Monuments of Afrikaner Nationalism

Afrikaners are a South African ethnic group descended primarily from Dutch, German, and French immigrants to the cape in the 17th and 18th century. In their early history, they did not have much of a cohesive group identity. Such an identity grew largely out of a shared struggle for legitimacy and self-governance in the face of British rule. The Boers (Dutch for farmers) left the Cape Colony through a series of migrations termed the “Great Trek” in the late 1830s and early 1840s, ultimately forming two independent states in the interior. They fought two major wars with the British over the independence of these states. Politicians and cultural leaders built up a nationalism around the Great Trek. This collective memory was used to cultivate an ethnic unity around the myth of a “chosen people” that was then mobilized toward Afrikaner political and economic freedom, and later dominance, in South Africa.

Heritage, the careful curation of historical narratives for contemporary means, is often used by groups to make claims of belonging, possession, identity and meaning. It is also used to naturalize ideologies. Afrikaner heritage sites and objects conceived before and during the segregationist apartheid era played a major role in this as they were used as rallying points to glorify and affirm Afrikaner nationalism. In the interest of nation building, the approach of the postapartheid government was to endeavor to leave in place monuments such as these, and to instead build new ones articulating different messages. Consequently, while a few inflammatory sculptures and images were removed from government buildings and public spaces, the majority of monuments have been left in place. Some adjustments to the sites of monuments or to their functioning have been undertaken to make them more inclusive. Nonetheless, there remains ongoing debate in the public sphere about what to do with them.