http://www.facebook.com/notes/braam-hanekom/farmers-are-striking-in-de-doorns/10151106012957691
Thank
you Braam for a thought provoking piece on the matter at De Doorns.
I
agree with you that the use of the language we use is confusing,
especially when it comes to the word “Farmer” or “Boer.”
Indeed, introspection is needed as I believe the issue is far deeper
than the mere use of language as the headline to your article in the
Cape
Argus
would suggest. To my mind there are two issues concerning the word
“Boer.” Firstly, the word is intrinsic to white Afrikaner
identity and nationalism, and secondly the word has class
connotations attached to it.
I
think we need to cast our minds back to the days of the VOC
occupation of the Cape. The Company granted permission to some of its
employees whose contracts had expired or who sought to be released
from their contracts, to farm on the land within the boundaries of
the Colony. So a group of itinerant pastoral farmers was created, the
“Trek Boere.” It is within this group that even today white
Afrikaners will look to for their cultural roots. Later on the
Company allocated land to those it deemed fit to establish farms that
would become the backbone of the colonial economy. Great farms were
established for grape, wine, fruit and wheat production. All these
farms were in the hands of white Afrikaners who relied mostly on
slave labour. It is here in the context of land ownership and farm
production that the Afrikaner identity was established and forged in
terms of language, religion and culture. The Afrikaner in fact became
a “Boer.”
The
Great Trek was a melting pot moment in the making of this new
identity: the Afrikaner was leaving the shackles of British rule to
find greener pastures (literally and figuratively). What drove them
and motivated them was to find new land to own and to farm, which is
exactly what they did. Along the way these “Boere” took land away
from the indigenous people living there and used these people as a
source of cheap labour for their new farms. The towns that were
established were there solely to support the farmers, the “Boere.”
Afrikaner identity and nationalism were bound to the land, and I
contend they are still bound to the land. When gold and diamonds were
discovered, there was an influx of foreigners and the economy began
to shift away from agriculture, but even so the Afrikaner did not and
could not relinquish that intrinsic connection with the land. During
the Anglo Boer War the British exploited this perceived weakness by
burning farms and removing women and children to concentration camps,
something for which the British have never apologised and which the
Afrikaner has never forgotten nor forgiven the British.
Scratch the surface of Afriforum's thinking and I am sure these facts
will emerge.
After
Union in 1910 the Land Bank was established to assist white people,
mostly Afrikaners, to get back onto the land and to farm
productively. Again this was done on the back of cheap black labour,
who had no claim to the land they lived on and worked. Even though
many Afrikaners worked in other sectors, the connection to the farm
was never lost. The vast majority of Afrikaner professionals living
in the cities were also farm owners and made a point of spending
quality time on the farm during the year.
That
brings me to my second point on the matter. The ownership of land and
the identity of being a “Boer” began to acquire a class status.
After the National Party won the election in 1948, Afrikaners were
pushed to the forefront of the crucial banking, mining, academic and
industrial sectors. For many this was at the expense of losing that
connection with the land. However, for those Afrikaners in the upper
middle and upper classes it was something prestigious to say that one
owned a farm. Owning a farm meant that one could still be an
authentic “Boer” albeit by remote control. Those who owned farms
were accorded a status above the average person who could not afford
it or had no desire to acquire his or her own farm. Intuitively the
Afrikaner knew that because of that deep connection to the land, a
true “Boer” must own a farm. However even those who were not farm
owners could still find a cultural commonality by referring to
themselves as “Boere.”
I
am beginning to think that this class status attached to farm
ownership, in our contemporary political landscape, is being blurred
across racial lines hence the farm owner's statement that, “We are
farmers, not whites.” Land distribution and shared ownership of
farms has seen the emergence of many black farm owners. There are of
course black farm owners who own farms for the sake of owning farms,
a reflection of their new wealth and status. There is also the darker
side to that when it reflects something of the victor mentality that
unconsciously states that true victory can only be achieved when the
Afrikaner has lost his identity as a “Boer” (a fear I am sure we
will discover in Afriforum's thinking if we scratch the surface).
This class of being a farm owner or a farmer, a “Boer,” can no
longer be used to refer exclusively to white Afrikaners, which I
think must be dreadfully unsettling to the white Afrikaner who finds
his identity in being a “Boer.”
In
English, the words “farmer,” “farm owner” and “farm worker”
sound and feel comfortable and apolitical. However, when we change to
Afrikaans the words, “boer,” “plaaseienaar” and “plaaswerker”
are no longer comfortable and are no longer apolitical. To tell the
“Boer” that the farm worker is also a “boer” is like saying
to the bull in front of which you are waving a red flag, “You are
not the Bull anymore.”
Perhaps
a way forward would be to say to the “Boer,” “Yes you are a
'Boer' and we respect you as such, and you are the farm owner and
your workers are farm workers.“ It might be wise to dispense with
the word ”farmer” for now and wait until the wound has healed
properly.
My
two cents worth.
P.S. I am writing in my personal
capacity and as the great grandson of Hendrik
Adolph Frederik Treu Jnr, a Commandant in the Anglo Boer War who
fought against the British in the Free State, a “Boer” and farm
owner.
