How the ANC emulates the Afrikaner 'Broederbond'

South Africa suffers from a diseased obsession with nationalism. Our current governing party appears to be drifting into spaces that are similar to the destructive nationalism models of the past. Our constitution instructs our politicians to uphold its democratic values, and to defend it from contrary onslaughts.  

In April 1918, three young Afrikaner men, dispirited by what they saw as the marginalisation of their culture and the “verengelsing (anglicisation) of their land” conceptualised an organisation that would defend Afrikaner identity and leadership and pledged to “return him to his rightful place in South Africa.” By June 1918, the Afrikaner Broederbond was formed. 

Over the next 72 years, the Afrikaner Broederbond became the power behind the throne in South African politics.

From railways to religion, homes to harbours and media to economics, it ensured that 'broeders' (members of the Broederbond) were appointed to every possible leadership position in the country. Whereas the ANC was formed in 1912 by black intellectuals, the Afrikaner Broederbond was formed by three men in their late teens.

At a meeting later that year, only “eleven railway workers, six policemen, and one outsider" were in attendance. But by the 1940s the Broederbond “had seized sufficient power to take it upon themselves the guidance and administration of an entire nation.”

At its 50th anniversary in 1968, its last remaining founder, Henning Klopper stated, according to Hans Strydom and Ivor Wilkins in their 2012 book ‘The Super Afrikaners’ that “the organisation had taken effective control of every almost every public position.”

The Afrikaner Broederbond was a case of cadre deployment on steroids. They opposed JBM Hertzog and Jan Smuts’ attempts to include the English as their partners in this quest for power. The organisation split into several ideological factions that supported multiple political parties, such as the National Party, The Gesuiwerde Nationale Party, the Herenigde Nationale Party, the Herstige Nationale Party and the Afrikaner Party, with each claiming to be a purer version of the other, and each claiming a greater commitment to the quest to establish Afrikaner dominance. 

They ruthlessly removed all disloyal forces from leadership roles. They purged the SABC and made it a political mouthpiece for the National Party. They established cultural movements like the FAK to advance their political agenda.

Trains, planes, buses and post offices all became sites of struggle to secure the supremacy of the Afrikaner. They became experts at changing street and suburb names and naming buildings after themselves.  

It is here that the ANC begins to look and feel more like the Afrikaner Broederbond and less like a political party serving its constitutional mandates.

It functions more as a movement copying the cultural and social engineering practices of the Broederbond than implementing the constitution of a liberal democracy. Its leadership language echoes a nationalism, awkwardly dressed up as transformation. 

The dangers are obvious. As the ANC becomes more loyal to itself than to the people of South Africa, the greater is the risk that South Africa will become like the society we left in 1994. The Broederbond of 1944 had a greater commitment to itself than to the people who lived in South Africa.

By becoming the Broederbond incarnate and recklessly replacing competence with loyalists to manage critical infrastructure and institutions, they effectively own the dire consequences of such policies.

Collapsed municipalities, dysfunctional hospitals, the demise of the Post Office, and failing water and electricity systems are examples of the consequences of this incarnation.

Whereas the Broederbond and its political parties created ghettos for black people and state-of-the-art suburbs for white people, the ANC has created a national ghetto for everyone but themselves.

The multiple factions born out of the ANC since 1994, each claiming to be a better ANC, is further proof of this incarnation.

Thirty-one years after Nelson Mandela's inauguration as President of South Africa, we are sadly witnessing the ANC incarnating the past instead of curating a better future.  

Cape Argus