This article examines an aspect of the growth of an Afrikaner bourgeoisie in the platteland through the ‘things’ they desired. It discusses the introduction of the American Saddlebred horse from the USA, to the agrarian sectors of the then Cape Province and Orange Free State. Analysis of breed discourse affords us insights into the role of status symbols, the socio-economic context of their acquisition, and the cultural impetus for their rise in popularity and wide geographic diffusion in rapidly upwardly-mobile, predominately Afrikaans-speaking rural communities in South Africa. In addition to the material context, the article analyses the elite – and, to an extent, internationalist – rhetorical space the American Saddle horse inhabited, by contrasting it with the self-consciously egalitarian and ethnically unifying discourse surrounding another horse used by primarily Afrikaans-speakers, the Boerperd. This article seeks to contribute to an area that is perhaps neglected in southern African historiography: the ‘cultural web of consumption’, with an emphasis on ‘things’ and their meanings. Historians have shown how consumer items and sports, for example, were invested with ethnic identity. This article, however, explores another nuance – the role of class. Past historiography on the culture of national identity has largely focused on the ways in which shared understanding of ‘history’ was mobilised to produce group (ethnic/national) identity, but identity could also be predicated in part on the embrace of ‘modernity’ and consumerism. The comparison between the supporters of American Saddlers and Boerperde, both factions within the (largely male) Afrikaans-speaking society, and an analysis of their quite different discourses reflect two ways of conceptualising identity, especially in the way they mobilised consumer hunger. The Saddle horse discourse reflects the development of a new class, with manifestations of fresh desires and a need to demarcate class boundaries. It reflects a way of thinking about self-identity that is not the traditional view of Afrikaner identity politics: a confident, internationalist, pro-American, elite – above all, embracing of ‘modernity’, the future, and not invested in the past. Instead of ‘Afrikanerising’ the American horse, it became more prestigious to maintain a foreign link. Antithetically, the Boerperd discourse offered a demotic weltanschauung, and the Boerperd breeders contested the notion of a horse as an effete relic of a higher class, revelling instead in nativist history, classlessness, usefulness, and autochthony.