The “Afrikaner” by Rudi Pretorius

The Afrikaner (boere Afrikaner)  is a individual that is much like a chameleon … he adapts to his surroundings by changing his colors in order to survive … in other words, he has a Jekyll and Hyde personality that will change his appearance as the most favorable surrounding around him unfolds. He will for the one moment be your ally when things are going for the good, but will immediately change his attitude and character to adapt to the most acceptable climate the moment that a spot of trouble seems to appear on the horizon, even if it means leaving you in the lurch. He has no conscious- and therefore can feel no guilt – to him – self survival is the only name of the game, irrespective of how many other people he left dead or dying in the wake of his quest to self enhancement.

The “Afrikaner” also are very easily recognizable, for he will be the one that will – in business – try to trample on his own race, but the one that always walks around bragging about his latest successes- and who’s wife will be the only “stiff upper lip” that believes the sun blessed her back-side with a “golden ray”. In the mean time it actually will be the Devil scrutinizing her soul with a torch! Unfortunately you get these lame ducks in the poor society as well … but they normally are too low intelligent to realize what they are actually doing – not that the rich lame ducks do know any better they just have a spot of arrogance added to their stupidity! These white humanoids will openly declare they are “Afrikaners” or even better …”Liberal Afrikaners” to fit into the “New South Africa” to please their new dog handlers. 

Among these very poor disillusioned white sacks of donkey-dung, you will in almost all the cases, find the collaborators, agents, policemen that torture their own kind, informants, and co-conspirators that work with the enemy to torpedo their own people. In this category, you will find also those mentally retarded imbeciles that care nothing for their race and will jump in bed with any other humanoid – whether white or dark … (normally they prefer dark). They are the ones that will be first to adopt little dark monsters rather than their own skin color … just to be “in”. This again runs back to the DNA that controls their self survival kit … to be part of the “winning team”. They have no heart or will to fight against any aggressor- even if it means they have to be slaves, as long as they survive.

We have lots- unfortunately most, of these low-life dregs amongst the Boer nation as well. You can name them … Smuts, Botha, Vorster, PW Botha, Diedericks, FWde Klerk, Pik Botha, Roelf Meyer, Leon Wessels, Koos van der Merwe,  Marthinus van Schalkwyk.  Gert Opperman  and many more. These are all mostly from the lawyer “escarole” and army. These lost cannibals have no history, except that of destruction, no race, no future among a race- and thus are lone werewolves that sometime hunt in packs in order to destroy the good and replace it with the evil, just to later fight among themselves according to their natural bad DNA configuration – and destroy their own comrades to be at the top … self survival again. On them self, these creatures are Lily-levered, and will lurk behind the dark of the night where they will plan their devious deeds. They are to the Boer, the human cockroaches. The weird part is this …. They also can breed!

The “Boer” on the other hand, will be an individual that is used to be generally honest and hard working. They – sadly – have no clue about politics and are the most of times very friendly and naïve … thus the reason why all the liberal conventicles of all ages tried to impose their dictatorships upon these poor people and robbed them from their inheritance time and again … like the case is today. The Boer see himself as a pure race and will not adapt to his bad surroundings but rather change the bad into something good, and just want to be left alone to live his life the way he does without being oppressed, governed of tied down by cosmic laws. He is a stern believer in the Bible and walks very close to his Elohim the Almighty God. He is a born and bred farmer that lives close to the earth and a formidable fighter.

The Boer intensely despises the Afrikaner, and in times of war – will and shall prosecute the Afrikaner and put him against the wall for a firing squad. Mostly through Afrikaners the Boers were sold out, hunted, prosecuted and killed, and thus the reason why a true Boer will spit in the face of a Afrikaner, for in the eye of the Boer, the “Afrikaner” is a despicable low-life parasitic vermin that leeches on the blood of his own people for self enrichment and survival.

Thus – as we can see – it really is as simple as that – the difference among the different races, the Israelite and the Jews, the Kazakhstani and the Russian, the Kashminian and the Indian/Pakistani – the difference between de Klerk and De La Rey … the Boer and the Afrikaner – in reality lies within one self … it comes from the heart, the mind … THAT indicate in which direction we will travel in life … the narrow and straight – or the broad and croquet. One thing is for sure … the “Afrikaner” leeches will have to decide very soon where they want to bet their cash - onto – the ANC and it’s worldly attractions in sporting arenas and blasphemous side shows, or the Boers in their awakening to regroup and turn their backs to this God forsaken country towards the one and only Savior and Redeemer our God …

The enemy in the Communist camp only uses these parasites for their own sleazy goals, and once used, they will spit these white rats out of their mouths like the rotten tomatoes they are … the same way the dubious ANC terrorists spat in the faces of those NP rats in CODESA.

A war is soon to come to this country, and then, according to the prophecies – many a pile of blood will flow (read of mainly Afrikaners), for the Boers learned to read the signs of the times, and knows their Herdsman whilst the Afrikaner is a roaming lost ship on a voyage to no-where. Thus two choices then will stare them in the face in time of conflict … THE EXECUTIONERS WALL … or THE SAVIOR’S WEDDING … for the Boers will have no mercy on any Afrikaner in these troubled times - but will destroy them and their bad seed forever from the soil of this country together with their blasphemous gentile alien invader friends and dog handlers. Too many an innocent farmer, white children, men and woman have been brutally murdered and maimed due to the doings of these white low-life-scum and the time of reckoning is fast approaching. Their blood are calling for revenge. You “Afrikaners” better start making peace with your own God in the little time you have left … because we Boers will be arranging the meeting!

The Afrikaners can try to run – but where ever they hide – the Boer will find them and destroy them, even if it takes ten generations … the evil must be rooted from our bodies. Afrikaner – the time has come to choose and choose fast. For too long you have been the cancer in the bones of the Boer Nation … for many centuries have you been the front-men for alien forces that created chaos in our midst. Your time of playing double agents, “moderate whites” and “liberal whites” are nearly over, and then it will be time to stand up and be counted. GOD says that you can either be hot-or-cold … NOT medium … for if you are not hot neither cold – He will spit you out from his sight … and so will the BOERS .

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.