marginal role as they had hardly anything to do with the implementation of Apartheid & were not as high in the ranks of the political order. Therefore going forward as Boers will only help their cause even more particularly among the rest of the world since the Boers were recognized the world over during the Anglo-Boer War. The Boer Republics themselves were recognized by the European governments & American government [25] & the cause of Boer independence was supported the world over.
Now it would be one thing if the difference between Afrikaner & Boer was just semantics (as one guest erroneously & ignorantly put it) being different terms referring to the same people. This could even be true to an extent vis a vis those Boers or Boer descendants who also refer to themselves as Afrikaners -due to conditioning- but the fact of the matter is that most Afrikaners are of Cape Dutch descent since people of Boer descent compromise only about not much more than a third of the total White Afrikaans speaking population.
Furthermore the term Afrikaner originally referred to those colonial Cape Dutch people who often worked against Boer interests & as such these two terms in fact refer to two different & distinct peoples. One poster on a forum once said that the Cape based Afrikaners -ie: the former Cape Dutch- are nothing more than Afrikaans speaking English people. Rather poignant observation since the Cape based Afrikaners have virtually the same cosmopolitan neo colonial liberal outlook as most of the English speakers have which is in sharp contrast to the more rustic / rural / anti colonial & conservative outlook of the Boers.
Therefore even if the Boers & Afrikaners were to achieve independence in a common state (as they had in Apartheid era South Africa along with the English speakers) -which the notion of dismissing the differences between Afrikaner & Boer would lead to- the Boer people will still not have the full self determination that they most seek as they would STILL be under the political control & suzerainty of the Cape based Afrikaners WHO OFTEN do not share their political outlook / culture nor even the same history ie: the trekking themed past / the various freedom struggles nor the frontier origins which shaped & defined the Boer Volk.This is why many Boers do not want to be viewed as Afrikaners since this makes them a minority within the Afrikaner designation. It makes the Cape based Afrikaners the center of power. The Afrikaners of Cape Dutch descent outnumber the Afrikaners of Boer descent. Making any union between Afrikaner & Boer always coming to the detriment of the Boers. This means that anti-Boer Afrikaners could (& often do) represent the entire Afrikaner group making decisions which could be inimical to the Boers. Rather like what often happened in Apartheid era South Africa when Boers were outvoted by the Afrikaners. Sort of like how liberal leaning states often make decisions inimical to the local conservatives because the given state's left of center leadership makes the political decisions affecting the entire population of the state marginalizing persons with right of center inclinations.The Western Cape based Broederbond -which was the driving force behind Afrikaner Nationalism / The National Party / Apartheid rewrote the history of the Boers turning them into "Afrikaners" [23] retroactively as part of a rhetorical device in order to co-opt the Boers / their history & inheritance. Therefore the history they wrote would often refer to Afrikaners instead of Boers -which is a common error still copied by contemporary authors -without realizing that they are promoting the Afrikaner Nationalists propaganda & skewed version of the past. The well known Afrikaans historian Hermann Giliomee was one of those who played an integral part in the continued perpetuation of this myth by covering up or derisively down playing the distinct & separate history of the Boer nation.
The late Boer patriot Robert van Tonder of the Boerestaat Party was one of those who was most insistent that the Boers are a different nation to the Cape based Afrikaners & was calling for the restoration of the Boer Republics as early as 1961 [24] the same year that Hendrik Verwoerd turned South Africa into a republic.
Furthermore: TRP caller Henry Pinkham is exactly right when he points out that the Boers can only achieve freedom as a nation since if they try to do it while still attached to the Cape based Afrikaners the Boers will (obviously) get nowhere. The Cape based Afrikaners -particularly its leadership- still to this day like nothing better than to keep the Boers on their Afrikaner reservation.
Also: the world remembers the neo colonial role that the Afrikaners played (at the behest of the British who put them in control in the first place) & their disastrous (though often exaggerated) legacy while the Boers played only a marginal role as they had hardly anything to do with the implementation of Apartheid & were not as high in the ranks of the political order. Therefore going forward as Boers will only help their cause even more particularly among the rest of the world since the Boers were recognized the world over during the Anglo-Boer War. The Boer Republics themselves were recognized by the European governments & American government [25] & the cause of Boer independence was supported the world over.
Now it would be one thing if the difference between Afrikaner & Boer was just semantics (as one guest erroneously & ignorantly put it) being different terms referring to the same people. This could even be true to an extent vis a vis those Boers or Boer descendants who also refer to themselves as Afrikaners -due to conditioning- but the fact of the matter is that most Afrikaners are of Cape Dutch descent since people of Boer descent compromise only about not much more than a third of the total White Afrikaans speaking population.
Furthermore the term Afrikaner originally referred to those colonial Cape Dutch people who often worked against Boer interests & as such these two terms in fact refer to two different & distinct peoples. One poster on a forum once said that the Cape based Afrikaners -ie: the former Cape Dutch- are nothing more than Afrikaans speaking English people. Rather poignant observation since the Cape based Afrikaners have virtually the same cosmopolitan neo colonial liberal outlook as most of the English speakers have which is in sharp contrast to the more rustic / rural / anti colonial & conservative outlook of the Boers.
Therefore even if the Boers & Afrikaners were to achieve independence in a common state (as they had in Apartheid era South Africa along with the English speakers) -which the notion of dismissing the differences between Afrikaner & Boer would lead to- the Boer people will still not have the full self determination that they most seek as they would STILL be under the political control & suzerainty of the Cape based Afrikaners WHO OFTEN do not share their political outlook / culture nor even the same history ie: the trekking themed past / the various freedom struggles nor the frontier origins which shaped & defined the Boer Volk.The Western Cape based Broederbond -which was the driving force behind Afrikaner Nationalism / The National Party / Apartheid rewrote the history of the Boers turning them into "Afrikaners" [23] retroactively as part of a rhetorical device in order to co-opt the Boers / their history & inheritance. Therefore the history they wrote would often refer to Afrikaners instead of Boers -which is a common error still copied by contemporary authors -without realizing that they are promoting the Afrikaner Nationalists propaganda & skewed version of the past. The well known Afrikaans historian Hermann Giliomee was one of those who played an integral part in the continued perpetuation of this myth by covering up or derisively down playing the distinct & separate history of the Boer nation.The late Boer patriot Robert van Tonder of the Boerestaat Party was one of those who was most insistent that the Boers are a different nation to the Cape based Afrikaners & was calling for the restoration of the Boer Republics as early as 1961 [24] the same year that Hendrik Verwoerd turned South Africa into a republic.
Furthermore: TRP caller Henry Pinkham is exactly right when he points out that the Boers can only achieve freedom as a nation since if they try to do it while still attached to the Cape based Afrikaners the Boers will (obviously) get nowhere. The Cape based Afrikaners -particularly its leadership- still to this day like nothing better than to keep the Boers on their Afrikaner reservation.
Also: the world remembers the neo colonial role that the Afrikaners played (at the behest of the British who put them in control in the first place) & their disastrous (though often exaggerated) legacy while the Boers played only a marginal role as they had hardly anything to do with the implementation of Apartheid & were not as high in the ranks of the political order. Therefore going forward as Boers will only help their cause even more particularly among the rest of the world since the Boers were recognized the world over during the Anglo-Boer War. The Boer Republics themselves were recognized by the European governments & American government [25] & the cause of Boer independence was supported the world over.
Now it would be one thing if the difference between Afrikaner & Boer was just semantics (as one guest erroneously & ignorantly put it) being different terms referring to the same people. This could even be true to an extent vis a vis those Boers or Boer descendants who also refer to themselves as Afrikaners -due to conditioning- but the fact of the matter is that most Afrikaners are of Cape Dutch descent since people of Boer descent compromise only about not much more than a third of the total White Afrikaans speaking population.
Furthermore the term Afrikaner originally referred to those colonial Cape Dutch people who often worked against Boer interests & as such these two terms in fact refer to two different & distinct peoples. One poster on a forum once said that the Cape based Afrikaners -ie: the former Cape Dutch- are nothing more than Afrikaans speaking English people. Rather poignant observation since the Cape based Afrikaners have virtually the same cosmopolitan neo colonial liberal outlook as most of the English speakers have which is in sharp contrast to the more rustic / rural / anti colonial & conservative outlook of the Boers.
Therefore even if the Boers & Afrikaners were to achieve independence in a common state (as they had in Apartheid era South Africa along with the English speakers) -which the notion of dismissing the differences between Afrikaner & Boer would lead to- the Boer people will still not have the full self determination that they most seek as they would STILL be under the political control & suzerainty of the Cape based Afrikaners WHO OFTEN do not share their political outlook / culture nor even the same history ie: the trekking themed past / the various freedom struggles nor the frontier origins which shaped & defined the Boer Volk.The late Boer patriot Robert van Tonder of the Boerestaat Party was one of those who was most insistent that the Boers are a different nation to the Cape based Afrikaners & was calling for the restoration of the Boer Republics as early as 1961 [24] the same year that Hendrik Verwoerd turned South Africa into a republic.Furthermore: TRP caller Henry Pinkham is exactly right when he points out that the Boers can only achieve freedom as a nation since if they try to do it while still attached to the Cape based Afrikaners the Boers will (obviously) get nowhere. The Cape based Afrikaners -particularly its leadership- still to this day like nothing better than to keep the Boers on their Afrikaner reservation.
Also: the world remembers the neo colonial role that the Afrikaners played (at the behest of the British who put them in control in the first place) & their disastrous (though often exaggerated) legacy while the Boers played only a marginal role as they had hardly anything to do with the implementation of Apartheid & were not as high in the ranks of the political order. Therefore going forward as Boers will only help their cause even more particularly among the rest of the world since the Boers were recognized the world over during the Anglo-Boer War. The Boer Republics themselves were recognized by the European governments & American government [25] & the cause of Boer independence was supported the world over.
Now it would be one thing if the difference between Afrikaner & Boer was just semantics (as one guest erroneously & ignorantly put it) being different terms referring to the same people. This could even be true to an extent vis a vis those Boers or Boer descendants who also refer to themselves as Afrikaners -due to conditioning- but the fact of the matter is that most Afrikaners are of Cape Dutch descent since people of Boer descent compromise only about not much more than a third of the total White Afrikaans speaking population.
Furthermore the term Afrikaner originally referred to those colonial Cape Dutch people who often worked against Boer interests & as such these two terms in fact refer to two different & distinct peoples. One poster on a forum once said that the Cape based Afrikaners -ie: the former Cape Dutch- are nothing more than Afrikaans speaking English people. Rather poignant observation since the Cape based Afrikaners have virtually the same cosmopolitan neo colonial liberal outlook as most of the English speakers have which is in sharp contrast to the more rustic / rural / anti colonial & conservative outlook of the Boers.
Therefore even if the Boers & Afrikaners were to achieve independence in a common state (as they had in Apartheid era South Africa along with the English speakers) -which the notion of dismissing the differences between Afrikaner & Boer would lead to- the Boer people will still not have the full self determination that they most seek as they would STILL be under the political control & suzerainty of the Cape based Afrikaners WHO OFTEN do not share their political outlook / culture nor even the same history ie: the trekking themed past / the various freedom struggles nor the frontier origins which shaped & defined the Boer Volk.Furthermore: TRP caller Henry Pinkham is exactly right when he points out that the Boers can only achieve freedom as a nation since if they try to do it while still attached to the Cape based Afrikaners the Boers will (obviously) get nowhere. The Cape based Afrikaners -particularly its leadership- still to this day like nothing better than to keep the Boers on their Afrikaner reservation.Also: the world remembers the neo colonial role that the Afrikaners played (at the behest of the British who put them in control in the first place) & their disastrous (though often exaggerated) legacy while the Boers played only a marginal role as they had hardly anything to do with the implementation of Apartheid & were not as high in the ranks of the political order. Therefore going forward as Boers will only help their cause even more particularly among the rest of the world since the Boers were recognized the world over during the Anglo-Boer War. The Boer Republics themselves were recognized by the European governments & American government [25] & the cause of Boer independence was supported the world over.
Now it would be one thing if the difference between Afrikaner & Boer was just semantics (as one guest erroneously & ignorantly put it) being different terms referring to the same people. This could even be true to an extent vis a vis those Boers or Boer descendants who also refer to themselves as Afrikaners -due to conditioning- but the fact of the matter is that most Afrikaners are of Cape Dutch descent since people of Boer descent compromise only about not much more than a third of the total White Afrikaans speaking population.
Furthermore the term Afrikaner originally referred to those colonial Cape Dutch people who often worked against Boer interests & as such these two terms in fact refer to two different & distinct peoples. One poster on a forum once said that the Cape based Afrikaners -ie: the former Cape Dutch- are nothing more than Afrikaans speaking English people. Rather poignant observation since the Cape based Afrikaners have virtually the same cosmopolitan neo colonial liberal outlook as most of the English speakers have which is in sharp contrast to the more rustic / rural / anti colonial & conservative outlook of the Boers.
Therefore even if the Boers & Afrikaners were to achieve independence in a common state (as they had in Apartheid era South Africa along with the English speakers) -which the notion of dismissing the differences between Afrikaner & Boer would lead to- the Boer people will still not have the full self determination that they most seek as they would STILL be under the political control & suzerainty of the Cape based Afrikaners WHO OFTEN do not share their political outlook / culture nor even the same history ie: the trekking themed past / the various freedom struggles nor the frontier origins which shaped & defined the Boer Volk.Also: the world remembers the neo colonial role that the Afrikaners played (at the behest of the British who put them in control in the first place) & their disastrous (though often exaggerated) legacy while the Boers played only a marginal role as they had hardly anything to do with the implementation of Apartheid & were not as high in the ranks of the political order. Therefore going forward as Boers will only help their cause even more particularly among the rest of the world since the Boers were recognized the world over during the Anglo-Boer War. The Boer Republics themselves were recognized by the European governments & American government [25] & the cause of Boer independence was supported the world over.Now it would be one thing if the difference between Afrikaner & Boer was just semantics (as one guest erroneously & ignorantly put it) being different terms referring to the same people. This could even be true to an extent vis a vis those Boers or Boer descendants who also refer to themselves as Afrikaners -due to conditioning- but the fact of the matter is that most Afrikaners are of Cape Dutch descent since people of Boer descent compromise only about not much more than a third of the total White Afrikaans speaking population.
Furthermore the term Afrikaner originally referred to those colonial Cape Dutch people who often worked against Boer interests & as such these two terms in fact refer to two different & distinct peoples. One poster on a forum once said that the Cape based Afrikaners -ie: the former Cape Dutch- are nothing more than Afrikaans speaking English people. Rather poignant observation since the Cape based Afrikaners have virtually the same cosmopolitan neo colonial liberal outlook as most of the English speakers have which is in sharp contrast to the more rustic / rural / anti colonial & conservative outlook of the Boers.
Therefore even if the Boers & Afrikaners were to achieve independence in a common state (as they had in Apartheid era South Africa along with the English speakers) -which the notion of dismissing the differences between Afrikaner & Boer would lead to- the Boer people will still not have the full self determination that they most seek as they would STILL be under the political control & suzerainty of the Cape based Afrikaners WHO OFTEN do not share their political outlook / culture nor even the same history ie: the trekking themed past / the various freedom struggles nor the frontier origins which shaped & defined the Boer Volk.Now it would be one thing if the difference between Afrikaner & Boer was just semantics (as one guest erroneously & ignorantly put it) being different terms referring to the same people. This could even be true to an extent vis a vis those Boers or Boer descendants who also refer to themselves as Afrikaners -due to conditioning- but the fact of the matter is that most Afrikaners are of Cape Dutch descent since people of Boer descent compromise only about not much more than a third of the total White Afrikaans speaking population.Furthermore the term Afrikaner originally referred to those colonial Cape Dutch people who often worked against Boer interests & as such these two terms in fact refer to two different & distinct peoples. One poster on a forum once said that the Cape based Afrikaners -ie: the former Cape Dutch- are nothing more than Afrikaans speaking English people. Rather poignant observation since the Cape based Afrikaners have virtually the same cosmopolitan neo colonial liberal outlook as most of the English speakers have which is in sharp contrast to the more rustic / rural / anti colonial & conservative outlook of the Boers.
Therefore even if the Boers & Afrikaners were to achieve independence in a common state (as they had in Apartheid era South Africa along with the English speakers) -which the notion of dismissing the differences between Afrikaner & Boer would lead to- the Boer people will still not have the full self determination that they most seek as they would STILL be under the political control & suzerainty of the Cape based Afrikaners WHO OFTEN do not share their political outlook / culture nor even the same history ie: the trekking themed past / the various freedom struggles nor the frontier origins which shaped & defined the Boer Volk.Furthermore the term Afrikaner originally referred to those colonial Cape Dutch people who often worked against Boer interests & as such these two terms in fact refer to two different & distinct peoples. One poster on a forum once said that the Cape based Afrikaners -ie: the former Cape Dutch- are nothing more than Afrikaans speaking English people. Rather poignant observation since the Cape based Afrikaners have virtually the same cosmopolitan neo colonial liberal outlook as most of the English speakers have which is in sharp contrast to the more rustic / rural / anti colonial & conservative outlook of the Boers.Therefore even if the Boers & Afrikaners were to achieve independence in a common state (as they had in Apartheid era South Africa along with the English speakers) -which the notion of dismissing the differences between Afrikaner & Boer would lead to- the Boer people will still not have the full self determination that they most seek as they would STILL be under the political control & suzerainty of the Cape based Afrikaners WHO OFTEN do not share their political outlook / culture nor even the same history ie: the trekking themed past / the various freedom struggles nor the frontier origins which shaped & defined the Boer Volk.Therefore even if the Boers & Afrikaners were to achieve independence in a common state (as they had in Apartheid era South Africa along with the English speakers) -which the notion of dismissing the differences between Afrikaner & Boer would lead to- the Boer people will still not have the full self determination that they most seek as they would STILL be under the political control & suzerainty of the Cape based Afrikaners WHO OFTEN do not share their political outlook / culture nor even the same history ie: the trekking themed past / the various freedom struggles nor the frontier origins which shaped & defined the Boer Volk.


Trekboers who first trekked / moved away from the Western Cape & colonial society in general during the late 1600s & 1700s due to their poorer status & the fact that they found the autocratic VOC regulations intolerable. This act alone would be the essence of the difference between the Boers & Afrikaners who had remained in the Western Cape as it was the beginning of a cultural gulf which strof a cultural gulf which stretches back to Europe before they were brought to the Cape. The Afrikaans historian Brian Du Toit states on page 1 of his book on the Boer diaspora which went to East Africa following the Anglo-Boer War that the Boers were formed on the frontiers of White settlement & on the outskirts of civilization. [1] While the Afrikaners in the Western Cape on the other hand were not. This is the crux of why the Western Cape Afrikaners were pro colonial & the Boers were anti colonial. This was a trait which would later play a significant role during the second Anglo-Boer War. When a significant number of the Trekboers settled down on the eastern Cape frontier by the late 1700s they became known as Grensboere or Border Farmers. It was from the Grensboere & a number of still Trekboers that the vast majority of the Voortrekkers would later came from after the local Boers were tired of British Imperialist Colonial oppression / Xhosa attacks / constant frontier wars & growing land shortages during what was later called the Great Trek.