TY - JOUR
AU - Müller, Retief
AB - Introduction Nationalism, the politics of group identity, or “imagined communities” as Benedict Anderson coined the concept,1 has been controversial in modern history for several good reasons, with Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa still counted among the most pertinent examples. Christianity has similarly been controversial. Both nationalism and Christianity have, in some cases correctly, been identified as responsible for fostering situations of violence and repression. Moreover, each of them typically makes a distinction between insiders and outsiders. One crucial difference between Christianity, on the one hand, and exclusive or ethnic nationalism2 on the other, is that Christianity generally seeks to make insiders out of outsiders through conversion, whereas nationalism resists permeation from the outside. When Christianity and ethnic3 nationalism combine, as was the case with Afrikaner Christian nationalism during apartheid, it makes for an interesting, if paradoxical, set of circumstances. Effectively, the in-group has to convert outsiders not only to its system of religious belief, but also to its wider worldview and political ideology, without, of course, allowing outsiders to become real insiders since that would contravene the rationality of exclusive nationalism. South African apartheid history illustrates this irony perfectly. A white minority driven by Afrikaner Christian nationalist ideas instituted a system of racial exclusivism, but it had to do this in a way that was supposedly beneficial to all. In theory outsiders, that is, black South Africans, had to be “converted” to see this system as the best possible one for South Africa as a whole, and for them as its subjects. Therefore, unlike more conventional attempts to win converts, the aim of this type of Christian nationalism was not to invite outsiders into the inner circle. On the contrary, outsiders remained outsiders, but outsiders of a peculiar kind, namely, those who had no other choice but to accept the system as normative. The idea of converting black people to the ideal of apartheid as supposedly beneficial to all racial groups was, of course, sheer wishful thinking and hardly ever successful, but the ideal still served to legitimate the system of apartheid because many of the apartheid theorists, such as G. B. A. Gerdener, were for a time able to convince themselves that the logic of their system should and would eventually be understood and accepted across the racial divisions of South Africa.4 Therefore, and this is partly what made apartheid such a convincing and enduring political option, pious insiders were able to proceed under the misguided belief that what they were doing was truly beneficial to all concerned. It is a matter of historical record that apartheid as a political system had a finite lifespan. Ultimately, even some of its most devoted apologists reversed their convictions in order to embrace the more recent and benign rainbow nation ideology in South Africa. Did the end of apartheid decisively also bury the idea of Christian nationalism? In this essay I will not attempt to answer this question definitively, but I will make the case that nationalism with Christian evangelical undertones was indeed present and influential in the history of one of the foremost anti-apartheid activists in South Africa, Beyers Naudé. Naudé’s Background Naudé’s father, Jozua Francois Naudé was a nationalist’s nationalist. J. F. Naudé fought in the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) under Generals C. F. Beyers and Jan Kemp. He distinguished himself in Afrikaner social memory with his status as a “bittereinder” (one who fought to the bitter end). At the treaty of Vereeniging, he also stood out as one of six burghers who refused to sign.5 His exploits during the Anglo-Boer War were recorded in his memoir, Vechten en vluchten van Beyers en Kemp “bôkant” de Wet.6 After the war, J. F. Naudé studied theology in Stellenbosch and then became a Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) minister in the Transvaal. His oldest son, Christiaan Frederick Beyers (named after the aforementioned Boer general) was born in the town of Roodepoort near Johannesburg in 1915. This was during the time of the First World War and the Rebellie (Rebellion) in which Generals Kemp and Beyers were leading figures. These generals led an unsuccessful armed conflict in opposition to South Africa’s participation on the side of the British Empire in WWI. J. F. Naudé, by this time a man of the cloth, did not take up arms on the side of the rebels. However, according to the testimony of family members, his manse in Roodepoort was a meeting venue for Rebellie leaders, all of whom were former compatriots and close friends of Naudé.7 Three years after the Rebellie, in 1918, Naudé became one of the founders of the Afrikaner Broederbond, a secret society that promoted Afrikaner nationalist interests. He also served as this organization’s first president.8 Rev. J.F. Naudé continued to fill a pivotal position in the emerging Afrikaner nationalist movement. He played a major role in making Afrikaans the official language of the educational system, as well as within the DRC. Perhaps his crowning glory in this regard was the first exclusively Afrikaans language school in the country, which he helped to establish in Roodepoort in 1918 and which was named after him.9 J. F. Naudé served in two other nationalistically significant congregations, that of Piet Retief, which was named after a nineteenth-century Afrikaner leader who died at the hands of a Zulu monarch (see below) and thus became a martyr of sorts, and most notably that of the Karoo settlement of Graaff Reinet, which was set to become a battleground of different political factions within the Dutch Reformed community. During J.F. Naudé’s tenure in Graaff Reinet, this conflict came to a head and the congregation experienced a schism in 1929, mainly along political lines, with Naudé remaining the pastor of the nationalist/Afrikaans-leaning faction. This Afrikaner DRC community in Graaff Reinet constituted the environment in which Beyers Naudé grew up and spent most of his childhood. Given this context and the knowledge of what subsequently happened in Naudé’s public career of progressive apostasy from the tenets of Afrikaner civil religion,10 one might be forgiven for imagining that he also eventually fully rejected nationalism, as well as his father’s influence over him. However, that was not necessarily the case, as one may gather from his autobiography, My land van hoop.11 On the contrary, and this is what makes his story unsettling, the data seems to suggest that his father remained a significant role model for Beyers Naudé during his later life. Although he rebelled against many Afrikaner positions, eventually leaving both the Broederbond and the DRC, it does not seem that he consciously rebelled against his parents. In the next section I shall indicate that his father’s views on nationalism were likewise transferred, although Beyers Naudé reinterpreted the implications thereof for his own context. A Story of Naudé’s Dissent In what follows I will argue that Beyers Naudé’s perspective on nationalism changed considerably over the course of his public career, which spanned a period of around forty years from the 1940s to the 1980s. My contention is that, in spite of Naudé’s dramatic inner changes and even his conversion-like experience regarding the political situation in South Africa, nationalist thinking of a certain kind remained basic to his understanding of the South African situation. Although Naudé steadily turned his back on the exclusive nationalism of white Afrikanerdom, a different kind of nationalism continued to influence his thoughts and actions over the course of his life. The concept of (plural) reference group formation12 is perhaps a useful analytical category because over time Naudé came to belong to more than one imagined community. Although Afrikaner Christian nationalism continued to function as part and parcel of an internally cohesive volkskerk (national or ethnic church) for his peers, Naudé’s own decisions, which eventually led him to sever ties with the DRC in the 1960s (see below), increasingly forced him to differentiate between his ethnic identity, on the one hand, and his Christian identity on the other. Hence, although there were at least two clearly distinguishable reference groups in Naudé’s worldview, Christian ecumenism increasingly superseded parochial nationalism. To use the Africanist anthropologist Robin Horton’s terminology of micro- and macro-cosmos13 somewhat out of context, one could suggest that Naudé, partly through his involvement with the Christian Institute (CI) and the international associations he acquired as a result of this, was uprooted from the narrow expectations of his upbringing, and transplanted into a more fertile territory that allowed for the sprouting of previously unimagined scenarios and opportunities. Let me give a brief synopsis of the Naudé story as I understand it. After completing his own theological studies in Stellenbosch, Naudé followed further in his father’s footsteps and became a DRC minister and a member of the Afrikaner Broederbond, apparently with the distinction of being the youngest member in history to join that secretive and influential club. He served in several DRC congregations. Following a stint in the Karoo community of Loxton, he ended up, as his father did, in the Transvaal where he served congregations in Pretoria, Potchefstroom, and eventually Aasvoëlkop in Johannesburg. During this final period of ministering in the DRC, he was even for a time elevated to the position of moderator of the Southern Transvaal Synod. However, in 1963 Naudé resigned from the Broederbond and also set aside his clerical cloak after his church body had determined that he could not serve in the DRC while simultaneously being active as the director of the recently founded Christian Institute, which was launched on August 15, 1963.14 The story of Naudé’s dissention from Afrikaner Christian nationalism is well documented. According to his own testimony, as well as the biographical account by Colleen Ryan, he experienced no sudden revelation that he had up until that point been on the wrong path and in need of radical change. Rather it was a gradual journey of growing self-doubt regarding the story of apartheid, which he had formerly held to be good and hopeful. Many seeds of doubt were sown by interactions he apparently had with people outside of Afrikaner Christian Nationalism. In other words, Naudé interacted with non-Afrikaners, and especially black people, both in South Africa as well as overseas.15 Two apparently crucial catalysts for Naudé’s break with Afrikaner Christian nationalism were the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 and the subsequent World Council of Churches decision to convene a conference later that same year in Cottesloe near Johannesburg with the intention of addressing the issue of apartheid in South Africa in South Africa. Naudé was one of the DRC delegates to this ecumenical conference. Along with his peers, he found himself in agreement with all of Cottesloe’s declarations that denounced racism and called for human rights to be protected. However, after the prime minister of South Africa, H. F. Verwoerd, used his New Year’s message over national radio to condemn Cottesloe and to challenge the DRC to state its official position, the main church body distanced itself from the stance taken by its own delegates at the conference. For Naudé this was a definite betrayal, and it no doubt drove home the unpleasant extent to which his church had been co-opted by the state apparatus. Naudé refused to recant the position he had taken at the conference and from then on set out on a steady path of revolt against mainstream opinion within both his church and Afrikanerdom generally.16 Naudé became director of the ecumenical Christian Institute and editor of the anti-apartheid journal Pro Veritate, quit his position in the DRC, and steadily grew more distant from his formerly primary reference group of white Afrikanerdom. Eventually the Christian Institute would be declared an affected organization, which meant their activities were restricted and they could not receive overseas funds, and ultimately declared illegal. Naudé himself would be served a so-called banning order for a period of seven years (1977-1984), which prohibited him from publishing his views and engaging in public speaking. It also severely curtailed his movements and activities and effectively amounted to a form of house arrest. Prior to this he had become involved first with some of the people representing Black Consciousness (BC), most notably Steve Biko, and eventually with the African National Congress (ANC). In fact Naudé would come to identify fully with the struggle for liberation and by participating in lobbying in favor of economic disenfranchisement in South Africa of international corporations and for funds for liberation movements, primarily through the World Council of Church’s (WCC) Program to Combat Racism (PCR). All in all, it would seem he became the quintessential anti-Afrikaner, the anti-Broeder. In his autobiography Naudé mentions that someone once attempted to make this point with a question that contrasted him with his father: “Your father was the great Brother, and you are the great anti-Brother. Why is that?”17 However, Naudé then denies ever having seen himself as a great “anti-Broeder.”18 On the contrary, he admits to a great admiration for his father and the work he had done.19 Of course, this does not mean that the mature Naudé in writing his autobiography was returning to those ideals he had earlier turned his back on. But it demonstrates that disentangling a person from their relationships to their own imagined past is not a straightforward process, nor is it advisable for the purposes of historical analysis. I shall now proceed to demonstrate from some examples of his personal writing, including speeches and sermons, how Naudé considered the issue of nationalism, particularly Afrikaner nationalism, over time. Naudé, the Voortrekkers, and Nationalism A large collection of Naudé’s handwritten sermons are stored in the Beyers Naudé archive at the theology faculty of Stellenbosch University. A selection of these has been published in a book by the Beyers Naudé Centre for Public Theology.20 One sermon titled “‘n Toegeruste Volk van God” (“An Equipped People of God”) was preached on a “Dingaan’s Day” festival on December 17, 1940, at Wellington, where Naudé served as an assistant pastor.21 Predictably, given the historical context (two years after the ox-wagon trek centenary celebrations which ritually reenacted the nineteenth-century Great Trek of Afrikaners who migrated away from British-controlled territory), Naudé draws a definite parallel between his contemporary Afrikaners and the travails of the Voortrekkers (as the participants in the original Great Trek had become known), whom he portrays as a people group formed by God. Dingaan’s Day, also known as Day of the Vow, annually commemorated a legendary Voortrekker victory over massive numbers of Zulu warriors. This battle, known as the Battle of Blood River, purportedly occurred after Voortrekker leaders made a vow with God, reminiscent of the biblical covenant between Yahweh and Abraham, that they and their descendants would be his followers if victory was granted. The tensions between Zulu the Zulus and Voortrekker Voortrekkers had reached a climax with the killing of Voortrekker leader Piet Retief in the kraal of the Zulu king Dingane during negotiations over land in 1838.22 The subsequent battle and Voortrekker victory came to symbolize Afrikaner dominance over, and God-given tutelage of, black Africans in the imaginations of subsequent Afrikaner generations, particularly from the 1930s onward, when Afrikaner Christian nationalism became ever more assertive.23 In the 1940s Naudé was sitting comfortably within this nationalistic camp. In his sermon, the Afrikaners are the Voortrekkers of the new century. The Voortrekkers are interpreted as the “people of the Lord” referred to in Luke 1:15-17, from which Naudé preaches here. This sermon is an unabashed example of Afrikaner volksteologie (ethnic theology). Naudé focuses particularly on the God-fearing qualities of John the Baptist, who is prophesized in this text to be the one who would prepare a people for God. Similar God-fearing qualities, according to Naudé, were found in the “heroes of Blood River.” Particularly interesting is Naudé’s interpretation of some of the events leading up to Blood River. The Voortrekkers exemplified the characteristics of justice and honesty: “Think of the history – everywhere they moved, they went with one thought: We want to see justice for all the races that we meet! And the death of Piet Retief – was it not a direct consequence of his attempts to secure justice – even for wild barbarians!”24 Thus Naudé implores his fellow “Voortrekkers of the twentieth century” to follow in the example of their “fathers” and to prepare the way for a better future. “On our shoulders rests a holy, dear obligation. Holy for the previous and coming generations. How can we fulfill the obligation? How can we show the highest service to our volk? How can we make our history also a holy history?”25 The answer is by emulating John the Baptist and by making sure that they, twentieth-century Afrikaners, do right for God, themselves, their fellow humans, their past, and their future. Regarding the past, Naudé is not ambiguous in this sermon. Afrikaners should realize: “My past is more beautiful and better than any other volk… . Not, my past is so bad and sad that I don’t want to hear anything about it, that I am ashamed to call myself an Afrikaner.”26 Regarding the future, Naudé lists several typical obligations, including the following one which clearly shows his position regarding the Afrikaners’ relationship to other South Africans. They should be a “volk that regards it as a privilege to honour all its obligations towards ‘whites,’ ‘coloureds,’ and ‘natives’ (guardianship).”27 With the term, voogdyskap (guardianship) Naudé invokes a colonial and early apartheid notion that blacks were incapable of self-rule and had to remain under the benevolent tutelage of whites in politics, education, and so forth. Here Naudé seems to imply that such tutelage is the responsibility specifically of the Afrikaner volk for all other inhabitants of South Africa. By 1959 much had happened in Naudé’s life to complicate his views regarding race relations and the place of Christianity within it. He was at Aasvoëlkop congregation in Johannesburg and, although his break with Afrikanerdom still lay in the future, Naudé’s formerly rather uncritical existence within this cultural system was already a thing of the past. On December 16 at Geloftedag (Day of the Vow), Naudé returns to the theme of Blood River. Early on in the sermon he states that one must be careful not to compare the Afrikaners with biblical Israel. This is of course exactly what he had done in the 1940 sermon quoted above and which was routinely done by other Afrikaner ministers, particularly on Geloftedag. In 1959, he argues to the contrary that the Afrikaner should not summarily be identified with Israel. Yet people should still testify that God, “through his wonders and judgment, has led our volk in a miraculous way.” The meaning of this day was not to celebrate the heroism of ancestors, or the powerful victory of “white” over “non-white,” but instead to ask what God had achieved through this day.28 After some brief comments about how the Voortrekkers had been pressured from all sides, and how the volk was once again being scrutinized and judged by world opinion and market forces, Naudé asks about the deeper meaning of Blood River. This turns out to be a spiritual meaning. The Voortrekker leaders, Naudé asserts, were deeply pious people who dedicated their lives and their ultimate victory to God. In fact, they were missionary people. Therefore Naudé exhorts his contemporary volk to dedicate themselves anew to God because there were signs of disaffection among the people, and he names things like materialism and laxity regarding the Sabbath as issues of concern. Then Naudé moves on to his central point when he argues that Blood River was a victory for Christendom over heathendom, rather than merely of Boer over Bantu. It so happens that the “whites” were representatives of Christendom, but the meaning was not that God wanted to especially protect the whites over the blacks. No, it was about the expansion of God’s kingdom, “and ‘whites’ of that time were the bearers of the gospel!”29 The sermon concludes then with some highly significant lines regarding so-called Bantu nationalism. Throughout the sermon Naudé insists on the Christian intentions and good graces of the Voortrekkers, and for this very reason he states the following: “Today there is the same drive in the nations of Africa, such as that expressed in the rising tide of ‘Bantu-nationalism.’ In many respects these expressions are unhealthy, hostile and unchristian, but precisely because of that Christians should recognize all rightful claims and help to promote them.”30 Naudé ends with the suggestion that more knowledge should be generated regarding the languages, culture, and customs of the Bantu. “We must encourage our children to study in this area!”31 On the one hand, this sermon could be read in the milieu of volk-centered missionary theory originating out of a German school of missiology represented by Gustav Warneck, most prominently, but reinterpreted in South Africa by influential thinkers such as the Stellenbosch mission theorists Johannes du Plessis and especially G. B. A. Gerdener.32 In this missionary paradigm, which was preoccupied with ethnicity, indigenous cultures, and languages, nationalist aspirations found a natural home. Naudé was undoubtedly influenced by such thinking, which might be instrumental in the sermon above. On the other hand, the sentiment Naudé expresses here might be read as a precursor to his ultimate identification with the black cause. This would then be a further twist in the construction of a rather unexpected story regarding the kinds of sensibilities that shaped the man’s identity. Naudé and Black Nationalism Prior to Cottesloe and the founding of the Christian Institute, Naudé’s position in terms of Afrikanerdom might be described using a term coined by twentieth-century Afrikaner poet and playwright N. P. van Wyk Louw, namely, loyale verset (loyal resistance).33 Naudé became steadily more critical of apartheid, but he remained an insider in Afrikanerdom until he was forced out of the fold by the decision of the DRC that he could not serve both as minister and as director of the Christian Institute. He chose the latter and, when the Christian Institute was declared an “affected organization” in 1975, it made sense for Naudé and his associates to establish closer connections with other “affected” organizations and people, which for them at the time meant BC.34 A question that has to be addressed concerns the ways in which the idea of nationalism, or group identity, functioned in Naudé’s thinking once he had left the fold of the DRC and the Broederbond—that is, once he had become in the eyes of many a traitor to Afrikanerdom. An article35 that Naudé published in 1977, evocatively titled “Die Afrikaner as Rebel” (The Afrikaner as Rebel), gives some insight into the matter. Contrary to expectations raised by the title, Naudé does not refer to historical instances of Afrikaner rebellion, such as the Great Trek, the Anglo-Boer War, or the Rebellie. Instead he uses the article to berate his fellow Afrikaner intellectuals for by and large failing to show the backbone necessary for standing up against the internal danger that threatened the future of both the Afrikaner volk and Christendom. This threat was none other than the policy of separate development. Naudé states that liberation for the Afrikaner will occur only when enough Afrikaner academics and theologians show themselves prepared to publically reject the policy of “independent development” and to “pay the price” for their stance.36 In his conclusion, Naudé emphasizes that breaking away from the “present political status quo” does not imply abandoning the Afrikaner, but only one’s willingness to allow “Pretoria, or Potchefstoom, or Cape Town” to determine one’s conception of Afrikaner identity. Naudé further exhorts Afrikaners willing to break free from the status quo to engage in “organized peaceful resistance against all forms of injustice which are today demanded in the name of the preservation of white identity and Christian nationalism.”37 Thus it would seem that Naudé’s major assumption in this essay is that the real identity of the Afrikaner is that of rebel. How stark a departure this is from the normative assumptions of his cultural and ideological roots might be indicated briefly by referring to what neo-Calvinists generally considered the standard textbook of Afrikaner Christian Nationalism namely, Koers in die Krisis. This 1935 collection of essays had a formidable impact on the Afrikaner churches and their theology. In addition to lauding the virtues of Calvinist “principles” that are conveniently brought into line with the apartheid ideology of separateness, this book also warns against the dangers of anything that might undermine that ideology, such as modernism, Methodism, and a generally defined sectarianism. Writing about the latter, Rev. C. F. Kies lists among the negative qualities of sectarianism a propensity for individualism, as well as the lamentable phenomenon that “the sects are denationalizing our fellow Afrikaner. In such a sect he becomes international, and thus non-national. He loses his God given national consciousness and becomes for his country and people ultimately nothing.”38 It is ironic that, following the logic of Koers in die Krisis, one might argue that Naudé, who did not join a “sect” but rather the ecumenical Christian Institute, would similarly have imperiled his nationalist state of being. He had consequently become an international figure, which no doubt played a role in altering his perception regarding his own ethnic identity as defined by Afrikanerdom. However, his views about Afrikaner identity must be juxtaposed with those he expressed specifically on the theme of Christianity and nationalism as published in a collection of essays in 1975.39 Here Naudé reflects, as might be expected of a Christian minister in relation to this theme, on the story of Pentecost, in which Jews and proselytes to Judaism from diverse “nationalities” suddenly found that they were able to understand one another despite speaking in different languages. Naudé argues that the Christian tradition recognizes cultural diversity, but that this does not override the unity instituted by the Pentecost events and the loyalty demanded of them as an era of persecution set in thereafter. These witnesses of the Pentecost events were forced “to make a clear, definite and final choice: To whom do I owe my primary allegiance: God or man, church or state, God’s people or my own ‘Volk?’”40 Naudé continues throughout the essay to illustrate not only how Christianity and nationalism are different, but how they are in fact in opposition to each other. In effect he seems to suggest that plural reference group formation is impossible for nationalists who also profess Christianity. While the latter is “inclusive,” the former is “exclusive.” Whereas Christianity draws people into community, nationalism forces “tribes and cultures apart and thereby creates hostility and enmity… .”41 Clearly at this stage, then, for Naudé there was no such thing as inclusive nationalism for the Afrikaner. Unlike Afrikaner intellectuals such as N. P. van Wyk Louw,42 and even certain missionaries who sought to expand ideas of groups belonging to include non-Afrikaner white South Africans,43 in the mid-1970s Naudé understood Afrikaner nationalism to be more or less coterminous with ethnic identity. About this time, in the early to mid-1970s, Naudé increasingly came into contact with representatives of BC through the activities of the Christian Institute, which became increasingly committed to the latter’s cause.44 It is therefore noteworthy that Naudé concludes this essay on Christianity and nationalism by touching on a theme to which he subsequently returns in other writings and speeches (see below). This theme concerns the issue of black nationalism as a reaction to white (Afrikaner) nationalism, a reaction which he describes as understandable and inevitable, but against which he sounds a rather ominous warning: When the pendulum of black nationalism (especially when political liberation comes to the blacks) swings its full course and completes the circle may God give to the black Christian leaders the courage and wisdom to help their people not to repeat the tragic and terrible mistake which we as whites (and especially we as Afrikaners) have made by imposing upon blacks in the name of Christian nationalism a system of domination and oppression which has evoked so much bitterness, anger and hostility and which threatens to destroy the Afrikaner-volk.45 This quotation is of significance because, in spite of the way that nationalism is contrasted unfavorably with Christianity throughout his essay, one may read between the lines and find that, in Naudé’s view, nationalism itself is not necessarily the problem; in fact it might even be construed as redeemable if, as Naudé hopes for black leadership here, it does not come to legitimate oppression. As late as 1988 one could still find Naudé wrestling with the idea of Afrikaner identity, which for him apparently was no longer entirely identifiable with the Afrikaner nationalism he had come to deplore. Of particular relevance here are a pair of unpublished speeches. In the first, which was delivered at a meeting of the Junior Rapportryers in Johannesburg, Naudé notes that he and other leftist Afrikaners, such as Breyten Breytenbach and Frederick Van Zyl Slabbbert, have challenged the common perception of Afrikaner identity. In the absence of a clear definition of what it means to be an Afrikaner, Naudé helpfully proposes the following: “Someone who uses Afrikaans as home or colloquial language, who has the best interests of the Afrikaner volk at heart and wishes to promote these, and who sees himself as part of Africa is in my view an Afrikaner.”46 This is clearly a more inclusive, non-racial understanding of the Afrikaners than the Afrikaner nationalism that he reacted against in “Christianity and Nationalism.” Had Naudé’s exposure to both BC and, increasingly, the African National Congress (ANC) through the underground activities of the Christian Institute in the late 1970s to early 1980s led him to understand black identity as something that was racially inclusive, thus paving the way for a similar re-evaluation of Afrikaner identity? Any answer to this question would be speculation, of course. It is nevertheless suggestive that Naudé was closely associated with people such as Allan Boesak, who did much to expand the notion of blackness in South Africa.47 In the second 1988 speech, “Waarheen met die Afrikaner?” (In which direction for the Afrikaner?), Naudé again discusses the connection between black nationalism and Afrikaner nationalism (although he never explicitly uses the term “nationalism”). Here he states: “If there is one population group that should be able to understand and appreciate the legitimate striving of the black population of our country (the Africans) then it is the Afrikaners—our struggle against the British domination, against Milner politics.”48 This way of thinking—making of a connection between the campaign of the Afrikaner against the British Empire in the early twentieth century and the more recent struggle of black South Africans against oppressive apartheid—was a central idea for Naudé in his later years. This is illustrated by the fact that he reiterates this connection in his 1995 autobiography, where he writes positively about BC and Biko’s assertion of black self-worth: [I]s this not precisely the same process which the Afrikaner had to go through to free themselves from the choke-hold of the English language and culture, of British domination? What did Milner do? He purposefully tried to suppress the Afrikaans language and culture, and the more he tried to do that, the more the resistance of the Afrikaner grew to say that we were not going to allow that. The founding of the Primary School Jozua Naudé in Roodepoort was a direct step to resist Milner and to say: No, we are not going to allow that.49 With this reference to an Afrikaans language school, named after his father as one of the founding figures, Naudé brings his own support for the black struggle explicitly into connection with his father’s earlier efforts to promote the Afrikaner cause. In the same context he makes some interesting comments about the Afrikaner Broederbond (AB). He states that things went wrong for the Broederbond when it decided to become a secret organization. But at the same time he affirms its aim of promoting Afrikaner language and culture “to overcome that earlier feeling of mediocrity of the Afrikaner—there the AB made an important contribution.”50 This connection between the historical struggles of two oppressed people groups in the imagination of Naudé goes even further, to the point where he considers whether violent resistance might serve the interests of justice. Again in terms of this question, he allows himself to be inspired by the memory of his father and his father’s generation of Afrikaner leaders: I had asked myself: What had caused us Boers to take up arms against the British Empire? What made my father, who was a theological student, who was preparing himself for the ministry, to take up the weapon? I am sorry that I never spoke to him about this, because I can imagine that he, just like General Beyers, must have struggled over this issue. Why did General Beyers do what he did during the Rebellie? It must have been an intense inner struggle for him: May I take up the weapon?51 The pervasive role of the memory of his father seems to me to be the crux of the matter, and what provoked me to pursue this question of Naudé and group identity. What originally aroused my interest was commentary by Naudé’s compatriot and fellow anti-apartheid activist Professor Klippies Kritzinger from the University of South Africa in a recent oral history publication on the life and legacy of Naudé.52 In his interview, Kritzinger, who had been a minister along with Naudé in the DRC in Africa, suggests that Naudé remained a patriot, even a nationalist, although not in the narrow exclusivist sense of that word, even after he became fully immersed in the struggle. Kritzinger argues that this is one reason why black people respected and trusted him. “He did not break with the Afrikaner nation; he was too deeply rooted and the whole black community apparently had no problem with that because they can deal with people who have roots; they know that we all have roots.”53 Kritzinger also confirms the connection between Naudé’s family history and his ideological support for the armed struggle: “Coming from a history of freedom fighters against the British, he knew that you could justify violence under certain circumstances, within certain very clear parameters. That is why he was a nationalist at heart, all the time… .”54 Admittedly, Kritzinger himself gives a rather inclusive interpretation to the concept nationalism, and when one compares this with Naudé’s own commentary on the theme over time, one must conclude that Naudé certainly appears to have had an ambiguous relationship not only with his own Afrikaner identity, but also with the idea of nationalism as such. However, one should take care to not relativize the role that the imagined memory of his father’s Afrikaner nationalism evidently played in Naudé’s identity formation and reformation over time. It is tempting to pretend that this was nothing more than quaint sentimentalism and thus not to be taken very seriously, but it is rather more correct given the data presented above to acknowledge that nationalism, a theologically suspect notion at best, could in fact add to the shaping of an individual’s costly struggle for justice. The potentially positive role of nationalism goes against much conventional wisdom regarding the philosophical underpinnings of human rights discourse. After all, human rights and human dignity are supposed to be rooted in the modern realization of the individual’s worth, which typically stands over against the kind of group-think associated with nationalism. There is, however, enough evidence from Naudé’s own writings and what others have written about him to indicate that nationalism and the affirmation of group identity stayed with him in one way or another, even though his thinking about these concepts changed and matured over time. The idea of nationalism certainly also influenced his evolving stance regarding the rights of the other in South Africa. Regarding this evolving stance, Ryan has indicated that Naudé underwent two political conversions in his lifetime: one from his Afrikaner nationalist roots to the kind of liberalism associated with the early life of the Christian Institute in the 1960s, and the other from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s when he gradually came to an acceptance of the position associated with BC,55 which rejected the liberal attachment to Eurocentric assumptions and values. Naudé’s various connections to BC and the ANC are particularly interesting regarding the discussion of nationalism. Historically the former, spearheaded by Biko, emphasized black experience, identity, and even nationalism, whereas the latter centered its ideological stance in the Freedom Charter, which promoted equality and non-racialism. As mentioned before, Naudé’s shift from being a liberal critic of apartheid to its radical opponent involved a kind of conversion to the ideas of BC through contacts with Biko and others in the mid-1970s. Later, mainly due to pragmatic considerations involving the CI and especially its support network abroad, a decision was taken to focus support specifically for the ANC.56 Effectively this decision probably led to diminishing support for BC. Eventually Naudé would become deeply associated with the ANC’s struggle for liberation—so much so that he represented it in negotiations with F. W. de Klerk’s government in the twilight of the apartheid era. Yet how strong was Naudé’s affiliation to the ANC really, given his earlier connection to BC? This is not an easy question to answer, but there are some hints in the literature, most notably in his autobiographical reflections, but also elsewhere. For example, reflecting on the aforementioned negotiations, de Klerk writes in his own autobiography that Naudé was an “enigma” to him. “Although he was part of their team, de Klerk writes, “he neither spoke nor acted like a real ANC supporter. On one occasion, in an aside to me during a break in the talks, he referred to the ANC as ‘they.’”57 Of course, de Klerk is hardly an unbiased source. He might have completely misread the situation, so one should be careful not to make too much of this observation in itself. even so, in his autobiography Naudé explicitly states that he was never a member of the ANC. Although he fully agreed with the Freedom Charter, it was his conviction that as a Christian minister he could not be a member of any political party.58 Therefore, in that sense the reported conversation with de Klerk is explained. Naudé referred to the ANC as “they” because he did not belong to their organization. There still lingers the deeper question of whether Naudé felt more in agreement with the ideology of BC and that this impeded his full endorsement of the ANC. There is no doubt that he was deeply impressed by Biko and horrified by his untimely death in police custody. Naudé recounts how he thought at the funeral, when standing at Biko’s grave, that this man could have become the president of South Africa.59 Did Naudé’s later association with the ANC carry the same amount of conviction? I think the simple answer is that Naudé in fact saw no contradiction between his earlier support of BC and his later cooperation with the ANC. Their struggle was for a broadly similar aim. At one point, it was more expedient for Naudé and the Christian Institute to support the former, but this changed over time for reasons that had little if anything to do with ideological differences within the liberation movement. What is important to acknowledge is that BC provided the hermeneutical lens for Naudé’s first real engagement with the black experience of struggle and resistance against apartheid. The BC’s agenda of Black Nationalism had his sympathy then and evidently this was a conviction that stayed with him, even when he was for all practical purposes in the ANC camp. Conclusion I started this essay with some commentary on the similarities and differences between Christianity and nationalism, and I would like to return to that theme to conclude. South African theologian David Bosch published an important essay in 1986 in which he argued that there were three “forces of the spirit” that had shaped Afrikaner identity in the twentieth century: Reformed evangelicalism, which was the oldest impulse; Kuyperian Neo-Calvinism from around the turn of the century; and Romantic nationalism, which became popular in the 1930s.60 Regarding the latter, Bosch emphasized the influence of Afrikaner intellectuals who had studied in Germany and were exposed to the ideas of National Socialism. Such ideas found fertile soil in South Africa, where a kind of national feeling had already been brewing for some time, as illustrated by the Rebellie, and as briefly discussed in this essay, for example in the activities of J. F. Naudé and the Broederbond. Bosch argued that these three “forces” together contributed to the construction of Afrikaner nationalism. Bosch furthermore stated that the first Afrikaner dissidents, among whom Naudé is specifically mentioned, emerged out of a group most heavily influenced by Reformed evangelicalism.61 I have discussed this theory in detail elsewhere62 and suggested that although Reformed evangelicalism undoubtedly played a role in dissent among Afrikaner theologians, this should not suggest anything particularly special about evangelicalism because the same historical “force” has also contributed to very conservative politics, both in South Africa and elsewhere. I suggested one might speak instead of a hybridized evangelicalism influencing the lives of Naudé and other anti-apartheid theologians. What this essay has shown is that the idea of nationalism played a formative and influential role in the thought of Beyers Naudé. The story of Naudé might at any rate be plausibly told from the point of view of nationalism, just as it might from the perspective of evangelicalism. Theologically speaking, however, this is somewhat troubling. Evangelicalism is a Christian tradition, and therefore it makes theological sense to hope for its redemption even if history has shown that it occasionally supported or simply remained silent regarding undemocratic political agendas. Therefore, when one can identify the influence of evangelicalism in the thinking of an exemplary figure such as Naudé, that might be a positive development for apologists of evangelicalism. However, the case of nationalism is very different. What would be the point of hoping for nationalism’s redemption given its exclusivist tendencies, especially when connected to ethnicity? Quite likely this way of viewing history, this hoping for the redemption of intellectual streams, “forces of the spirit,” or ideologies, is entirely misguided. Perhaps it makes better sense to simply acknowledge that an individual, in this case Naudé, was able to utilize, bend, and blend whatever intellectual and cultural resources he had at his disposal in his search for justice—including even nationalism, unsettling though the idea may be. Indeed, nationalism appears to have been so central to Naudé’s background and self-understanding, but in a way that grew steadily more inclusive over time that one could term his mature thinking “evangelical nationalism” without implying any irony at all. Footnotes 1 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991). 2 Not all types of nationalism are equally exclusivist. A distinction has been made between exclusive and inclusive nationalism—or differently put, ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism. Whereas the former is exclusive on the basis of kinship ties to a territory, the latter, “founded on the rights of man and the quest for freedom, allows all citizens to identify with the nation, regardless of ethnicity.” See Joanie Willett, “Liberal Ethnic Nationalism, Universality, and Cornish Identity,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 13, no. 2 (2013): 201. 3 Afrikaner nationalists considered themselves a volk. Therefore, the term “ethnic nationalism” could be used, although theirs was very much a constructed ethnos rooted in linguistic affiliation and skin tone rather than primarily kinship ties. 4 Richard Elphick, keep it among others, has convincingly illustrated that the invention of apartheid was a product of certain missionary enthusiasts within the Dutch Reformed Church. See Richard Elphick, The Equality of Believers: Protestant Missionaries and the Racial Politics of South Africa (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012), 234-37. 5 See Milde Weiss and Jozua Francois Naudé, Vuurtoring: biografie van ds Jozua François Naudé (Stellenbosch: Sun Media, 2014). 6 J. F. Naudé, Vechten en Vluchten van Beyers en Kemp bôkant de Wet (Rotterdam: Nijgh & Van Ditmar, 1903). 7 Weiss and Naudé, Vuurtoring, 132-42. 8 Ibid., 145. 9 Colleen Ryan, Beyers Naudé: Pilgrimage of Faith (Claremont, South Africa: David Philip, 1990), 10. 10 See T. Dunbar Moodie, The Rise of Afrikanerdom: Power, Apartheid, and the Afrikaner Civil Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975). 11 Beyers Naudé, My land van hoop: die lewe van Beyers Naudé (Kaapstad: Human & Rousseau, 1995). 12 See Robert W. Hefner, “Introduction: World Building and the Rationality of Conversion,” in Conversion to Christianity: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives on a Great Transformation, ed. Robert W. Hefner (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 25. 13 Robin Horton, “African Conversion,” Africa 41, no. 2 (1971): 85-108. 14 See Ryan, Pilgrimage, 73-82. 15 Ibid., 124. 16 Ibid., 73. 17 Unless otherwise noted translations in this text are all my own. 18 Naudé, My land van hoop, 16. 19 Ibid., 17. 20 M. Coetzee, L. Hansen, and R. Vosloo, Vreesloos Gehoorsaam: ’n Keur uit Beyers Naudé se Preke 1939-1997 (Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2013). 21 Ibid., 25. 22 Lionel Forman, Why Did Dingane Kill Retief? And Other Extracts from His History Notebooks (Cape Town: S. Forman, 1964). 23 See D. F. Malan, “Die Nuwe Groot Trek: Suid-Afrika Se Noodroep. Dr. D.F. Malan Se Rede Op Bloedrivier, 16 December 1938,” B856, Dutch Reformed Church Archive, Stellenbosch. 24 Coetzee et al., Vreesloos Gehoorsaam, 28. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid., 30. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., 139. 29 Ibid., 140. 30 Ibid., 141. 31 Ibid. 32 See Elphick, The Equality of Believers, 223. 33 See Mark Sanders, “‘Problems of Europe’: N.P. van Wyk Louw, the Intellectual and Apartheid,” Journal of Southern African Studies 25, no. 4 (1999): 610. 34 Naudé, My land van hoop, 103. 35 Beyers Naudé, “Die Afrikaner as Rebel,” Pro Veritate 4 (1977): 6. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 C. F. Kies, “Die Sekte-wese,” in Koers in die Krisis (Stellenbosch: Pro Ecclesia, 1935), 145 (italics original). 39 Beyers Naudé, “Christianity and Nationalism in the light of Pentecost,” in Church and Nationalism in South Africa, ed. Theo Sundermeier (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1975), 141-44. 40 Ibid., 142. 41 Ibid., 143. 42 See Sanders, “Problems of Europe,” 609. 43 See R. Müller, “War and ‘Racial Feeling’ in the Writings of an Afrikaner Missionary,” Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae 40, no. 2 (2015): 71-84. 44 Ryan, Pilgrimage, 144. 45 Naudé, “Christianity and Nationalism,” 144. 46 Beyers Naudé, “Afrikanerskap en die Afrikaner se Alternatiewe vir die Toekoms,” April 23, 1988, Beyers Naudé Archive, Stellenbosch. 47 See Allan A. Boesak, Black and Reformed: Apartheid, Liberation, and the Calvinist Tradition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1984). 48 Beyers Naudé, “Waarheen met die Afrikaner?” September 29, 1988, Beyers Naudé Archive, Stellenbosch. 49 Naudé, My land van hoop, 77. 50 Ibid, 76. 51 Ibid, 92. 52 M. Coetzee, R. Müller, and L. Hansen, Cultivating Seeds of Hope: Conversations on the Life of Beyers Naudé (Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2015). 53 Klippies Kritzinger, in M. Coetzee, R. Müller, and L. Hansen, Cultivating Seeds of Hope: Conversations on the Life of Beyers Naudé (Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2015), 112. 54 Ibid., 116. 55 Ryan, Pilgrimage of Faith, 124. 56 Cor Groenendijk, in Coetzee et al., Cultivating Seeds of Hope, 302. 57 F. W. de Klerk, The Last Trek – A New Beginning (London: Macmillan, 1998), 181. 58 Naudé, My land van hoop, 128. 59 Ibid., 108. 60 David J. Bosch, “The Afrikaner and South Africa,” Theology Today 43, no. 2 (1986): 208. 61 Ibid., 213. 62 R. Müller, “Evangelicalism and Racial Exclusivism in Afrikaner History: An Ambiguous Relationship,” Journal of Reformed Theology 7 (2013): 204-32. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com
TI - Evangelical Nationalism in Apartheid South Africa: Beyers Naudé Reconsidered
JF - Journal of Church and State
DO - 10.1093/jcs/csx001
DA - 2017-04-17
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/evangelical-nationalism-in-apartheid-south-africa-beyers-naud-irm3ShHDUQ
SP - 110
EP - 129
VL - 60
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -