There is another Afrikaner story worth telling, rooted in reconciliation and a shared future

I find it troubling to think about what black South Africans must be making of the way Afrikaners are increasingly being portrayed internationally.

We seem to be presented as a community living in fear, struggling to survive in a country that has turned against us. Having spent much of my working life involved in reconciliation and community development, I worry about what this might be doing to relationships that have taken decades to build.

There are certainly good reasons to be concerned about South Africa’s future. Crime, corruption, unemployment and failing public institutions have caused enormous suffering. I share many of these concerns. But surely our fears about our own circumstances should not prevent us from trying to understand how other South Africans experience this country. I have become increasingly convinced that this is something we cannot afford to neglect.

I find myself thinking about six people whose lives and work I admire: Antjie Krog, Wilhelm Verwoerd, Andries Odendaal, Chris Spies, Truida Prekel and Fanie du Toit. They come from different generations, and some are better known than others. Some may not even be comfortable with the traditional label of Afrikaner. What interests me is the effort they have made, often over many decades, to understand South Africa beyond the experiences of the communities in which they grew up.

Antjie Krog has spent much of her life asking uncomfortable questions about our history, our language and how we understand ourselves. Through her poetry, journalism and particularly Country of My Skull, she brought many white South Africans into contact with experiences of suffering and humiliation that were largely absent from the worlds in which we grew up. 

Her writing also deals with something I think many Afrikaners continue to struggle with: how to remain connected to our language and cultural history while recognising how deeply that history is entangled with apartheid.

Historical responsibility

Wilhelm Verwoerd has approached some of these questions from within a family whose name remains closely associated with apartheid. Today, through his work at Stellenbosch University, he continues to engage with historical responsibility and reconciliation, including conversations with fellow white South Africans about how they understand our history and their place in the country. I think this work is particularly important because so many of us still struggle to confront the assumptions with which we grew up.

Andries Odendaal and Chris Spies were involved in the peace committees during the early 1990s, when political violence threatened South Africa's transition to democracy. Andries subsequently became internationally recognised for his work in local peacebuilding. His book, A Crucial Link: Local Peace Committees and National Peacebuilding, examines why political agreements alone cannot resolve conflict in communities where mistrust and division have become part of everyday life. 

Chris took his experience into land-claim mediation and later worked internationally, including as a United Nations peace adviser in Guyana. Together with Nomfundo Walaza, he established the Unyoke Foundation, which gives peacebuilding practitioners opportunities to reflect together on the difficulties and personal struggles that accompany their work.

I know from my own experience that people can sit around the same table, agree that reconciliation is necessary, and still leave with very different understandings of what justice requires. Our political settlement in 1994 was an extraordinary achievement, but it did not remove the anger, mistrust and memories of injustice that people carried into their relationships. Andries and Chris have spent much of their lives dealing with these realities, often far from public attention.

Need for different voices

Truida Prekel has contributed through decades of work in women’s development, organisational transformation and bringing people together across social divisions. More recently, she helped establish Afrikaners vir Suid-Afrika, which emerged from concern about how Afrikaners are being represented and the need for different voices in the public conversation. At 86, Truida remains actively involved. I find that particularly encouraging. She has certainly not concluded that she is too old to contribute to the country.

Fanie du Toit, who helped establish the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, has devoted much of his professional life to reconciliation and peacebuilding. His book When Political Transitions Work: Reconciliation as Interdependence addresses something I believe we still struggle to understand: our futures are connected. Afrikaners cannot expect to live securely and prosper while millions of fellow South Africans continue to experience the consequences of exclusion and injustice. The unresolved questions of land reform, restitution and economic inequality remain part of this reality.

Through my involvement in reconciliation and restitution, I have become increasingly aware of how deeply the everyday humiliation experienced under apartheid continues to shape relationships today. Apartheid was not experienced only through the terrible human rights violations investigated by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 

It was also experienced through everyday indignities on farms, in workplaces, in people’s homes and in the way people were treated by others. Much of this remained outside the commission’s central focus, and I do not believe we have adequately dealt with its consequences.

I have also been deeply disappointed by what successive governments have done with the opportunities created in 1994. But I have never understood why disappointment with the government should mean abandoning the principles of dignity, equality and non-racialism on which our democracy was founded. We have every reason to demand better leadership and accountability, while remaining committed to those principles.

The question we should be asking

Perhaps the question we should be asking is no longer whether Afrikaners have a future in South Africa, but rather what are we doing to contribute to the future of South Africa?

At 61, I increasingly think about what my generation will leave behind. We lived through apartheid and witnessed the extraordinary changes of 1994. We have now had more than three decades to decide what we wanted to do with that opportunity. The six people I have written about, and many others whose contributions deserve recognition, have spent much of their lives trying to build relationships in a country where our history has so often driven us apart.

I hope that their work will not be lost in the current arguments about who Afrikaners are and what our future holds. We have already lost too much in South Africa because we failed to understand one another. 

The relationships we have managed to build since 1994 are worth protecting, and there is still an enormous amount of work to be done. DM