Hermann Giliomee: Historian. Hermann Giliomee

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СКАЧАТЬ role of prominent figures such as Napoleon and the Boer Republic presidents Paul Kruger and MT Steyn. In his lesssons on the French Revolution, he would sometimes go as far as singing the rousing anthem “La Marseillaise”.

      After his retirement, my father wrote this message to the school: “Keep in mind that all knowledge and all experiences are of value to one and make one a richer and better person.” He added that, despite temporary disappointments and setbacks, his teaching career had been “happy and fruitful years”.

      One of the disappointments had been an unsuccessful application for the principalship. He never applied for a principalship elsewhere. He could see no sense in it, as he identified with the local community and was able to find fulfilment in the town. Financially, there was no need for him to pursue a senior post. He did well with his investments on the stock exchange, especially in gold shares, and could send his three children to the University of Stellenbosch without taking out a loan.

      He expressed himself exceptionally well in writing, and assisted me with the Afrikaans translation of The Rise and Crisis of Afrikaner Power (Yale University Press, 1979), which I co-authored with Heribert Adam. Given the chance, he might have become an excellent historian.

      War and its aftermath

      Both my parents supported the National Party (NP) except for a period in the 1930s, when my father lined up behind General JBM Hertzog, leader of the United Party (UP). The declaration of war in 1939, after General Jan Smuts had gained the upper hand in the UP, caused him to return to the NP. My parents remained loyal to the NP government through thick and thin. They would have voted for the proverbial broomstick if it had stood as the NP candidate in their constituency.

      During the war years I was vaguely aware that my parents, like the majority of Afrikaners, were opposed to South Africa’s participation as a member of the Allied Forces. The decision to join the war had been taken in Parliament in 1939 with a slim majority of thirteen votes, which mainly reflected the Afrikaans-English split in the country.

      Afrikaner nationalists were not the only ones who felt that the country should not have entered the war on the basis of a split vote in Parliament. In her memoirs, the historian Phyllis Lewsen recounts that JS Marais, a respected liberal historian, told her: “No country should go to war except with multiparty support … The great majority of Afrikaners, and I include myself – though, as you know I am a liberal and hated the Nazis and the Nationalists – supported Hertzog’s neutrality policy.”11

      The stories I heard from my parents about the victimisation of Afrikaners during the war would later prove to be true. The Smuts government suspended the policy of employing people on merit to a professional civil service during the war as, understandably, it did not want to run the risk of having anti-war Afrikaner nationalists in strategic positions. There were many stories of Afrikaners employed on the railways who were transferred against their will or forced to take early retirement. Another major grievance was that monolingual English officials were appointed in senior positions to replace officials who had joined the armed forces.

      Rob Davies, in later years an ANC cabinet minister, wrote in his book Capital, State and White Labour in South Africa, 1900 to 1960 (1979) that the dissatisfaction among railway officials was so widespread that Paul Sauer, who had become minister of transport after the election of 1948, appointed a Grievances Commission. A total of 2 875 complaints were received from Afrikaans-speaking employees who felt they had been disadvantaged.

      Following the 1948 election, in the case of two high-profile positions the NP government made appointment shifts that created a great stir: William Marshall Clark, who, during the war, had been appointed general manager of the SA Railways and Harbours over the heads of two Afrikaner civil servants, was ousted with a generous golden handshake, and Major-General Evered Poole, who had been first in line for promotion to chief of staff of the defence force, was sidelined. There are indications that the change of government disadvantaged another fifty officers who had been pro-war, including Afrikaans speakers, who were demoted or sidelined.

      Leo Marquard, a respected liberal commentator, asserted in his book The Peoples and Policies of South Africa (1969) that the NP government reinstituted the policy of a professional civil service. The NP government did insist, however, on the strict application of the bilingualism requirement in the case of civil servants and on compensation for those who had been unfairly dismissed or denied promotion during the war. The predominance of English speakers in the higher ranks in the civil service still continued, and it was only by the early 1960s, more than fifty years after Unification, that people in those ranks reflected the white population composition.12

      When I started writing about politics in the 1980s, I often had arguments with English-speaking commentators, notably Ken Owen, who claimed that the NP government had politicised the civil service by instituting a massive purge of English officials after the 1948 election. No evidence was supplied to substantiate these claims. It was more the case that, after the war, there was the perception among English speakers and pro-war Afrikaners that they would be discriminated against. The Civil Service Commission, however, would have acted against blatant injustice.

      I have vague memories of how the war affected our household. White flour and rice were in short supply. Contrary to the government’s orders, my father did not hand in his revolver at the police station but buried it in the garden instead. He probably obeyed the instruction that civil servants had to resign from the Broederbond. The fuel shortage meant that my parents sometimes had to cancel plans to visit Grasberg or other places.

      In 1999 I asked the well-known South African business magnate and philanthropist Anton Rupert what had been the decisive factor in the NP’s victory of 1948. He was unequivocal: “It was the war that clinched the election for the NP in 1948, not apartheid.”

      I can still recall the great joy with which my parents greeted the news of the NP’s victory. It was not apartheid in the first place that had motivated them, but their identification with the Afrikaner volksbeweging (national movement).

      The NP fought the 1948 election with several planks in its platform. These included:

       a republican plank, which urged that the state should be as independent from Britain as possible;

       a cultural plank, which set great store by mother-tongue education and active involvement in the Afrikaans language and cultural movement;

       a nationalist plank, which maintained that the state as well as the white community should accept responsibility for the white poor;

       a populist plank, which was directed against the big English corporations, especially Anglo American, which towered over the economy. The aim was to establish an Afrikaner corporate sector (the first Afrikaner company had been listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in 1945);

       a racist plank, which advocated white domination and comprehensive discrimination against coloured and black people.

      The Afrikaners of my early years were very colour-conscious, and some were openly racist. Yet, on an interpersonal level, there often existed a paternalistic relationship between the “baas” and his “volk” (workforce) and between the “miesies” (mistress) and her “bediende” (domestic worker) that included responsibilities and obligations on both sides. A farmer was respected if he was someone who looked after “his people”.

      It was when the Afrikaners acted collectively as a group or party that they showed a much more inhumane face. The Immorality Act, the pass laws and Group Areas were harsh and merciless. Jan Smuts made a noteworthy observation late in his life: “I do not think people mean evil, but thoughtlessly do evil. In public life they do things of which they would СКАЧАТЬ