South Africa: A People Set Apart

South Africa: A people set apart
By Richard Lapper in Johannesburg
Published: April 9 2010 20:31 | Last updated: April 9 2010 20:31

Isolated: the death of white supremacist Terre’Blanche has reignited talk of an Afrikaner state
EDITOR’S CHOICE
Battle lines drawn as S Africa wins loan - Apr-10

S Africa plans state mining company - Mar-31

World Cup rail link challenges car culture - Mar-31

Washington urged to back South Africa loan - Mar-29

ANC youth leader convicted over ‘hate speech’ - Mar-15

Cosatu attacks Zuma’s economic policy - Mar-07

Lucky Austin almost quakes with rage when asked about the murder last weekend of Eugène Terre’Blanche, the white supremacist leader. “Of course, I’m angry,” rages the 38-year-old garage owner from Bapsfontein, goose pimples rising on his bare arms. “The shit is really going to hit the fan.”

Customers waiting in Mr Austin’s ramshackle office, its walls decorated with his collection of 800 baseball caps, are upset as well. “Everyone just wants to shoot right now,” says Jan Grobler, a 46-year-old who has been taking on odd jobs since becoming unemployed at the end of 2008. “Everybody is talking about it. It is definitely more tense.”

Bapsfontein, a down-at-heel farming town an hour’s drive east of Johannesburg, is the sort of place where Terre’Blanche enjoyed strong backing in the late 1980s when he was in his pomp. Even then he may have been a minority taste; during the past 15 years, his support waned to virtual insignificance.

But his death seems to have touched a chord in Afrikaner society, allowing men like Mr Austin and Mr Grobler to vent frustrations stemming from issues ranging from crime to the loss of economic and social opportunities to an increasing sense of insecurity. Descendants of the 17th-century Dutch, French Huguenot and German settlers whose distinct language reflects those origins, the group is more aggrieved than at any time since 1994, when Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk, the last Afrikaner president, piloted a peaceful transition from apartheid.

The increasing marginalisation of one of its largest and previously most powerful minorities represents a challenge to a country that seeks to promote itself as the “rainbow nation” and, with the soccer World Cup about to take place in June, is particularly keen to present a positive image internationally.

Terre’Blanche’s Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB) had been notorious for its violence, setting up paramilitary units to block the transition to democracy. But the 69-year-old buried on Friday had apparently become more mellow since his release from jail in 2004 (he served part of a three-year sentence for brutally assaulting a black worker).

Early last Saturday evening two workers from his farm outside Ventersdorp, about 100 miles from Johannesburg, approached Terre’Blanche’s house, where he was recovering from heart surgery. Apparently following a dispute about wages, they beat him to death using a machete and a wooden club, took his mobile phone and then allegedly called the police to confess the crime.

Exactly how and why Terre’Blanche was killed is unclear (the court case is being held in closed session because one of the accused is only 15 years old). But it is the manner and circumstances of his death that have made Afrikaners furious. It appears he was humiliated. The alleged killers were charged with crimen injuria (the act of impairing the dignity of another) because, as prosecutor George Baloyi explained, “they [had] exposed his private parts”.

Terre’Blanche’s death conforms with a pattern that has emerged in the rural areas where many Afrikaners live. Since 1994, at leas 3,000 farmers have been killed, rights groups say. The murders have generated something approaching paranoia in the Afrikaans media. Sam de Beer, who served as a minister in apartheid governments, helping negotiate transition to majority rule before ending his political career in the governing African National Congress, says there has been “an onslaught against farmers and old people. You can’t open a newspaper without reading details of another murder. The Afrikaner is beginning to feel under threat. The circumstances are very, very bad.”

Many believe the government is at best doing too little to control this wave of murders; or that at worst, through the rhetoric of the bellicose leader of its unruly youth league, it is complicit. Since the middle of last month, 29-year-old Julius Malema has been singing at public gatherings the anti-apartheid anthem, “Shoot the Boer”. He and his party have protested against a court order to cease on grounds that the lyrics offend against the constitutional ban on “hate speech”. On the day that Terre’ Blanche was murdered, Mr Malema – in Zimbabwe as a guest of President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF – insisted he would continue singing the song.

All this has crystallised a broader sense of disillusionment, and even betrayal, with post-apartheid South Africa among Afrikaners. As they became increasingly disadvantaged economically compared with English-speaking whites, they developed the apartheid system in part at least to defend their culture and social standing. In the early 1990s, Mr Mandela persuaded them to accept majority rule but guaranteed, in the words of the constitution, “opportunities for all South Africans, irrespective of colour, race, class, belief or sex”. However, many Afrikaners argue that the pact has now weakened appreciably.

Mr de Beer talks about “growing disillusion and bitterness [among Afrikaners]. The promises of reconciliation have not been lived up to.” Formerly an MP for a constituency that incorporated Bapsfontein, he says he was a sworn enemy of Terre’Blanche, having fought his party in 1980s election campaigns. Nevertheless he fears his death “could be a turning point”.

Many Afrikaners feel “transformation” policies have hurt them economically. When the ANC started to impose the measures that discriminate in favour of black public sector workers, thousands of white people – including many Afrikaners – lost jobs in the civil service, police and schools. Justifiably or not, many feel they are less likely to receive social welfare than black counterparts, increasing their vulnerability to the impact of last year’s economic slowdown that hit small towns such as Bapsfontein particularly hard.

“Afrikaners have to exist in squatters’ camps, corrugated iron shacks, caravans, tents and even pigsties. It’s a quiet poverty today about which people are afraid and ashamed to talk for fear of another political slap in the face,” said Danie Langner of Solidarity Helping Hand, a trade union support group, at a recent conference. He said that 430,000 Afrikaners (according to the 2001 census, about 2.5m of the country’s 4.4m whites speak Afrikaans as a first language) live in informal settlements.

Mr Malema’s rise has made the uncertainty more acute. The youth leader’s support of nationalisation and land reform policies, and his sympathy for Mr Mugabe’s violent tactics, is deeply unsettling for a group that fears it could lose its right to own property. Against this background, seemingly innocuous moves by ANC-controlled councils to give cities and streets African names have excited emotions that seem out of proportion to the issues involved.

Teasing out the political implications of all this is difficult. At last year’s general election, Afrikaners voted heavily for the Freedom Front, a small Afrikaans party, as well as the bigger, more liberal Democratic Alliance, the main opposition, which draws support from white, Asian and “coloured”, or mixed race minority populations.

It appears, though, that they are now looking at less conventional forms of organisation. Hermann Giliomee, a historian wrote re cently in Afrikaans newspaper Die Beeld that until lately they “were not aware how from a minority position they could mobilise against attack on their rights and in support of their language and culture [but] this is changing rapidly”.

An Afrikaner civil group, Afri-Forum, has taken legal action to try to curb Mr Malema’s excesses. Before Terre’Blanche’s funeral, supporters sent thousands of text messages to potential allies. Mr Giliomee, writing on PoliticsWeb, A South African site, says opinion polls show support is rising again for the kind of Volkstaat, or semi-autonomous white community, favoured by Terre’Blanche.

Afrikaners may also be drawn to radical politics, according to analysts. Terre’­Blanche’s AWB, re-formed only two years ago, says it has received 3,000 membership applications during the past few days.

Mr De Beer is hopeful that President Jacob Zuma and the centre of the ANC will prove strong enough to inject new life into the 1996 constitution, following signs last year of a more inclusive approach to minorities. “President Zuma shows an awareness of the problems. He needs to be able to get this through to his followers. Zuma must be more vociferous in implementing the principles of the constitution. He must try to do what Mandela did.”

But he is politically realistic enough to appreciate the dangers. “The leadership style of Malema is giving the radical right an opportunity to do their thing.”

Back in Bapsfontein, that much is evident. David de Gavea, an unemployed 24-year-old who helps out at Mr Austin’s garage, says he finds Terre’Blanche’s ideas attractive. “I think there will be a resurgence of the AWB. I am sure the party will grow, especially with [what] Malema [is doing]. The main thing that was wrong about apartheid was its name. We should have called it diversity.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web