Dr Michael Sutcliffe
THE negotiations and establishment of our Constitution in 1996 was a seminal moment for our country establishing for the first time a rights-based framework of political, social, economic, developmental and other rights.
Whilst there can be no doubt that the vast majority of South Africans accept the overall intentions contained in that document to redress the terrible effects of particularly colonialism, sexism, racism and other forms of discrimination writ large on our landscape, a few have used every means possible to return us to a period of conflict and hatred.
Leading that pack of course is AfriForum, established in 2006 to call up Afrikaners. They claim to “follow a double strategy with actions and campaigns that it undertakes on a national and local level to manage and influence the current political realities on Afrikaners. At the same time, AfriForum establishes sustainable structures through which Afrikaners can ensure their survival in an independent manner.”
Importantly, no recognition is made by AfriForum that indeed Afrikaans is a black African language, first developed in a written and spoken form by particularly slaves in the Western Cape. Since then, it has remained a language spoken mainly by black South Africans.
I raise this upfront because growing up on the south coast of Durban, I first encountered Afrikaners as a white “tribe” and throughout my early school days I saw them as our enemy. In the school playground, a white line divided us English speakers from Afrikaans children and teachers ensured that we did not go over the line.
These divisions between white English and Afrikaans speakers dominated much of my school life, with us English speakers often feeling that all problems resulted from the Afrikaners who were now moving into our areas through strategies by the National Party to bring in voters to unseat the United Party.
The history I learnt at school was fashioned to reinforce a view that the National Party had saved all whites, that white boys must be brought up to be leaders of all, and that Afrikaners had brought civilisation before any black people “arrived” in our country. Nowhere did I hear of the existence of black Afrikaners, except for those who worked on farms or in other servile relationships who had to know the language.
Only at University did I start seeing a slightly different reality.
Outside the University I started seeing the bigger picture though: with workers, civics and then students leading the way in struggling for their rights. I also engaged with some unions whose black membership was largely Afrikaans. But these peaceful protests were only met with brutal repression.
What amazed me, and still amazes me, is that in all my politics I have been greeted by so much love from black people, and even when they often corrected me, did it in the nicest possible way! They stuck to the principle that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white. In contrast, the option the apartheid government gave us all was filled with hatred and division by race and language.
As I first met many of our leaders in Lusaka in the mid-1980s I realised the importance they placed on particularly Afrikaner leaders, something of importance given the dominating operations of the secretive Broederbond on occupying all parts of civil society and government.
The leadership by President Oliver Tambo and Thabo Mbeki led to meetings such as the one in July 1987 where IDASA co-convened the historic meeting between sections of the Afrikaner community and the ANC in exile to discuss strategies to build a united, democratic SA.
I was honoured to be appointed by President Mandela as part of a technical committee chaired by Zam Titus to look at the issue of Orania in democratic South Africa. It allowed me to realise that even in that context there are people who see themselves as Africans first, and who saw Orania as also providing an opportunity for white South Africans to stay in South Africa and not leave for other shores.
However, throughout our democracy, we have found small groups using every means possible to take us back to the past of division and hatred. Now in 2025, we find organisations like AfriForum and Solidarity approaching President Trump and his racists to impose sanctions and turn our clock back.
The stupidity of these people though is that no sooner had they been to Washington, than Trump produced an Executive Order making English the official language of the USA! And yet we are the only country in the world where Afrikaans is an official language.
It begs the question, why doesn’t Afriforum promote a campaign to ensure that in every school where Afrikaans is taught, equal resources are made available to ensure isiZulu, Tshivenda, etc are also taught at those schools?
There is no doubt that the vast majority of South Africans are disgusted at the actions of AfriForum, Solidarity, etc. A few may of course try and use this for their political advantage, with some favouring Afriforum and others showing the negative consequences of Afriforum’s approach for Afrikaners as a whole. All of that is like shuffling the chairs on the decks of the Titanic.
This is because these narrow actions ignore the fact that the material reality is such that whites in general and white Afrikaners, in particular, enjoy an average household income of four to five times greater than black South Africans. The divisions within the Afrikaans community are even greater with only a small minority being the supporters of Afriforum and the majority of mainly black Afrikaners remaining poor.
Their attempts to focus on issues like the land question, education and employment equity are also naïve, as the opposites of these issues – theft of land, bantu education and job reservation – were implemented over many decades and are still amongst our greatest challenges to resolve.
We know the national question must be part of the national dialogue so that we can take stock particularly on why the economic and spatial divide in our country is still largely one of race. My respectful advice to Afriforum and their cohorts is that they should be focussing on the fact that if Afrikaans is to survive, it must be founded on, and provide material change to, the black African base that created it.
Dr Michael Sutcliffe is a Director of City Insights (Pty) Ltd.