I was taken to task by a well known Afrikaner author, Albert Blake on Facebook pages and accused of ‘Boer Bashing’ on my website and social media and warned to keep my neck in. He even went as far to say he had included this in his new book on Jopie Fourie and to quote him he had investigated my:

‘deeper motives for (my) apparently predetermined “findings” (on Jopie Fourie) … and … the charges that were levelled against (me) in the past regarding severe “Boer/Afrikaner bashing”.’

All a bit rich, I don’t know Blake personally, I’ve never really interacted or debated anything with him, he’s never challenged or even opened a discussion with me in the past, and as to investigating anything, I’m in plain sight, we work in the same circle, he could have merely contacted me and asked the question, it would be the professional thing to do before willy-nilly publishing something that may or may not be libellous and slanderous. Bit odd considering he’s also a lawyer and nobody has “proven” any case of ‘Boer Bashing’ on anything I’ve ever written, nor has any alleged ‘bias’ been proven – ever! By being ‘Anti-Afrikaner’ or ‘Boer Bashing’ as he has alleged, he’s venturing into accusing me of ‘hate speech’ – and you better have some solid proof if you’re going to do that, let’s see, so far he’s provided nothing.

Not unusual that there is no evidence to back up Blake’s accusation and ‘investigation’. As to whenever this “Boer Bashing” accusation is levelled at me I’ve simply asked one question “prove it” and nobody has to date. I’ve also never belittled or insulted anyone on the basis of their ‘Afrikaner’ ethnicity, there is nothing in my media and it’s all ‘public’ – so feel to search my entire website and public social media pages … oh … and good luck.

I’ve even been accused of having an “anti-afrikaner bias” by a handful of detractors and a couple of social media trolls, when challenged they feel it just “comes across” that way, a sort of “out there” sense they have – that this is not a basis for argument or logic is lost on them.

Blake’s sudden assertion is all a bit of a surprise to me to be honest, I’m sure my very Afrikaans family must find it amusing to learn how much I hate them, it’s all rather counterintuitive and illogical – so, I’ll explain my position and I’ll do everyone a favour to stop any speculation, slander and other libellous conjecture right here – they can have it “straight from the horse’s mouth” so to speak.

Specialism

Now, many of my articles and almost all of my research revolves around one period in South African history. It started when I took to researching Nazi movements in South Africa prior and during the Second World War (1939 – 1945). I started researching and blogging on this about 10 years ago, and the response was surprising – many people wrote in to me say “I never knew this” and urged more research. This took me into the politics of returning South African servicemen from WW2 and their reaction to the Nazi enamoured Afrikaner nationalists who found themselves in power from 1948. This cumulated in a large research body on The Torch Commando and early South African political, civil, para-military and military reactions to Apartheid. This took my specialised research period from 1935 to 1955 – about 20 years of specialism as historic ‘scope’ goes.

During this period – 1935 to 1955, the right wing fringe of the Afrikaner Nationalist movement became highly Nazified. Nazi dogma, laws, and ideology started to enter the thinking of Afrikaner Nationalist leaders and heavily influence them – especially from 1935 to 1944 – it manifested itself in Christian Nationalism as an ideology, which grounded itself on ‘Krugerism’ – especially from 1938, it in turn became infused with a cocktail of Nazi purity and race laws, national socialism and weimar eugenics to eventually become “Apartheid” as we knew it from 1948 to 1994.

In terms of historic sweep, from the implementation of Apartheid in 1948, as a derivative of Nazism comes this idea of a police state to command and control a ‘whites only’ Afrikaner led hegemony over all South Africans – an oligarchy of minority rule with brutal state security apparatus, highly centralised government and a ‘command economy’ to maintain this status quo. This under-pinning Nazi philosophy eventually manifesting itself in various ‘Boerenasie’ and Afrikaner resistance movements (the AWB et al) starting in the mid 1980’s and its still lurking in South Africa to this day as a minority counter culture demanding a ‘Herrenvolk’ populated ‘Volkstaat‘ in places like Orania, and it can also still be found in various security services, political parties, cultural movements, historical reenactments and the internet. To illustrate the point, the Herstigte National Party still exists in South Africa, believe it or not, the extreme right wing party with its proto-Nazi origins everyone tries to forget. It has lost its ‘ticket’ but still exists and its stated mandate is the return of Verwoerdian Aparthied, and there are others like it.

In researching this period (1935 to 1955) two distinctive groups of Afrikaners emerge. On the one side we find Afrikaners who embrace unity, seek reconciliation and are open to race relations to build a South Africa open to all. Many of these men are soldiers – military men, many having taken part in World War 2 fighting Nazism and all of them highly regarded, in terms of ‘history’, history treats them kindly for the most part. As a military veteran myself there is much in these men to like, actually for me it verges on complete admiration to be honest, but that’s a personal thing – they include the following Afrikaners:

Field Marshal Jan Smuts, Kommandant Dolf de la Rey, Group Captain Adolph “Sailor” Malan, General Daniel Pienaar, Group Captain Petrus “Dutch” Hugo, Mattheus Uys Krige, General Kenneth Reid van der Spuy, General George Brink, Major Jacob Pretorius, Lt (Dr) Jan Steytler, Pieter Beyleveld, Captain (Sir) Devilliers Graaff, Lt Harold Strachan, Major Pieter van der Byl, Colonel Danie Craven, Colonel Ernst Gideon Malherbe to name the leadership caucus of anti-Apartheid and ‘liberal’ or ‘libertarian’ Afrikaners during and post war.

On the other side in my research period, we find Afrikaners who embrace Nazism, either partly or in whole – they seek division and race hate as a political model, central to their philosophy is the ‘politics of pain’ – a ‘victimhood’ ethos and a deep seated Anglophobia alongside a heightened admiration of Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler. They either sit out of World War 2 and tacitly support Nazi Germany or they become directly involved in treason and sedition supporting the Nazi state – they include the following Afrikaners:

B.J. Vorster, Oswald Pirow, Dr. Johannes Van Rensburg, Hendrik van den Bergh, Johannes von Moltke, P.O. Sauer, Frans Erasmus, Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd, C.R. Swart, P.W. Botha, Eric Louw, Dr Nico Diedericks, Jaap Marais, Dr Albert Hertzog, Louis Weichardt, Piet Meyer, ‘General’ Manie Maritz, ‘General’ Jan Kemp, Dr. Eben Dönges, J.G. Strydom, Koot Vorster – to name some of the far right Nationalist leadership caucus with overt Nazi leanings pre, during and/or post war.

Even the Nationalist leaders who took up a ‘neutral’ positioning as to the war, tacitly supported Nazi Germany and/or its dogma – both Dr. D.F. Malan and Prime Minister Barry Hertzog fall into the category, in fact Hertzog declared that National Socialism was the path for Afrikanerdom before he died, Malan also leaned heavily to anti-semitism and Völkisch nationalism.

Through their actions all these right wing Afrikaner Nationalists bring about the system of Apartheid, a system that is now regarded as a crime against humanity, and as such history does not treat them kindly. As historians, we try and contextualise and I’m pretty sure that out of Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Albert Speer, Martin Bormann, Hermann Goering, Joseph Goebbels, Rudolf Hess and Reinhard Heydrich, some were stand-up guys – polite, popular and sociable to family and friends. But history does spend too much time on this and instead as we move nearer to the centurion celebration of WW2 they are viewed in the context of sociopaths, megalomaniacs, deviants, murderers and psychopaths. As sure as the sun rises, the Afrikaners who came up with Apartheid will all eventually be viewed the same way – they are the “bad guys”. In this respect it is almost impossible to paint any of the Apartheid leadership in a benign, loveable and sympathetic way, you can “contextualise” them to a degree, be as honest as you can with them, but as they say in marketing “you can’t polish a turd” – it’s a complete waste of effort and in fact its impossible to make them “look good” – certainly without been called out as an “Apartheid apologist” or “Nazi sympathiser” – so there is a very fine line.

My research into the Nazification of the Afrikaner right is always going to show this far right segment on the rump of Afrikanerdom in a highly critical way, certainly to most modern readers in 2024 who understand ‘Nazism’ in hindsight, these people will automatically be viewed in a repulsive and repugnant light, it’s almost unavoidable. Once identifying an association and/or sympathy to Nazism, in any way, there is just no way anyone is going to come out of it smelling of roses and held up as the true disciples of Afrikanerdom, people with a benevolent Christian veneer and a mere love of all things German. If anything they are easily viewed as the vanquished incubus of Afrikanerdom, the Judas to their denomination and creed.

These Apartheid protagonist Afrikaner Nationalists are no different to the Nazi heroes they worshipped and modern South Africans are no different in the way they view Aparthied as the majority of German’s treat Nazism now. That’s just a truism, these Afrikaners committed a crime against humanity, they came into power on a ‘minority’ ticket, dominated South African politics for nearly 50 years and represented the rump end of an ethic minority – barely 4% and they “committed a crime” which impacted the majority, the other 96% of South Africans. In the process they took nearly “all” white South Africans along with them – nothing we can do about it, it’s not salvageable, it happened. However, to say a historian researching the Nazification of the Afrikaner right is “anti-Afrikaner” is the same as to say a historian researching Nazism is somehow “anti-German” – it’s just plain counterintuitive and deflective – its red herring argument, prejudiced and plainly untrue.

This majority – the 96% of the country – now feel very differently about the “Architects of Apartheid” to the odd small Afrikaner cultural grouping trying to hold onto redeeming qualities in them. It’s a herculean task just to educate a fraction of modern South Africans to be more tolerant of ‘white’ history in South Africa and it’s also sad that of this ‘majority’, a massive swathe blame “all white Afrikanerdom” for Apartheid, some even go as far as to say “all whites” – and that has manifested in deadly hatred in some instances, certainly if farm killings of ‘Boere’ are anything to go by. This is where ‘historical balance’ is necessary – to prove that not all ‘whites’ and not all ‘Afrikaners’ bought into the whole idea of Apartheid, that they even resisted it. It becomes very important to prove that Apartheid was an ideological conflict and not a race conflict – all races were affected by it, including many whites – and not just a handful, but large swathes of 100’s of thousands of whites actively resisted Apartheid, a ‘critical mass’ argument – and here’s the fun part, we can easily prove it and dispense with the ‘revolutionist’ history that is the current political narrative.

Considering my research area and span (1935 to 1955) by historical confluence and not by design there emerges a “good guys” versus “bad guys” argument on the Afrikaner front. It also has the numbers, the critical mass to dispense with this idea that all “whites” and especially all “Afrikaners” upheld their privilege and exploited and repressed all “blacks” by keeping the Afrikaner Nationalist Party in power. Numbers alone tell a story, the 1948 election win by the National Party was not a majority win … and by 1953 a massive voting bloc of 250,000 white people (i.e. 25% of an electorate of 1,000,000 odd whites) had joined The Torch Commando – a war veterans based anti-Apartheid mass movement – paid up members in almost equal balance of ‘Afrikaans’ and ‘English’ and all protesting Apartheid in massive rallies countrywide – some well over 50,000 strong, a campaign which lasted about 5 years until the Nationalists (as was their fashion) started to crush it with legislation.

This research vindicates many white Afrikaners of Apartheid – fact. It is far more helpful to understand their story, study this history, find out how and why it was repressed and manipulated by a radical Afrikaner far right and not try and promote an unattainable and factually impossible redemption for the radical Afrikaner far right. In fact, the reaction I got to this work by Afrikaners was intensely positive, many Afrikaans people have written to personally, to say “thank you” and things like “finally” I can talk about my family heritage, my ‘Ouman’ or ‘Oupa’ (even Ouma) was one of these hundreds of thousands of ‘Smutsmen’ – our history has been flattened out by decades of National Party propaganda and rhetoric, in fact the term often used is “repressed”. Devoid of a voice by historical circumstance for over 50 years of ‘Apartheid censorship’ this work has given it back to them.

How uplifting ‘redeemable’ Afrikaners, the ones in history who resisted Apartheid and whose history was ‘forgotten’ and ‘censored’, the ones who sought reconciliation and understanding and now we are finally bringing their politics and their stories to life, giving them a long lost platform, how that possibly constitutes an “Anti-Afrikaner” standpoint is simply beyond me, it defies logic and even common sense.

But somehow it does, this position does not detract from the odd troglodyte emerging, like Ludwig Rode who on social media made an unhinged, libellous and unsupported comment to support Albert Blake by way of a justification of my alleged ‘Boer-bashing’ and said:

“Dickens hates Boers … (he is) trying to put the British and Joiners and anyone left of the Boers or against their freedom aspirations on the moral high ground. No balance at all”.

So, by Mr Rode’s logic highlighting those ‘leftist’ Afrikaners who resisted Apartheid and “joined” Smuts’ ‘khakis’ as opposed to the ‘rightist’ Afrikaners – i.e. those right wingers whose aspirations for “freedom” meant flirting with Nazism and trampling on the rights, freedoms and emancipation of everyone else – especially Blacks, Coloureds, Indians, English South Africans and Jews, and subjugating them to jackboot Nazism and violent oppression instead – this to Mr Rode is a bad thing. Now, I thought ‘separating’ them and opening them up so we can see the difference between these two vastly different factions of Afrikanerdom was a good thing – it provides a far more ‘balanced’ and insightful argument. Clearly Mr Rode does not see it this way, not sure how he sees ‘balance’ – maybe I should tar all Afrikaners with his idea of jackboot “Freedom” – in any event his sheer prejudices and adherence to Apartheid period historical doctrine are plain to see in the language he uses.

Also, as to historic sweep, sorry to say this to Mr Rode, but as to a ‘moral high ground’, these ‘lefty’ Afrikaners I highlight are already on it – I didn’t ‘put them there’, and as to the far right ‘Nazi’ Afrikaners I highlight – as South Africans they are all in our collective memory’s rubbish bin – and I didn’t put them there either, they did that bit all by themselves – sad but true, I can ‘contextualise’ them, put them into their ‘period’, understand ‘Nazism’ in the context of historical popularism – but that’s about it. To find out more about how they landed up with all our modern day collective contempt for them – read the thousands, I mean thousands of history papers, books, essays, memoirs, manuscripts, reports and confessions written on the ills of Apartheid brought about by these individuals … Some ‘freedom’ he refers!

Also, as a specialism I write a lot about the subject of the Nazification of the Afrikaner right, its full on, so anything coming out from me can seem a little infatuated with Afrikaners and Nazism as the published articles are numerous and frequent – there’s “a lot” of it, it can even be a little overwhelming and over saturating – to the point that one chap wrote to me to say it’s all a ‘bit much’ – let ‘bygones be bygones’ and I should find something ‘new’, something he likes and thinks would be more agreeable … now that’s just plain daft and it reinforces my thinking that I have not yet written enough on this subject – its like a modern Italian saying to a historian specialising in Fascism and Mussolini that they don’t like the work, its not “nice”, there’s “too much” and he should focus on the evolution of professional football in Italy instead – much better, less controversial and far more agreeable. I honestly had to go back to this detractor to say I’m pretty happy with my specialism and won’t be changing it anytime soon.

Sometimes this extends to a second category of person, one who does not like the conclusions reached as it does not suit their identity, culture or socialisation – any form of preconceived narrative really … their ‘bias’ in effect. These people (and even Albert Blake made this mistake) usually come back with “you can do better” – in other words keep re-writing your article until you come up with a conclusion I can agree with.

As to giving a platform to historic Afrikaner characters who have made positive contributions to the broader society in which they live, believe it or not, there is a group of Afrikaners who still just simply don’t “get it” – like Mr Rode they are still conditioned in this old Afrikaner nationalist ‘Völkisch’ idea of Afrikanerdom. They hand to heart believe that ‘liberal’ Afrikaners are traitors to the Afrikaner cause, and they sincerely believe that ‘Verwoerdian Aparthied’ will make a ‘Volkstaat’ comeback – a place in the sun for the ‘Herrenvolk’. This bit I like to call “bringing back porch-monkey.”

Porch Monkey 4 Life

‘I’m bringing back Porch-monkey” – this quote comes from a movie ‘Clerks 2’ and its a line from a complete idiot clerk with zero emotional IQ, he’s convinced that because the “old timers” like his Grandmother used terms like “Porch-monkey” (the American equivalent for a black ‘House-Boy’) it is perfectly acceptable language and not a racial slur – he makes it his life’s mission to “Bring Back Porch-monkey” and make it acceptable again – the scene is comic genius as he goes about insulting Black people with imbecilic oblivion. Obviously he’s on an offensive highway to nowhere, he’s an ingrained racist, he is moronically obtuse – and he still “doesn’t get it” even after he is challenged on racism by his best friend – he simply does not understand that he’s an utter idiot or even a racist – it makes for great comedy.

I’ve met a couple of proponents of the idea of bringing back “Porch-monkey” – the one is an Afrikaner historian (actually he’s a choreographer of the Boer War) who went round the tree with me on social media for three days solid trying to convince the world that Dr. H.F. Verwoerd did not have any Nazi leanings or connections to Nazism whatsoever (despite a court case proving otherwise and his own actions and writings) and he was a virtuous and admirable man worthy of word-wide admiration for his ideas of ‘good neighbourliness’ and detente (how dare I even suggest otherwise) – that he is trying to bring back a true ‘porch-monkey’ is lost on him.

Another was a local councillor for the Freedom Front Plus, a man who has published two novels of fictional ‘Boer history’. He pulled me up after I highlighted an old ‘Citizen’ newspaper propaganda piece called ‘Call to Afrikaners by an Englishman’ written in 1990 by ‘anonymous’ – which he was plugging on his social media was well … erm … nothing more than a well known Nationalist government propaganda piece in a state sponsored rag and its ‘bringing back porch monkey’. So, before booting me off his social media he messaged me to say that I was ‘Boer Bashing’ as I only regarded Afrikaners “with British hearts” as acceptable, and that I should be grateful for the “thin white line” of protection that he provides against the riotous black hordes who live next door to me. His own ingrained sense of pomposity, misconstrued history, nationalist indoctrination and sheer prejudice lost completely on him.

Another chap was a fellow military veteran in a Veterans Association I chaired in the UK who figured that the Oranje, Blanje, Blou (the old “Aparthied” National Flag) had a bad rap and everyone in the old SADF should be proud of the “flag they fought under” so he planted it outside an African speciality shop in the middle of Peckham London (a suburb known for its ‘black’ multiculturalism – nearly half its population identifies as Black, Black British, Caribbean or African) … this sort of ‘bringing back porch monkey’ takes a special kind of determination and its no surprise to learn that after his SADF national service he joined Eugène Terre’Blanche’s special AWB bodyguard. That he planted a ‘porch monkey’ (whether we agree with it or not) was lost on him.

Now, I’m all for the correct demonstration of historic flags, from the “Vierkleur” to the OBB (same with statues and monuments), I’m also for ‘non-fiction’ and even ‘fiction’ based ‘Boer’ history if it’s grounded correctly and not grounded in identity politics and propaganda, and I’m all for chronologically recording Afrikaner history correctly – good and bad – warts and all. There is a careful balance to contextualising history and presenting it in an even-handed manner – and there’s also a point when you simply cannot bring back ‘porch monkey’.

Sweeping up the Boer Wars

Which brings me to the Voortrekkers and especially the “Boer Wars” as this is always a social media hot potato – all three of them, the Transvaal Revolt (1880 – 1881) the South African War (1899-1902) and the subsequent Afrikaner Rebellion (1914 – 1915). Hoo Boy!

Let me upfront say this, understanding the ‘Boer Wars’ is important to my preferred historic period on the Nazification of the Afrikaner right and the Torch Commando (1935 to 1955) because it provides for a back-drop, it’s in the “historical sweep” … without the Transvaal Revolt we don’t have “Krugerism” as an ideology … without “Krugerism” we don’t have The South African War and again the attempt to re-instate “Krugerism” is the object of the Afrikaner Rebellion. “Krugerism” – and the old ZAR constitution with its central 1860 racist tenet ‘The people are not prepared to allow any equality of the non-white with the white inhabitants, either in church or state’ is the adopted political philosophy by Hertzog’s breakaway National Party in 1914, and it is the epicentre on which the ideology of Aparthied is based. So, very important to the Nazification of the Afrikaner right and the anti-Aparthied Torch Commando.

Upfront I must also say this – the ‘Boer Wars’ are not my “specialism” but they are important for context and sweep, I generally leave the in’s and out’s of the Boer Wars to the historians who make these wars their “specialism”. However what the Boer Wars do provide is a lot of interest and “traffic” on my website. If there is conflict that is completely misunderstood in the historiography of the Afrikaner nation it’s the three Boer wars, and the reason for this is over five decades of Afrikaner nationalist propaganda and conditioning – “Half a Century” of propagandist history and Afrikaner identity politics, think about that, from the Centenary celebrations of the Great Trek in 1938 all the way to the democratic election of 1994.

The “Christian Nationalist” education agenda was spread through every avenue of social conditioning and socialisation, from Sunday School, to Primary School, to High School, to ‘Veld’ School, to University, to cultural clubs and youth movements, to National Service in the military, and to all state owned Television, Radio and Print media, even ‘SABC’ financed movies – Brug 14 (1976), Jopie Fourie (1979) and Gideon Scheepers (1982) etc. etc. It was on-going, relentless indoctrination and propaganda. The people pushing out all this ‘Christian Nationalism’ dogma were the Broederbond and everything they touched attempted to condition and convert every single ‘white’ person in South Africa, be they English or Afrikaans – even Jewish (strangely enough, they tried), to their particular brand of ‘nationalism’.

To do this top flight Broederbond members were placed everywhere – especially Education Boards and School Inspectors, government run ‘white’ Primary and High Schools in keynote positions like headmasters, ‘Afrikaans’ Universities – notably the University of Pretoria and RAU et al as Chancellors and academics, the South African Police (SAP), the South African Defence Force (SADF) especially after all the ‘Erasmus Reforms’, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), the Dutch Reformed Church, cultural organisations like FAK, and a number of other government SOE’s and security apparatus.

Also, this is not ‘conspiracy theory’ on my behalf, there are entire academic papers, thesis and books on this subject of Christian Nationalism and indoctrination thereof. So when Albert Blake and one of his acolytes Juan de Vries, called me out on overstating ‘Afrikaner Nationalist rhetoric’ just because the Afrikaner Rebellion (1914-1915) was never taught in a Christian National Education Curriculum ‘high school text-book during the Apartheid era’, really is a transparent attempt at gaslighting and a rather sloppy attempt at deflection given the scope of Broederbond’s activities and the stated factual history of it – that or Blake has not researched the subject enough, either way its a blatantly condescending and unscholarly remark.

As a net result of the Broederbond’s stated aims, the “Boer Wars” are arguably riddled with more “myths” than any South African wars before or after. So much so, that as to Boer War 2 (the main one), there is a vast gap between the histories and personal accounts written at the time (primary data or primary source) – Leo Amery, Jan Smuts, Deneys Reitz, Winston Churchill, Fredrick Maurice, Arthur Conan-Doyle, Clement Stott, Regimental histories etc. and those written almost 70 years after the fact by ‘Republican’ historians like Thomas Pakenham, Professor Hermann Gillomee, Professor Fransjohan Pretorius, Professor John Boje, Professor Burridge Spies etc, many of whom by their own admission were writing (and some still write) within the context of the “history of the Afrikaner” – and here I would even allocate Albert Blake as he only publishers in Afrikaans, writes on traditional ‘Afrikaans’ historical debates and he sells his work to a very specific and narrow Afrikaans audience. On a political scale for simplicity sake let’s call the first lot of historians the ‘Imperial School’ and the second lot the ‘Republican School’.

New School

There is however a third lot, another school on the Boer Wars, and it a relatively ‘new’ one – so let’s call it “New School” as it only really starts to come into its own after 1994, after South Africa’s universities are unhinged from towing an Afrikaner Nationalist ‘white’ history agenda, and ‘Black’, ‘Coloured’, Indian and even ‘English’ academics and their history’ is now pushed forward in order to ‘balance’ the history of the Boer Wars and incorporate the histories and ambitions of all South Africans – to make it universally relevant to everyone who took part in the Boer Wars. So much so they move to change the terminology and lexicon of the war at academic levels to the more universally accepted “The South African War (1899-1902)”.

This ‘New School’ consists of historians who seriously challenge – not only the ‘Imperial School’ but also the ‘Republican School’ narratives of the war and they have punched massive holes into it, especially the ‘Republican School’ as its still a contemporary school and its been busy with a lot of ‘revisionism’ – these ‘New School’ historians include: Dr. Garth Bennyworth, Professor Bill Nasson, Dr. Peter Warwick, Dr Elizabeth van Heyningen, Professor Elizabeth Stanley, Professor John Laband etc. and even British accredited ‘Boer War’ historians like Dr. Donal Lowry, Dr. Damian O’ Connor, Andrew Roberts FRSL FRHistS and Chris Ash FRGS FRHistS … all working to unravel this politically inspired mythology, navigate this quagmire of Afrikaner Nationalism surrounding the Boer Wars and get to the truth.

Imagine the complete train-smash when social media really took off from about 2005, and all these historians came out their musky libraries and people started sharing website links, blogs, vlogs etc. of their stuff on-line. Suddenly the ‘Republican School’ historians found themselves at odds with the ‘New School’ historians in public space, and social media platforms experienced ‘melt downs’ as two separate camps of enthusiasts went hammer and tongs at one another (they still do). The ‘English’ enthusiasts accusing the ‘Afrikaner’ enthusiasts of peddling Apartheid period (Republican School) propaganda and the Afrikaners accusing the ‘English’ of peddling a new form of ‘revisionist’ history (New School) and ‘jingoistic’ (Imperial School) history. The poor ‘administrators’ – most of them local ‘Republican School’ amateur enthusiasts with ingrained cultural and identity bias – all spinning endlessly as they are not professional historians, and they don’t know much outside their ‘Christian Nationalist’ upbringings – they just figured its a good idea to open a Facebook appreciation ‘group’ – and they are especially untrained to deal with all this historical revisionism as its all ‘new’ to them.

Now, it’ll come as no surprise to anyone that I am a BIG fan of “New School” historians, I like the old “Imperial School” – Smuts, Amery, Reitz etc. because they are closer to source, some are even classified as ‘primary source’ themselves which is what any good historian should reference first – its critical to writing history. I also like the ‘New School’ precisely because they have unraveled large bodies of the Republican histories, disproven much of it as politically driven rhetoric, and simply got on with ‘correcting’ the narrative.

It may however come as surprise to some, but absolutely nothing I have written about the Boer Wars cannot be supported by a ‘New School’ historian. Not one single article I’ve written does not have grounding, and there is nothing I’ve said that’s new, everything I’ve said has already been published by a very accredited historian. That I believe the white concentration camps are highly nuanced and not ‘genocide’ is largely due to the work of Elizabeth van Heyningen, that I believe much Afrikaner identity had a flawed underpinning is due to David Harrison, Liz Stanley and Andrew Roberts, that I believe the Boers targeted civilians during sieges is due to Garth Benneyworth and his work, that I believe the NG Church and not the British invented Apartheid is because of the work of Herman Giliomee and Damian O’Connor, that I believe that causes belli of the war was about the ZAR’s suzerainty and not ‘stealing gold’ is because of historians like Bill Nasson and even Leo Amery.

It’s not ‘conspiracy theory’ – Tinus le Roux, the chap who colourises Boer War photos, accused me of peddling ‘conspiracies’ without remotely offering a rational or proof behind his accusation, unfortunately Mr Le Roux, everything I’ve ever posted on the Boer Wars is already grounded in solid history by top flight historians – and it can all be verified and validated. I don’t make conclusions of my own on the Boer Wars as simply put – its not my specialism – it is however the specialism of these historians – so I use them extensively. The only difference is that of all these ‘New School’ historians, I am the only one that uses a website and blog with trailed social media – twitter (x), Facebook and Instragram accounts – so my ‘reach’ and ‘medium’ brings their message to a much broader audience in snap sized, fast consumption, historical interest pieces.

To take what is already concluded by many accredited historians and then turn around and say by using their findings I’m somehow suddenly “Boer Bashing” is indicative on just how uneducated, ignorant and biased these detractors are – they are simply not ‘read’ and what’s driving their view is an emotional state and not a learned state. As to Tinus le Roux, he ignored references I gave him (Benneyworth’s ‘Magersfontein’ and Stott’s ‘Boer invasion of Natal’) and refused to change his view – he should really stick to colourising pictures and get a proper historian to caption his work before he commercialises it and completely embarrasses himself.

Fools rush in

This bit is important, it’s not just the ‘Facebook’ amateur enthusiasts, even heavy weight South African historians of the old ‘Republican School’ and the ‘New School’ give each other ‘both barrels’. A case in point is Professor Fransjohan Pretorius, the ‘go-to’ Afrikaner Boer War historian from the University of Pretoria, semi-retired now but still firing. Prof Pretorius gave both barrels to Dr Elizabeth van Heyningen at the University of Cape Town and Prof Liz Stanley, now at the University of Edinburgh, for their papers and books on the white Boer concentration camps of Boer War 2. Pretorius penning scathing criticism of both van Heyningen and Stanley in a paper titled ‘The white concentration camps of the Anglo Boer War: a debate without end.’ on the basis that they ignored Afrikaner political and cultural nuances, and their research and findings were therefore academically sloppy. Stanley ignored him, but van Heyningen would have none of it and responded to Pretorius and said his remarks reinforce and ‘demonstrate the continued power of myth making among ordinary Afrikaners’ in a very erudite academic reply on white Boer Concentration Camps titled ‘Fools rush in: writing a history of the concentration camps of South Africa’.

This ‘bun-fight’ is not just between local ‘New School’ historians and Professor Fransjohan Pretorius, it extends to the overseas ‘British’ new school historians and Fellows of the Royal Historical Society, some of Britain’s leading historians. Prof. Pretorius recently went out in the media and claimed ‘many English-speaking South Africans at present, let alone Englishmen from England’ fail ‘to understand the presence, goals and effect of British imperialism’. This of course pricked the interest of ‘English’ historians who rightly questioned as to why only Afrikaners, like Prof. Pretorius – who studied at institutions heavily financially subsidised by the National Party regime and controlled by the Broederbond, are the only ones who are wise enough to truly understand British Imperialism. Not only the derogatory and disparaging language used, but the supreme arrogance to assume that the specialists in Victorian and British Empire history and the ‘English’ themselves are not adequately equipped to understand their own Imperialist history. Naturally the strong rebuttal from qualified ‘English’ historians to these remarks by Pretorius were quickly deleted by the website owner – litnet, an Afrikaans website geared to Afrikaner academia .

This supreme sense of arrogance and bias was even expressed by Albert Blake when he said of me in social media:

‘Dickens by his own words has a problem mastering Afrikaans. If you cannot read Afrikaans you will never be able to properly understand the Afrikaans way of thinking. Dickens lack thereof is apparent in his work.’

Really? Does he honestly think a historian has to be fluent in a language before he can write its history – he’s just dismissed just about every historian on the planet. I’m sure the English historian Sir Antony Beevor FRSL, whose written highly acclaimed WW2 history books on Stalingrad and the Russian conflict is not fluent in Russian – nor is he born into a German or Spanish hertitage, yet he’s written some highly acclaimed military history books on them. I’m also pretty sure the English historian Sir Ian Kershaw FRHistS FBA is not fully conversant in Yiddish and Hebrew or a born a Jew, yet he wrote some compelling works on the Jewish Holocaust. Closer to home I’d hate to know what Blake thinks of Dr. David Katz, a friend of mine and published SA Military historian, now David’s grasp of Afrikaans is the same as mine, does that make him and his work somehow unqualified?

That’s the other thing, I told Blake that I had a ‘colloquial’ grasp of Afrikaans – I can certainly speak, read and write it and at one stage in my life as a SADF officer I not only commanded in Afrikaans I thought in the language. I also have a Afrikaner heritage (two Great Grandparents), I have a Afrikaans wife (married for over 30 years) and I have a Afrikaans family, and the net result of all that is most my friendship circle is Afrikaans – so how I don’t understand the nuances of Afrikanerdom, Afrikaners and Afrikaans is anyone’s guess (methinks he’s grabbing at straws in his efforts to play to a peanut gallery) – Blake is also being hypocritical, you can reverse his logic and argue that because he is not ‘English’ himself, so he cannot comment on British history just because he cannot really understand the ‘English peoples’.

There is only really one key bias driving people like Prof. Pretorius and Albert Blake, and it has nothing to do with a home ‘language’ and everything to do with a home ‘identity’ – it’s an ingrained “victim mentality” and some older Afrikaners generally still tend to have it – brought on by decades of Broederbond indoctrination that says because of the white Concentration Camps of the Boer War, only the Afrikaner can comment on Britain’s history in South Africa, their victimhood makes their self righteousness and Anglophobia perfectly understandable. If you took this idiotic logic one step further you could conclude that ‘Black’ South Africans are the only ones who can comment on Afrikaner history because they were the victims of Apartheid – that’s how disjointed and self serving this thinking is.

But what’s with all this ‘identity’ overriding logic? Funnily its the ‘Broederbond’ at the centre of it again and for this bit – I like refer to the American satirist PJ O’Rourke’s book on holidaying in South Africa during Apartheid in a chapter he called ‘in whitest Africa’.

In Whitest Africa

So here’s the history of Afrikaner ‘identity’ not many people know about. In 1938, Henning Klopper, then the chairman of the Broederbond (and later a National Party speaker) initiated the Great Trek millennial re-enactment, his mission to bring the ‘Cape Afrikaner’ together with the ‘Boer Afrikaner’ – which he called the two separate hearts of Afrikanerdom forced apart by the Boer War and a separate history. The idea was that they would both merge with the ‘Voortrekker’ iconography, identity and historiography and jointly ‘map a path’ to a future Afrikaner hegemony, an oligarchy state with strong Christian theological belief in separate worship and all desirous of implementing a ‘whites only’ Republican paramountcy.

Long and short – it worked, Klopper would step back from his success and call it providence, divine intervention …. to quote him – a “sacred happening”. The Ossewabrandwag would carry this new Afrikaner unification under its singular identity like a ‘flame torch’, spread it like ‘wildfire’ (hence the name) from the centenary celebrations into every Afrikaner cultural organisation. The Broederbond sat with the Ossewabrandwag (OB) and the National Party (NP) and agreed the ‘Cradock Agreement’ – the spreading of this Afrikaner nationalist identity on the ‘Cultural Front’ of Afrikanerdom would be the ambit of the OB, whereas on the ‘Political Front’ of Afrikanerdom – the National Party (and the Volks Party, Afrikaner Party as well as other political organs like the ‘Boerenasie’ and ‘New Order’) would carry this identity through – and they would carry it well past the 1948 National Party election win, the 1961 ‘forward to a white Republic’ plebiscite win, all the way through ‘Apartheid’ and it’s still prevalent in modern Afrikanerdom to this day.

That this is a completely artificial construct, an ideological make-believe, a Jungian archetype – that it has nothing to do with the actual historiography of large swathes of the Afrikaner community is immaterial – only some can claim this all-white ‘Voortrekker’ identity but many (in fact most) can’t. However, a great deal of modern Afrikaners have just bought into this identity – 60 years of steady indoctrination will do this.

This ‘identity’ history is also not conspiracy theory – monuments and artefacts to the 1938 Voortrekker centennial litter nearly every single town in South Africa, even in towns which never saw a Voortrekker, hundreds of thousands of people took part and it cumulated in the laying of the cornerstone of the Voortrekker monument, manually hauled up the hill by teams of the faithful. Whole thesis, academic papers and even books have been written about the phenomenon that was this event and the identity and political philosophy it created.

Here’s the thing, as to the development of Afrikaner Christian Nationalism and the keynote authors of it, Henning Klopper was a mere child with a smattering of a memory of the Boer War, however he concluded the concentration camps were – to quote him – ‘organised murder‘.  The mythology spun out from there by organisations like FAK (a Broederbond mouthpiece) amongst others – the British “stole” the gold and diamonds, the British “murdered” 28,000 Boer women and children, the British “raped” Boer women en-masse, the British committed systematic “genocide”, the British were the “warmongers” declaring the war and then the British invaded “sovereign” Boer Republics. The British “invented” the concentration camp and the “Nazis” followed their example. The British used Boer civilians – women and children as “hostage collateral” to win the war. The British were solely responsible for all the farm burnings and rural destruction. The British unfairly and illegally executed Boer commanders. The Boer War started the collapse of the British Empire. The Boers were “superior” fighters in every way but denied their victory by unscrupulous scorched earth tactics and overwhelming numbers – it goes on – it even ends with highly improbable claims – Boers inventing trench warfare, sniping, bush craft and camouflage.

Let alone all the ‘New School’ Boer War historians – just one ‘Imperial School’ book – Amery’s 7 volumes of official history of the Boer War as a starter will show that absolutely none of what I have written above is true – but this is immaterial, not one statement expressed above is historically proven, not even remotely correct, none of it factually supported – but no matter, let’s go with it – its political spin so it must be true.

Problem with writing modern South African military history is that very often you meet white Afrikaners who conflate this identity politics inspired by the Broederbond with the historiography of the Afrikaner nation. If you write any history which does not conform to the acquired belief structure or challenges it, there is a literal meltdown, they feel it is an assault on their world – their literal understanding of the way of things, their values, their personality, their language, their culture – there is a separation, cognitive dissonance takes hold and they get defensive, sometimes very irrationally so.

A case in point of conflagulated identity – Chris Pretorius, an administrator of large format Boer War Facebook group cannot compute analytical thought on any of his ‘Boer Heroes’. His stated claim is that he will not accept any criticism of General Christian de Wet for example, such heretic will be met with an immediate ban or a gag. To him, some of this ‘New School’ history is the result of “Ashism” – a concept he came up with to gag or ban anyone using ‘new school’ history and lumping them as a “disciple” of a “banned” Fellow of Royal Historical Society historian – Chris Ash – who consistently, and using sound factual support, sources and cross referencing, challenges Pretorius’ and his cabal’s very understanding of Boer War history (albeit abrasively so) – now Ash is his own historian, and I’ve seldom referenced him in the past, but no matter. These Boer War sites are truly like watching the Dunning Kruger effect in full fledge and its the reason I undertook to leave Pretorius’ media and others like it about nine months ago.

But that has not stopped some rather nasty individuals who really conflate identity with reality from cropping up, and almost all of them can be found in Facebook groups and pages run by the likes of Chris Pretorius, Tinus le Roux and John Elsegood. These individuals are so unhinged that they resort to criminal slander and even resort to sending me on-line threats, sometimes even directly – and it’s a lesson in open and brazen racism, prejudice and anti-Semitism. Everything the old ‘Afrikaner nationalists’ were about – alive and well and bubbling over in these Voortrekker and Boer War social media groups.

Amusing Fan Mail

Let’s get to the peanut gallery in these Boer War aligned social media platforms, these are some of the comments and social media mails sent to me – either directly or on my media platforms, they speak for themselves,I won’t go into all of it, but here’s some choice examples:

First out the blocks are people who because of my surname somehow think I’m British and only in South Africa at the behest of the Boere – just plain old prejudice and warped thinking. Earlier I said that as an officer in the SADF I became very astute as to Afrikaans and Afrikaners.

I recall when I entered the SADF at 5 SAI in Ladysmith as a conscript, there were a grouping of Afrikaner NCO’s with support of other Afrikaner troopies who took great delight in “bashing” (and at times literally bashing) the “English” guys accusing us of murdering their Great Grandmothers, stealing their country and their wealth  – we were called everything under the sun from “Jingo’s” to “murderers” to “rooi-nek” to “soutie”. Much delight was taken when guys were singled out with “English” surnames – “Mason” and the like, and mine – “Dickens” came in for a lot of attention and slander.

That my family were Pretoria Loyalists – my Great Grandfather born there in 1877 and he a descendent of an 1820 settler meant nothing, they had all married into Afrikaner families, I have not one but two actual Voortrekkers which are blood relatives on my paternal line (that’s more Voortrekker heritage than most Afrikaners can point to) – but this meant nothing, not a jot, as far as they were concerned I was an “Uitlander” a “Jingo”.  My “English” University (Rhodes) did not help either – because now I was also just lumped as a “fokkin Kommunis” in addition.

I can see these “clowns” coming a mile away – here’s some of them.

Then there are believers in ‘General’ Manie Maritz and his autobiography which promoted the anti-semitic and anti-masonic and highly discredited ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ to the Boer nation – these clowns are so unhinged that pure racism, prejudice and anti-semitism is perfectly acceptable in an on-line space when writing to me.

Then there’s these gems from Rudi Rousseau, I took on one of his acolytes in a Boer War group and the next minute a PM appeared in my mailbox. I maintained that Rousseau, who is a self appointed historian for “Boere media”, defaced the monument at Surrender Hill in the Free State when he cemented a granite plaque to it which called the surrendering Boere “verraaiers” (traitors) and absolved Christian de Wet of abandoning his command – his action really no dissimilar to any defacing of a war memorial and as unhinged. The next one relates to a Blood River post, and Rousseau is so conflated with mythology and the idea of a “super-Boer” that he honestly believes a handful of Boers fought off 350,000 Zulu at the Battle of Blood River in 1838 – as stated earlier this kind of thing is not unusual in some circles.

It’s not only the nut-jobs, racists and anti-semites – I’ve even received a threat from a Dominee in the NG Church, a senior member of one of their Synods. He took the time out to write to me and say my “Boer hate” will be exposed in a future book. The background to this is a Jopie Fourie discussion where I attested that Jan Smuts was not present in his house when the Malan contingent arrived and the rightful person as Prime Minister to receive such a contingent was Louis Botha. His reference is to a conspiracy he believes in – that Smuts burned the Fourie case court records. I’ve blanked out his surname and picture as if this sort of crap continues he will lose his job for ‘bearing false witness’ against me and good ‘ol basic libel and slander – and he happens to be on Albert Blake’s Facebook friend profile. If there is a link, the gloves in this matter will come off and some very public naming and shaming will follow.

On Blake again, he also went into social media with this prize comment – and its pure “hearsay”, surprising here for a lawyer again, its up there with Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear and the famous “some say”:

….. “some say” he sleeps upside down, all we know is he’s called the Stig!

Blake said of me:

‘Dickens has been called “Jingo Dickens” and labelled a “Boer /Afrikaner basher” by others. He should seek the true reasons thereof. He clearly thrives on the sensational.’

Now, I’ve just posted the choice individuals who have called me a “jingo” in the past and I know the reasons, as anyone can see most of it is nut job slander and has no credibility whatsoever. As to hearsay and the “some say” principle, this would be like me going out on a public forum and saying of him:

‘… “some say” Blake is a Plagiarist, I’ve heard from others he’s known as “Copycat Al” and he should find out why.’

The Dam’s Geese

I will conclude this in a language Albert Blake will understand, and it’s a courtesy to him, as this cess-pool from which he is trying to “investigate” my alleged “Boer hate” is now open for him to review, and I say this to him in pure honesty:

‘Luister nou mooi makker, hierdie is nie ons dam se ganse. Meng jou met die semels, dan vreet die varke jou.’

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Written by Peter Dickens