BROEDERTWIS: INTRA-AFRIKANER CONFLICTS IN THE TRANSITION FROM APARTHEID

Abstract

ONE OF THE most striking features of the contemporary scene in South Africa is the political overreach of Afrikaners, currently forming approximately eight per cent of the population. Afrikaners are in a predominant position in the cabinet, the top levels of the central state bureaucracy, the state television and radio, and the senior officer corps of the security forces. By the end of the 1980s the ruling National Party was still effectively an Afrikaner party which retained many of the ethnic linkages forged in its rise as an ethnic mobilization movement. A study showed that on economic issues the government was far more responsive to Afrikaner institutional pressure and lobbying than to representations from English big business or blacks.l Managerial positions in the para-statal sector remained largely an Afrikaner preserve. As recently as 1986 a study described the South African state as the Boereplaas2 (literally the Afrikaners' farm). In pursuing negotiations the NP leadership is still strongly motivated by the goal of securing the survival of the Afrikaners.3 A negotiated settlement in South Africa will, to an important extent, depend on the ability of Afrikaners to adapt to a major curtailment of their overreach through redefining their ethnic identity and claims. This article will discuss the general debate on the transmutability of ethnic groups4 before proceeding to