Abstract
IN his thorough sociological study of Afrikaner ideology, Dunbar Moodie has shown that the civil theology most adequate to the exigencies of the 1930s was an interpretation ‘which was tight enough to unite Afrikaners and yet loose enough to allow considerable difference of opinion on practical matters’.2While the same functional needs for a proper ideology remain for the 1970S and 80s, ‘civil theology’ can no longer fulfil this task. This is mainly due to increased secularisation and value changes in an urbanised life, which has diluted traditional culture with the corruptive spoils of affluence. Moodie aptly concludes that the exigencies of Afrikaner power have changed the debate from one between rival metaphysical interpretations of Christian-Nationalism (Kuyperianism, neo-Fichteanism,Volkskerk) to that of ‘the very continuance of ideology itself’.3Such considered findings are confirmed by similar observations of ‘outsiders’ who have returned after a lengthy exile. In the assessment of Ezekiel Mphahlele:
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