An Age ago Book

After having read some reviews on here of Giliomee's magnum opus I just had to write mine. Others' reviews mention things like "Recommended to anyone who wants to know about White Africans". That is a rather reductive take on what Giliomee wrote.

Granted it's a thick tome and it covers a lot, but Giliomee is at pains to point out for example that - the first person to call himself an Afrikaner, Hendrik Biebouw, had a sister that was mixed race. He points out that the first written Afrikaans are Koranic prayer verses. And that Reverend Du Toit, in whose parish the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners was founded, was a parish of poor whites and coloureds. He debunks Afrikaner nationalist myths like Slagtersnek. Instead of anti-British rebels, the Bezuidenhouts of Slagtersnek were layabouts.

Yet it's true to say that Giliomee adores Afrikaners as a parent would a child, warts and all. Central to the story he is telling is of a people who was not pure as the driven snow (biologically or morally). AND there is a certain wistful lament running throughout that 'white' Afrikaners, through their actions, have estranged brown Afrikaners. Yes, Giliomee is not simply a historian. And although politically liberal in many ways he is I suspect an ethnic nationalist (but certainly not one based on race). Afrikaans is what he thinks binds all Afrikaners together. In this, he is probably like a modern-day NP van Wyk Louw, but without the poetry.

Another thread that runs through the reviews on Goodreads is an argument that Giliomee's is the most comprehensive or honest, the real history - of South Africa. It certainly may come across this way, because of the time frame it covers, its detail, its depth, the passion with which its told.

There are reasons for this. Black South Africa is a relatively speaking not as coherent an identity: barely 100 years old, comprising many - often geographically specific - groups making competing claims on identity like Sothos, Zulus, Tswanas etc. It's ironically because of - or rather in reaction to- Afrikaners (and later the British) that black South Africa think of itself as one group. Afrikaners spread out all over Southern Africa long before the British and the contours of the modern South African state is largely a reflection of this. As ironic though is that it's precisely because Afrikaners were almost everywhere to be found in South Africa that they are a minority everywhere today. Neither do English speaking whites have a clearly defined identity. Many white English speaking South Africans as recently as the 1960s were loyal first (or at least equally) to the UK. And a lot of their cultural references remain outside the country to this day.

A second reason is that Afrikaners, like black South Africa, were subject to British cultural domination inside the country, but also outside. From early on what you read about them was from the British (and later the Anglosphere's) perspective. Many of these accounts were fair, but some were biased, jaundiced and even just written in the spirit of jingoism. Afrikaans at the same time built quite a literary canon, and Afrikaners a very particular identity. Afrikaners told complex stories about themselves and South Africa in Afrikaans. But that canon of a singular identity has rarely been given wider circulation in English. And this is what Giliomee taps into.

There are some things Giliomee does not get right. The Battle for Cuito Cuanavale for example. If war is politics by other means then Fidel Castro marginally won this round. Giliomee also veers away from Marxist scholar Dan O'Meara's class-based accounts of Afrikaner Nationalism too much (although he does mention it), and it is to his history's detriment.

But one point other reviewers make that I do agree with is that this is a major work. It is in my opinion impossible to write about South Africa and not to take account of this book.