The voice rolled through the night with the force and timbre of a highveld storm. The crowd listening clearly rejoiced to hear their beloved Afrikaans sung with such passion and power. It was hard to be sure in the flickering light of the candles, but there must have been at least 600 people under the stars in a grassy primary school arena in Krugersdorp, outside Johannesburg – all gathered to hear a young rock musician, the latest idol of Afrikanerdom, perform.<\/p>\n
One by one they got to their feet as the concert reached its climax. Matrons in floral print dresses, students, barefoot children and civil servants all started swaying to the music. A few had tears in their eyes. Some wore the uniform of the South African farmer: khaki shirt, shorts and long socks. A couple of jokers had dressed up in the regalia of the Boer war of 1899-1902. But most were middle-class Afrikaners – the sort who had once supported the National party, apartheid’s creators.<\/p>\n
It was like stepping back in time to the jittery last months of white rule in early 1994, which I covered as a correspondent. After 45 years of Afrikaner domination of South Africa, apartheid, imposed in 1948, ended far more smoothly than many had predicted. There were some sabotage attempts: white rightwingers set off bombs, killing more than 20 people. But most Afrikaners were too affluent and too sensible to flirt with extremism. They took a deep breath and opted, however uncertainly, for the new era.<\/p>\n
Since democracy came to South Africa, the Afrikaner volk<\/em> has been largely out of the spotlight. The National party dissolved itself. Four years ago a far-right group called the Boeremag (Boer force) attempted a bombing campaign in Soweto, which resulted in one death and the arrests of the alleged conspirators, who are still on trial for treason. But the great majority of Afrikaners, many of whose forebears fought the British in the Boer war and then supported the imposition of apartheid on the country, have quietly got on with their lives.<\/p>\n But the Krugersdorp concert, at the Protea Ridge primary school, was part of a new stirring in Afrikanerdom. The performer, a young folk-rock singer called Bok van Blerk, strummed his hit song: an elegy to Koos de la Rey, a daring general whose guerrilla campaign infuriated the British and helped to delay their ultimate victory by more than a year. The song shot to the top of the Afrikaans music charts, the compact disc on which it appeared swiftly becoming the second bestselling Afrikaans album of modern times. (The bestseller was a compilation for the 1995 Rugby World Cup.) As Bok’s fame spread via the radio and the internet, he crisscrossed the country, performing to packed audiences in theatres, school playing fields and stadiums.<\/p>\n The English translation of the chorus may sound banal: “De la Rey, De la Rey, will you come and lead the Boers? General, general, we will fall around you as one.” But when delivered in that gravelly voice, with its martial lyrics and its military beat, Afrikaner pulses start racing. Rugby crowds began bellowing for it to be played before matches.<\/p>\n Commentators agonised over what it meant. Was it a sign of renewed Afrikaner confidence? A paean to white rule? Or a reminder of a happier and simpler time when Afrikaners did not have to feel guilty about their past? Sympathetic voices in the media suggested that the song had tapped into a feeling of alienation creeping over some white South Africans in the 14th year of majority rule. Others retorted that the lyrics oozed rightwing revanchism and implicitly challenged the legitimacy of the ruling African National Congress. Whatever his intentions, young Bok had clearly roused a grassroots Afrikaner populism.<\/p>\n In the days of apartheid Krugersdorp was the ultimate bourgeois Afrikaner suburb, a repository of contented National party values. The neat suburban houses with their swimming pools mirror the environment that Bok, whose real name is Louis Pepler, was born into 29 years ago. His father was a civil servant working for the National Productivity Institute – part of the sprawling state bureaucracy which the National party used to provide jobs for thousands of Afrikaners. It was an affirmative action policy not dissimilar to the one the ANC today uses to promote black employment – and which cost Bok’s father his own job in 1995.<\/p>\n Before the concert, a tubby Afrikaans policeman waved me past a melee of Bok fans barbecuing their supper. I walked into the band’s changing room, vaguely expecting to find a khaki-clad throwback to the past. Instead I met a young man who looked like he could have been a Scandinavian entrant in a 1970s Eurovision Song Contest.<\/p>\n Bok is tall, with short-cropped hair and a little goatee beard. He was wearing bracelets, a crisp white T-shirt and ripped designer jeans. His chirpy band members were clearly bemused by all the attention. In late 2006 they were just one of many South African bands hoping to surf a new wave of interest in Afrikaans music. Now they were preparing to embark on an international tour, first in Namibia, then in London, to play for expatriates at Canary Wharf.<\/p>\n Bok happily concedes that his career exemplifies a flowering of Afrikaner culture. While Afrikaans has lost its predominance – it is just one of 11 official languages and no longer the language of government it was under apartheid – Afrikaner literary and music festivals are thriving. Websites testify to the emergence of a zappy new urban Afrikaner set. Many of the old Afrikaner corporations, which were founded by the Nationalists to take on the English speakers who traditionally dominated business, have modernised and prospered since sanctions fell at the end of white rule.<\/p>\n I asked Bok what his song was about. “It’s funny,” he says in slightly halting English. “The song wasn’t written for [a political] reason. I’m a singer, not a politician. I wanted to create something for people to be proud of. It’s like ‘Flower of Scotland’. There’s a warm feeling inside and it’s got that feel to it. My generation of Afrikaners wants to be proud of who we are, and where we come from, and our language, this whole Afrikaans thing. We grew up with the guilt of apartheid, being told, ‘You are wrong – apartheid is on your heads.’ We don’t want to say sorry any more. This is a democratic South Africa and we have moved on. We keep on being told that if we have a white skin, we can’t get a job. You walk into an interview and are told, ’Sorry’. People are fed up. The younger generation says ’enough’.”<\/p>\n Those who think there is a secret message in his choice of de la Rey, a bitter-einder<\/em> who fought the British to the bitter end, are wrong, he insists. The reason he chose de la Rey is that it is easier to find words that rhyme with the name. The song wouldn’t have worked with Boer war generals such as de Wet, Botha or Smuts. “We wanted to write a song of the Anglo-Boer war. It is a very important war in the history of South Africa. We wanted to sing a song about history and the general, to be proud. De la Rey did not want to go to war. He stood up for the right things, for freedom, and he even said you should not discriminate because of the colour of your skin.”<\/p>\n To present de la Rey as a champion of a multiracial South Africa is a stretch. He was, it is true, a reluctant warrior; he argued against the push for a pre-emptive strike against British troops. But black South Africans were in those days seen by both armies as little more than hewers of wood and drawers of water. Yet Bok’s account of the song’s origins – and the reasons for its success – had a convincing ring. Clearly it appeals to rightwing racists and old-style Nationalists clinging to the past and despairing of the future. But he has also tapped into a hankering among Afrikaners – in particular of his own generation – to be allowed to shed their past and speak their minds.<\/p>\n As I wait for the concert to begin I join a queue at the makeshift bar. Kyle Esterhuyse and Shawn Luppa, both in their last year at high school, are in line to buy drinks for their girlfriends. They are Generation Bok. They were small children when white rule ended. Liberated from the stigma of apartheid, they can travel abroad without facing the hostile questions their parents used to endure. Indeed, like many of the generation, they are looking forward to what has become a young Afrikaner rite of passage – a stint working in London.<\/p>\n Cheerful, they exude the good health that comes from 18 years of growing up in relative affluence under Johannesburg’s diamond-bright skies. Far from hankering for the old days, they describe the end of apartheid as the best thing that ever happened to South Africa. But as happens in so many conversations with white South Africans (and not just Afrikaners), their attention soon turns to crime and affirmative action.<\/p>\n “The blacks at our school act as if it’s apartheid in reverse,” says Kyle. “My girlfriend’s aunt used to be a chartered accountant and they gave her job away because she was white.”<\/p>\n Shawn breaks in to tell of being held up the other day when he was on his way home from the local shop. He had to hand over two boxes of cigarettes and all his cash – 20 rand (£1.50). Kyle adds: “Two days ago our neighbour pulled into the yard. They tied him up. I was checking on my rabbits when I came upon him. They took his car and television. Police said they were planning on shooting him but they must have heard me coming.”<\/p>\n By now Bok is on stage. His warm-up songs are hardly the material of irredentist fantasy. They included a tribute to Bryan Habana, the Springboks’ black rugby wing; a jaunty number entitled “Girls in Bikinis”, and then one of the highlights, a riff mimicking Nelson Mandela’s high-pitched tone: “I would like you to welcome my favourite singer of all time: Bok van Blerk…viva Bok viva!” The tone is affectionate; there is no edge.<\/p>\n But the audience has come for one song, and when it comes, at the very end of the show, they explode into life, belting out the chorus as if singing an ancestral tribal anthem. Watching from the fringe is Kobus Koekemoer, a former civil servant turned businessman, and Conrad, his 23-year-old son, a recent tourism graduate from Potchefstroom University. “The Zulus have their leader,” Conrad says, referring to Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the leader of the mainly Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party. “Where is the Boer leader? We need a leader. It’s not political. We just want someone to stand up for us.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s vision of a “rainbow nation” clearly holds little appeal for Conrad. Looking at the orderly, all-white stream of people leaving the concert he rolls his eyes. “If this were a black crowd leaving, it would be chaos. People would be drunk and shouting.” His father is more guarded. “It doesn’t mean anything, this song,” he says. ”It just gives you a warm feeling in your heart.”<\/p>\n A month or so later Bok and his band played a gig in Sasolburg, a drab industrial town south of Johannesburg. They were due to perform at the Etienne Rousseau Theatre, a soulless brick monolith typical of the totalitarian architecture of the Nationalists’ days in power. As Bok’s minibus rolled into the car park a group of young white girls, barefoot and in sundresses, rushed over to hug him. Fifty yards away, a solitary young black man sitting on a patch of public grass looked on expressionless, resting in the last of the evening sun.<\/p>\n Mohapi Sekeleoane works part-time at the local council. He lives in the township on the edge of Sasolburg. He had never heard of the de la Rey song, still less Bok. He also had a jaundiced view of the state of race relations in South Africa. “Apartheid is finished as a signature on paper,” he said. ”But in all our minds it is still there. Whites here still treat you the same.”<\/p>\n His view was a reminder of the chasm that still separates the races in South Africa outside the wealthy metropolitan areas. It was also a counterpoint to the victim mentality of some Afrikaners. Crime is appalling, and affirmative action is driving numbers of Afrikaners abroad in search of employment, but white South Africans do have a tendency to forget how relatively little they have been expected to pay, or do, to reverse the injustices of apartheid.<\/p>\n This clearly irks the ANC and it worries Carl Niehaus, one of the ruling party’s most prominent Afrikaners. “Bok has obviously touched some chord,” he said. “Part of it relates to a lack of understanding from young Afrikaners of where we come from. They somehow feel they are the victims of the sins of their fathers. It’s indicative of a dilemma. How do Afrikaners define themselves? Do they see themselves first as South Africans and then Afrikaners, or first as Afrikaners and then as South Africans? They are right: there is no strong Afrikaner leader. But should there be? My own belief is that they are extraordinarily fortunate to be in a society that has worked through the ravages of apartheid and hasn’t turned on the white community.”<\/p>\n Afrikaners need to learn some important lessons from Zimbabwe, Niehaus adds. White Zimbabweans stood apart from the rest of their society, which made it easier for President Robert Mugabe to turn on them. “No one can be forced to be part of the mainstream, but I would prefer to see Afrikaners involved in the mainstream of South Africa,” he says. Niehaus grew up in the small conservative town of Zeerust. He broke with his tribe to join the ANC in 1980. Convicted of high treason in 1983, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He served seven and a half years before being released with the unbanning of the ANC and went on to become Nelson Mandela’s spokesman. Niehaus is startled that the de la Rey song has become so popular – not just in conservative rural areas but also in the “higher end of the Afrikaner community”, in affluent university towns such as Stellenbosch in the Cape.<\/p>\n One Stellenbosch Bok aficionado is Hermann Giliomee, professor of history at the university and one of the most renowned conservative Afrikaner academics. Sitting on his stoep in a woolly tanktop, he says that a good 50 per cent of Afrikaners have done “fairly well” in the post-apartheid era. He is certainly prospering. His latest work, The Afrikaners: Biography of a People<\/em> was expected to sell about 4,000 copies. Instead it sold 20,000 – a runaway bestseller by South African standards. But he regards the furore over the de la Rey song as reflecting a clash between the need of Afrikaners to assert their identity and intolerance on the part of the ANC.<\/p>\n “The froth of the miracle has disappeared and those Afrikaners who have decided to stay have said, ’I need to know my roots or I will get swept aside.’ They must know their history because the ANC’s version is one of guilt and shame.”<\/p>\n Giliomee sees himself as being on the frontline in the defence of Afrikaans and Afrikaner culture. He is deeply concerned by the ANC’s move to rename a number of Afrikaner towns and streets. His is one of several traditionally Afrikaans universities and schools embroiled in a bitter fight over what their language of instruction should be. Five years ago, in a bid to encourage more black students to apply for places, the authorities at Stellenbosch University agreed that English could be taught in the first year of undergraduate courses. Now there is pressure for this to be extended throughout the university. Of the 1,396 schools that taught solely in Afrikaans in 1993, fewer than 60 per cent are left, mostly in the Western Cape. This reflects the government’s attepts to redress the inequalities of apartheid and open up formerly white schools to black South Africans, but many Afrikaner leaders, including F.W. de Klerk, South Africa’s last white president, are worried that the very survival of Afrikaans is at stake.<\/p>\n In the frontispiece of his book, Giliomee quotes the author and Holocaust survivor Eli Wiesel: “To live without a past is worse than to live without a future.” His concern for the survival of Afrikaans intensified recently when the police chief in Western Cape province said police statements should be in English. For Giliomee, the de la Rey song came at the right time. “When I first heard this CD, I said it was like 9\/11, a bolt from the blue. It was for us a unique stroke of luck. It hit just the right note.”<\/p>\n Four months after that Krugersdorp concert, the Bok phenomenon has slipped from newspaper front pages. The ANC has wisely decided to play down the controversy. Bok is planning to release another album. The Canary Wharf gig was a success, although it took place in a pub rather than a stadium. Bok seems relieved he is no longer a political football.<\/p>\n Yet when the histories of the immediate post-apartheid era are written, the de la Rey affair will almost certainly be seen as a milestone for Afrikaners. Possibly the most acute commentary came from Antjie Krog, a prominent Afrikaans poet and author of Country of My Skull, a haunting account of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the body set up to address South Africa’s troubled past.<\/p>\n In an essay in Johannesburg’s Mail & Guardian newspaper she suggested that the de la Rey brouhaha had been fuelled by the desire of some non-Afrikaners, white and black, to revive the traditional apartheid-era notion of the wicked rightwing Boer. The song had given people a chance to say, “Wow the Afrikaners are at it again,” she wrote. She said people needed to distinguish between two very different types of Bok fans: a minority of rightwingers, and a far larger number of middle-of-the-road Afrikaners who were unsure of themselves and their future and felt unable to shed their past.<\/p>\n A scene I recently witnessed in a small house on the outskirts of Ladysmith, in KwaZulu-Natal province, lent credence to her theory. Renee Human, a keen amateur historian whose forebears fought against the British forces, and her 48-year-old son, Jan, a farmer and businessman, were discussing the de la Rey phenomenon. For his children, who are in their late teens and early twenties, the Boer war is ancient history, Jan says. They have not been to the nearby battlefields. Yet they have heard and like the de la Rey song.<\/p>\n “It seems to have filled a void,” he ventures. “My 16-year-old went to a rugby tournament. They had songs to fit all cultures. The Afrikaners played the de la Rey song.” His mother had never heard the song before. As she listened to it on her CD player, a dreamy look crossed her face. “It’s like a waltz…” she said, and she sashayed across the room.<\/p>\n “It’s the sort of song that wouldn’t have been written in 1994,” Jan said. “Everyone was that much more careful then. Young Afrikaners don’t feel the same reticence now. They don’t see why they can’t express themselves. Our children feel baffled that they have to put up with the problems that we caused.”<\/p>\n