I noticed a blog post today from a fellow historian who took a swipe at a Boer War photograph colourising Facebook page for allowing a user to compare a black armband being worn by Lord Kitchener and his staff at the Veereniging Peace Conference to end the South African War (1899-1902) aka Boer War 2, to that of the Nazi armband worn by Adolf Hitler and his cabal during World War 2 (1939- 1945). The armband in question was a common funeral black band, in this case it marked the death of Queen Victoria on 22 Jan 1901.

Whilst all highly amusing and clearly all either ignorant and (more likely) a blatant and very cheap attempt to brand Lord Kitchener a Nazi, it does bring up a real comparison – which is the armband used by the Commandant General of the Ossewabrandwag and that of the armband used by the National Socialists (Nazi) – Adolf Hitler and his cabal.

The Ossewabrandwag (Ox Wagon Sentinel) was the largest and most successful Afrikaner Nationalist organisation with pro-Nazi sympathies prior and during World War 2. The Ossewabrangwag was formed on the back of the 1938 Great Trek Centennial celebration – the centennial under the directive of the Afrikaner Broederbond (Afrikaner Brotherhood) and its Chairman, Henning Klopper, sought to use the centenary anniversary of the Great Trek to unite the ‘Cape Afrikaners’ and the ‘Boere Afrikaners’ who were deemed by Klopper as been separated by Boer War 2. He strove to unite “the two separate hearts” of white Afrikanerdom into a singular ‘Boer’ archetype under the pioneering symbology of the Great trek and to literally map a ‘path to a South African Republic’ under a white Afrikaner hegemony. The trek re-enactment was very successful, and Henning managed to realign white Afrikaner identity under the Broederbond’s Christian Nationalist ideology and its archetypal outline calling it a “sacred happening”.¹

The Ossewabrandwag (OB) was tasked with spreading the Broederbond’s (and the Purified National Party) ideology of Christian Nationalism like ‘wildfire’ across the country (hence the name). The OB’s national socialist leanings can be seen in correlation with other world ideologies of the time, and specifically to that of Nazi Germany.²

Christian Nationalism, although grounded in ‘Krugerism’ as a ideology, can be regarded as a derivative of German National Socialism and Italian Fascism and was identified as such by OB leaders like Balthazar Johannes “B. J.” Vorster (a future National Party Prime Minister/President) who in 1942 said:

“We stand for Christian Nationalism which is an ally of National Socialism. You can call this anti-democratic principle dictatorship if you wish. In Italy it is called Fascism, in Germany National Socialism (Nazism) and in South Africa, Christian Nationalism.”³ 

The leader of the Ossewabrandwag (OB), Dr. Johannes Van Rensburg as a Union Defence Force officer had met with Adolf Hitler and became an admirer, he then infused the OB with National Socialist ideology and the organisation took on distinctive fascist and Nazi ritual, insignia, structure, oaths and salutes. 

Merely ‘anti-British’ they were not. Ideologically speaking the Ossewabrandwag (OB) took on anti-communism, antisemitism, the Nazi creed of ‘Blut und Boden’ (Blood and Soil) in terms of both racial purity and historic bond and rights to the land, the ‘Führer Principle‘, a derivative of the Nazi creed of ‘Kinder, Küche, Kirche‘ (Children, Kitchen, Church) as to the role of women and the role of the church in relation to state. In term of economic policy the OB adopted a derivative of the Nazi economic policy of expropriation of Jewish monopoly capital without compensation by adding “British monopoly capital’ to the mix .⁴

This image shows the militarisation and fascist leanings of the Ossewabrandwag – here’s a rare image not often seen – a Ossewabrandwag “Kommandant” in full para-military uniform with lapel badges, ‘crested eagle’ epaulettes and ‘lightning bolt’ cap badge insignia. In addition he is wearing a sam-browne belt and lanyard. His ‘green’ arm band signifies his rank – using the ‘crested eagle’ again and horizontal lines for scale of seniority.⁵

In adopting distinctive national socialist ideology and concepts as well as iconography and culture, Chief Commandant Hans van Rensburg went about ‘nazifying’ this ‘Cultural Front’ of Afrikaner Nationalism. The Broederbond had arbitrated a meeting between the National Party and the Ossewabrandwag agreeing to two clear lines of delineation between the two organisations – the National Party would look after the ‘political’ front of Afrikanerdom and the Ossewabrandwag the ‘cultural’ front – known as the Cradock Agreement it was ratified on 29 October 1940.⁶

Here is Hans van Rensburg complete with his high command Ossewabrandwag armband … note the Eagle iconography – the Ossewabrandwag adopted the Nazi Reichsadler – “Reich Eagle” – which replaced the German “Imperial Eagle” the Reichswappen.

As to Nazi German eagles, the Eagle and holder are the same, however symbology is given to the direction in which the eagle looks – the Reichsadler (Reich Eagle) looks left and the Parteiadler (Party Eagle) looks right.

Also, note the jodhpurs (horse riding pants), a firm militaristic and often fascist fashion statement – you can easily see his admiration for Hitler’s dress sense and iconography. However for all the Nazi iconography and ideology adopted by van Rensburg, after Nazi Germany lost the war, van Rensburg would quickly try and cover his tracks and the genocide committed by his heroes and say of them. 

“It was the greatest disaster in my spiritual life to realise suddenly that the people I had thought to be the heroes of a new era in western civilisation should in fact turn out to be just a band of murderers and nothing else.”

In addition to the Ossewabrandwag other leading and influential Afrikaner Nationalists were forming German National Socialist movements with distinctive antisemitic and anti-communist leanings in South Africa. As a committed antisemite Louis Weichardt broke with the National Party on the 26 October 1933 and founded South Africa’s Nazi party equivalent – The South African Christian National Socialist Movement with a paramilitary ‘security’ or ‘body-guard’ section (modelled on Nazi Germany’s brown-shirted Sturmabteilung) called the ‘Gryshemde’ or Grey-shirts. In May 1934, the ‘Grey-shirts’ merged with the South African Christian National Socialist Movement and form a new enterprise called ‘The South African National Party’ (SANP). The SANP would all keep with the ‘grey-shirts’ as their dress and keep this identification and other Nazi iconography including extensive use of the swastika.⁷ Overall, Weichardt saw democracy as an outdated system and an invention of British imperialism and Jews.⁸

The SANP Grey-shirts loved armbands too, and their took two forms, one using the Hitler Youth Red and Black band and swastika and one which used the South African Flag’s colours at the time – Orange, White and Blue, and here they are:

Left to Right – standing outside the courthouse in Grahamstown in full SANP dress is Johannes von Strauss Moltke, Harry Inch and David Olivier. The alternate (OBB) Orange, White and Blue SANP armband is to the right.

Talking Boer War, not shy of nailing their colours to the mast and also linking their ideology to Boer War 2, ‘Die Waarheid/The truth’ – the SANP’s own newspaper, would claim a Jewish conspiracy as the cause of the war and Louis Weichardt would write:

“the disastrous Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902 was deliberately brought about by the Jewish mine magnets who circumvented Rhodes and Kruger alike”.⁹

Luckily for the Afrikaner Nationals and the likes of Hans van Rensburg and Louis Weichardt, the National Party came into power in 1948 and in the same year issued a general amnesty to all Afrikaner Nationalists who had flirted with Nazism, joined the Nazi Party or directed supported Nazi Germany, either through local political organs like the Ossewabrandwag, the New Order and the SANP Grey-shirts (and many other splinter groups) or even directly collaborating with the Nazi Propaganda Ministry (Radio Zeesen), or the Nazi German Wehrmacht (military), or the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS and Waffen SS) or the Nazi German Abwehr (intelligence) service. ¹⁰

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Written and Researched by Peter Dickens

Footnotes

1. Harrison, David. 1981. The White Tribe of Africa – South Africa in Perspective. University of California Press. Pages 103 – 106. ↩︎
2. D.P. Olivier, May 2021, “A special kind of colonist” : An analytical and historical study of the Ossewa-Brandwag as an anti-colonial resistance movement, thesis University of the North West ↩︎
3. Bunting, Brian. 1964. The Rise of the Afrikaner Reich. Penguin Books. Page 88 ↩︎
4. Bunting, Brian. 1964. The Rise of the Afrikaner Reich. Penguin Books, Nelson Mandela Foundation O’Malley Web Digital Library, Chapter 6 ↩︎
5. Ditsong Museum of Military History. Saxonwald, Johannesburg – Ossewabrandwag Display ↩︎
6. Fokkens, A. M. Afrikaner unrest within South Africa during the Second World War and the measures taken to suppress it. Journal for Contemporary History. 2012. Page 130 ↩︎
7. A Perfect Storm – Antisemitism in South Africa 1930-1948 By Milton Shain pages 55 – 58 ↩︎
8. Werner Bouwer, National Socialism and Nazism in South Africa: The case of L.T. Weichardt and his Greyshirt movements, 1933-1946. Page 18 ↩︎
9. A Perfect Storm – Antisemitism in South Africa 1930-1940 By Milton Shain page 58 ↩︎
10. Kleynhans, Evert. Hitler’s Spies: Secret Agents and the Intelligence War in South Africa 1939-1945. Jonathan Ball Publishers 2021 ↩︎