South Africa's transition to democracy coincided and interlinked with massive global shifts, including the fall of communism and the rise of western capitalist triumphalism. Late capitalism operates through paradoxical global-local dynamics, both universalising identities and expanding local particularities. The erstwhile hegemonic identity of apartheid, 'the Afrikaner', was a product of Afrikaner nationalism. Like other identities, it was spatially organised, with Afrikaner nationalism projecting its imagined community onto a national territory. The study traces the neo-nationalist spatial permutations of 'the Afrikaner', following (...) Massey's understanding of space as political, produced through interrelations ranging from the global to micro intimacies, potentially a sphere for heterogeneous co-existence, and continuously created. Research is presented that shows a neo-nationalist revival of ethnic privileges in a defensive version of Hall's 'return to the local'. Although Afrikaner nationalism's territorial claims to a nation state were defeated, neo-nationalist remnants reclaim a purchase on white Afrikaans identities, albeit in shrunken territories. This phenomenon is, here, called Afrikaner enclave nationalism. Drawing on a global revamping of race as a category of social subjugation, a strategy is deployed that is here called 'inward migration'. These dynamics produce a privatised micro-apartheid in sites ranging from homes, to commercial and religious enterprises, to suburbs. Virtual white spaces in the form of Afrikaans media products serve as extensions of these whitened locales. The lynchpin holding it all together is the heteronormative, middle-class family, with consumption the primary mode of the generation of its white comfort zones. (shrink)

This article was derived from my doctoral thesis, ‘Post-apartheid racism among Afrikaans speaking urban adolescents: A narrative-pastoral reflection’. The impetus for this study was the seemingly increasing occurrences of racism amongst post-apartheid Afrikaans-speaking urban adolescents in South Africa by taking a narrative practical theological perspective on the matter to help build meaningful cross-cultural dialogue. This study explored the level of dialogue of the participants using a postfoundational paradigm. Two questions guided the investigation: (1) How deeply embedded are objectifying of cross-cultural (...) relationships? (2) How can we instigate honest dialogue aiding us in being more aware of our biases to embrace diversity and going forward as a unity in diversity? This study was conducted in 2016 amongst white Afrikaans-speaking urban adolescents living in Pretoria-East, South Africa. I had four group conversations (A, B, C and D) with my co-researchers (research participants), with six to eight adolescents per group. I made use of certain empirical research methods, such as narrative interviewing and group discussions. From an epistemological perspective, a postfoundational, social constructionist perspective, including an auto-ethnographical approach, was followed. The research indicated that Afrikaner adolescents could live life unquestioned from a position of power and objectivity that was culturally inherited. It was found that by objectifying relationships ( I-It ), diverse engagement becomes almost impossible. Consequently, this article advocates for a dialogical ( I-Thou ) approach towards building relationships in a context where people feel vulnerable and shameful, have fears, but also gain trust to contribute to meaningful dialogue with ‘others’. (shrink)

When assessing the history of Afrikaners domination in South Africa and its current fragile status in the new dispensation, what becomes clear is that their claims for cultural recognition and protection turn contemporary Western discourse regarding multiculturalism on its ear. In this paper, I organize my discussion of recognition of Afrikaners in contemporary South Africa by first giving some background on Afrikaners, as well as their history and current status in South Africa. I go on to examine how the notions (...) of “cultural identity” and “cultural worth” problematize and complicate these ideas as they are employed in Western discourse of multiculturalism. (shrink)

There is a growing body of feminist scholarship and literature exploring the ways in which Western patriarchal technologies of gender differentiation and sexual violence structure the racial categorisation and dehumanisation that define South Africa’s history of slavery, colonialism and apartheid. In this article, I consider the gendered history of white Afrikaner nationalism in the context of these insights. Using the decolonial feminist lens of María Lugones, I interpret the historical and contemporary patriarchal subjugation of the white Afrikaner woman as a (...) site of the production and maintenance of colonial racial categories and hierarchies. Gaining a better understanding of how gender operated as a colonial mode of organisation in the process of forging the ethno-racialised white identity of the Afrikaner in the early nineteenth century in opposition to the black indigenous majority population helps to explain how the continued patriarchal subjugation of white Afrikaner women by Afrikaner men in postcolonial/postapartheid South Africa works to reassert and maintain colonial racial categories and inequalities that continue to plague the country. (shrink)

The approbation, in the last few decades, of 'African ways of knowing' and, more recently, the critical emphasis on 'knowledge in the blood'—which refers to 'deeply entrenched' and 'received knowledge', notably of Afrikaners—give rise to all kinds of questions and concerns. What makes certain ways of knowing and kinds of knowledge 'African' and 'Afrikaner', respectively? What do these ideas cover and include, and what falls outside their respective ambits? What functions are served by appealing to these notions? Amongst other things, (...) the idea of 'African ways of knowing' constitutes part of a challenge to occidental belief systems, science, education and ethics. Theorists who single out certain ways of knowing as distinctly and uniquely 'African' or characteristically 'Afrikaner', respectively, not only emphasise their significance in post-colonialist and antiracist discourse but also maintain that the study of these is of profound relevance to educational and socio-political transformation. In this paper, I examine the notions in question, by seeking to understand how those who employ them might see them as plausible, before referring them to a particular epistemological framework. Problems that need to be addressed include relativism about knowledge and truth, as well as elevation of all kinds of beliefs—notably superstitions and racial prejudices—to the status of knowledge, for any real and sustainable transformation to occur. (shrink)

Originally published: Mandala Publishers, 2007.

Literature on the radical indigenous resistance tradition, which predated the emergence of Garveyism as a form of Afrikan philosophy of liberation is scarce in South African politics and history. Robert Edgar and Robert Vinson have contributed to the literature on the influence of Garveyism in South Africa in the 1920s. However, their scholarship does not delve into the emergence of the radical indigenous resistance tradition which was a reaction to conquest since 1652 in wars of colonization in South Africa. This (...) paper seeks to remedy this gap by discussing this radical indigenous resistance tradition which we designate as the Indigenous Fundamentalist Tradition. This paper will utilize the historical analytical framework to provide a brief outline of the cause and elements of this tradition. We will rely on historical research design to discuss how, upon its arrival in the 1920s, Garveyism regalvanised this radical indigenous resistance tradition. The first objective of the paper is to foreground the convergence of the intellectual and political endeavours of people of Afrikan descent (continent and diaspora) in their struggle against global white supremacy. The second objective is to contribute to the eventual hegemony of the combined radicalism of the Indigenous Fundamentalist Tradition and Garveyism which is a marginalized issue in the literature on Afrikan nationalism and the Black Radical Tradition in South Africa. This paper will provide a brief intellectual portrait of Lembede to argue that through his political philosophy of Afrikanism he encapsulated the convergence of the Indigenous Fundamentalist Tradition and Garveyism. This is in order to lay the foundation for the foregrounding of Lembede’s idea of Afrika for the Afrikans as an alternative paradigm regarding the national question in South Africa. (shrink)

A collection of spiritual essays written by Black thought leaders and teachers that discuss what it means to be Black in the world today.

A recepção de Nietzsche da filosofia transcendental de Kant é intermediada por diversos autores de diferentes tendências filosóficas que se viam em continuidade com o projeto kantiano de uma filosofia crítica. Um desses autores é Afrikan Spir, filósofo que levou a cabo um programa de renovação da filosofia crítica que ia na contramão da tendência hegemônica na segunda metade do século XIX de naturalização do kantismo. A influência de Spir na construção de algumas das teses epistemológicas centrais do pensamento de (...) Nietzsche é variada, assim como sua importância no que tange à recepção e à crítica nietzscheana ao idealismo transcendental. Nietzsche se apropriou e reinterpretou várias teses e temas presentes na reformulação da teoria kantiana do transcendental proposta por Spir. O objetivo do presente trabalho é investigar o alcance e a importância dessa apropriação e suas consequências para a crítica de Nietzsche ao transcendentalismo. Esta crítica é formulada a partir do pensamento do devir, que constitui a base do seu programa de uma filosofia histórica. Nietzsche's reception of Kant's transcendental philosophy is mediated by various authors from different philosophical tendencies who saw themselves in continuity with the kantian project of critical philosophy. One of these authors is Afrikan Spir, a philosopher who undertook a program of renovation of critical philosophy that went against the tendency of naturalization of kantianism which was hegemonic in the second half of the 19th century. Spir's influence on some of Nietzsche's central epistemological theses is variegated, as well as his importance concerning Nietzsche's reception and criticism of transcendental idealism. Nietzsche appropriated and reinterpreted many theses and themes that featured Spir's reformulation of Kant's theory of the transcendental. The objective of this paper is to investigate the reach and the importance of this appropriation and their consequences for Nietzsche's criticism of transcendentalism. This critique is formulated on the basis of the thought of becoming, which provides, on its part, the basis for his program of a historical philosophy. (shrink)

Standing at the edge of life's abyss, we seek meaningful order. We commonly find this 'symbolic immortality' in religion, civilization, state and nation. What happens, however, when the nation itself appears mortal? The Mortality and Morality of Nations seeks to answer this question, theoretically and empirically. It argues that mortality makes morality, and right makes might; the nation's sense of a looming abyss informs its quest for a higher moral ground, which, if reached, can bolster its vitality. The book investigates (...) nationalism's promise of moral immortality and its limitations via three case studies: French Canadians, Israeli Jews, and Afrikaners. All three have been insecure about the validity of their identity or the viability of their polity, or both. They have sought partial redress in existential self-legitimation: by the nation, of the nation and for the nation's very existence. (shrink)

In September 1982 then Bishop Desmond Tutu appeared before the Eloff Commission of Inquiry. After politely explaining the activities of the South African Council of Churches to the government appointed commission, Tutu ended on a defiant note: -/- God's purposes are certain. They [i.e. the S.A. government] may remove a Tutu; they may remove the South African Council of Churches, but God's intention to establish His Kingdom of justice, of love, of compassion, will not be thwarted. We are not scared, (...) certainly not of the Government, or any other perpetrators of injustice and oppression, for victory is ours through Him who loves us.1 -/- Others have also made appeals like this in time of need, and many are bound to continue the practice in the future. However, it is tragically ironic that the institutions and individuals that Tutu singles out as the "perpetrators of injustice and oppression" in his deputation invoke the very same deity in their deliberations. As I shall show in this paper, the founders of apartheid also lay claim to God in their attempts to overcome their sociological and political problems. But the Afrikaners are not alone in their appeal to faith to justify their actions. Many of the early settlers in South Africa also rest their vision of the solutions to the problems of South Africa on their understanding of "God's intention to establish His Kingdom of justice, of love, and compassion." Prominent among those with this vision for Africa are the missionaries. -/- An assessment of the involvement of the missionaries in South Africa is clearly too vast an undertaking for this paper. What I can do here is provide only some indication of the perspective imported by some of these influential participants in the development of the country. (shrink)

This essay will critically analyse how conquest that resulted in white settler colonialism laid the foundation for epistemic violence. Epistemic violence, which took the form of the imposition of the law of the European conqueror in the wake of land dispossession in 1652 in South Africa is the fundamental problem this essay will critically engage with. We will rely on the Azanian philosophical tradition as a theoretical framework to critique this legal epistemic violence. Our theoretical framework is in line with (...) Afrikan jurisprudence, which is grounded in the culture and worldview of the Indigenous people conquered in wars of conquest. Fundamental to our argument is that the law of the European conqueror, which was imposed through conquest is a Eurocentric enterprise, which seeks to negate the Afrikan worldview and culture and reinforce historic injustice. It is important to note that epistemic violence commenced with the issuing of papal bulls, which undergirded conquest and white settler colonialism in South Africa. The thesis of the essay is that in the wake of conquest and the attendant imposition of the law of the European conqueror, white settlers used their law to technicalise issues of historic injustice such as land dispossession. It is in this sense that this essay seeks to contribute to the decolonisation of law by foregrounding the worldview and culture of the Indigenous conquered people. (shrink)

Bram Fischer was born in 1908 into an eminent Afrikaner family in South Africa, and seemed destined for prominence in white South African life. His path, however, was an unexpected one. As a Rhodes Scholar he saw the rise of Nazism in Europe and travelled to the Soviet Union. Some time after his return to South Africa he joined the Communist Party, and from then on was involved in the iconic moments of the anti-apartheid struggle, working alongside figures such as (...) Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu. Fischer was a lawyer, and in his role as an advocate played a part in the major political trials of the era, leading the defence of Mandela and the other accused in the Rivonia Trial of 1964. Soon after, he went underground in disguise to help lead the resistance. Ultimately, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, and when he died the authorities would not release his ashes to his family. His story raises a number of issues for our times as well as his. There are questions of belonging and hospitality: who is included in the circle of the home, whether domestic or national. There is the challenge of what it means to live in an inhospitable world and sustain one’s commitment nonetheless—something that faces many around the world. There are also ethical issues surrounding Fischer’s revolutionary role as a lawyer. The article ranges from Namibia in the 19th century to issues of climate change in our own in considering how we respond when the world becomes inhospitable. (shrink)

This article uses decolonial to critique the discourse of ‘subaltern whiteness’ by questioning some Afrikaner scholars’ morality of regarding ‘white Afrikaners as subaltern’. Subaltern designates submerged, subordinated, exploited or suppressed – those whose voices have been historically muted, their humanity stripped by those with sociopolitical and economic power. Within South Africa, this raises the question: to what extent can white Afrikaners be regarded as subaltern? The article proposes indivisibility of epistemic vulnerability and regenerative theological praxis both emerging within Afrikaner theological (...) discussion as viable response to broken bodies of those who still bear the marks or scars of apartheid and rather not to seek to hijack their voice. (shrink)

In an actual conflict situation many different factors can contribute to the view that a recourse to violence is inescapable and even desirable. Among them are natural responses to repression, encouragement from interested parties outside, and the oversimplification of the situation as it is described in the militant ideologies of the organizers of the conflict and in the moral evaluations of those who take sides in it. The reality is far more complex and the situation far less determined than it (...) seems. Taking the South African situation, the question of whether violence can be avoided can still be seen to depend on the kind of action that is taken. There is a relationship between ends and means. If the end is racial domination (by Africans in place of Afrikaners), then violence is the appropriate means. If the end is racial integration then violence must be avoided. Whether non-violence can serve this end of racial integration depends on its being consistently practiced and on the provision of the necessary outside encouragement. (shrink)

This article explores the rise and fall of an Afrikaner psychological association: the Psychological Institute of the Republic of South Africa (PIRSA). It presents rhetorical, discursive and social analyses of presidential addresses delivered at PIRSA congresses between 1962 and 1977, identifying the emergence of a discourse of volksdiens (ethnic-national service) during the 1960s that called for the ethnic-national relevance of the discipline. With the Afrikaner nation vulnerable to the triple threat of communism, capitalism and egalitarianism, PIRSA insisted that psychological research (...) be dedicated towards addressing these and other dangers. In the 1970s, however, such appeals became less prominent as discussions of South African issues slipped off the agenda. Curiously, at a time when the apartheid state was in decline, PIRSA’s psychologists were concerned with everything but the survival of Afrikanerdom. The unraveling of PIRSA’s quest for ethnic-national relevance mirrored the disintegration of the state’s apartheid rationality, which resulted from a concatenation of political, economic and cultural upheavals. (shrink)

Ainda que pouco conhecido e estudado em nossa época, o filósofo neokantiano russo, de origem greco-alemã, Afrikan Spir, produziu uma obra original que teve repercussões importantes em seu tempo. Nascido um pouco antes de Nietzsche, em 1837, Spir será citado por ele, sobretudo, no que se refere às questões que envolvem o caráter transcendental do conhecimento. Afinal, como Kant, Spir defende que o mundo nos aparece mediado por nossa sensibilidade; mediado e organizado pelas estruturas “a priori” do conhecimento, ou seja, (...) do mundo recebemos apenas impressões sensoriais, qualidades sensíveis, cabendo ao sujeito cognoscente ordená-las a partir de suas intuições. No entanto, na intitulada filosofia crítica de Spir, o único e o verdadeiro, à priori, é o “princípio de identidade”, que seria o responsável pela síntese do conhecimento, seja de nós mesmos, seja dos objetos do mundo. Em poucas palavras, segundo Spir, e contestando o senso comum e o próprio objetivismo científico, não existe nada que seja estável e absoluto fora de nós. Todo o absoluto diz respeito ao pensamento. Mesmo o “eu” nada mais é do que uma síntese operada pela consciência. (shrink)

In this paper I make two arguments: first, that the Western Cape has always functioned as the epistemological heading of the 'coloured' category. This is because it is in the Western Cape where the category first emerged as a descriptor for the 'mixing of blood', and where knowledge around the category was first produced through the appointment of commissions of inquiry. In addition, intellectuals in the Western Cape based primarily at Stellenbosch University also produced knowledge by drawing on the concept (...) of heredity, and attaching inherited racial traits or characteristics to the 'coloured' category. The second argument is that by the late 1930s, a new epistemological heading emerged in the Transvaal, where intellectuals from the University of Pretoria would engage with the category through the emerging discourse on bloedvermening or miscegenation. To these Pretoria-based intellectuals, 'coloured' was no longer just a marker for the 'mixing' of blood that originated in the Western Cape, but represented a threat to the heredity of the Afrikaner volk in the Union as a whole. Intellectuals in the Transvaal were less concerned with ascribing hereditary traits to the 'coloured' category, and more preoccupied with how those characteristics would affect the white racial imprint through miscegenation. By arguing that the Transvaal emerged as a new heading on the 'coloured' category, I am suggesting that another epistemological direction is on offer one that departs from the form, the sign, or the logic of the heading of the Western Cape. (shrink)

This article is motivated by a concern about the increasing embrace of apolitical and ahistorical notions of racial “mixedness” and “impurity.” It draws on recent examples from the United States and South Africa in order to direct attention to the difficulties of identifying logics that, on the face of it, seem to evade conventional claims of racism, but nevertheless, as it will argue, rely on racist notions that must be challenged. These include examples in the United States and South Africa (...) of individuals self-identifying as a stand-alone mixed race category as well as white Afrikaners in South Africa uncritically appropriating claims to mixed heritage. This article is critical of these phenomena because of what it finds to be a lack of politically and historically situated understandings of the notions of purity and impurity and their relation to racism. (shrink)

Nationalism has been a cause of great misery in the world. In this century alone we have seen a number of hideous forms of nationalism leading to genocide, ethnic cleansing, forced relocations, and civil wars. The violent conflicts between Serbians, Croatians, and Muslims in the former Yugoslavia; the Hutus and the Tutsis in Central Africa; Palestinians and Jews in the Middle East; Afrikaners, Zulus, and Xhosas in Southern Africa; and the Nazis and non-Aryans, are just some of these.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Remembering ApartheidMark Sanders (bio)What was apartheid? How is it being remembered? Two questions. The first of them, almost at once, encourages a third: what is apartheid? An answer to the first question will be an answer to the third. Knowing what apartheid was, it is implied, we will know what apartheid is. We will know what it is in essence. But if the answer supplied to the first question (...) is the same as that to the second, the question has been begged. This answer and begged question affect not only what we understand apartheid to have been. The essence of what apartheid is has been derived from an activity of remembering that is historically contingent. Is there a way out of this circle? A path to a place where essence will in no way be trammeled by any historical excrescence—where apartheid, stamped with -heid, the Afrikaans suffix for -ness, stands forth intact, unique—where, in a final victory, apartheid's phantasy of separateness will have perfected itself in truth? Supposing that responsibility involves the unstable articulation of essence and contingency, and consequent decision in the "night of non-knowledge," would it be responsible to seek such a way out? Is it possible, on the other hand, not to embark upon, or want to embark upon, such a search?The title "Remembering Apartheid" is to be understood as shorthand for this aporia of certain knowing. It refers in the first place to ways of remembering bound up, in South Africa, with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. These have involved not only the collection of facts anchored in recollection, a classically forensic project, but also the admission of acts of grieving and the invitation for others to participate in these acts—a participation to which I will refer, employing the word in the general sense of a mourning-with, as condolence. The word remembrance (echoing the German Gedächtnis, with its folding in of Denken) might more closely approach the inextricable interlinking, before the Commission, of epistemic and mournful practice. Yet, in traversing the aporia provisionally without eliminating it, the title of my essay lays claim to knowledge. It announces: this is apartheid, for this is what apartheid was. It thereby also seeks to acknowledge that, just as forensic evidence assembled by the Commission may be bound up with the grieving of witnesses, no claim about the nature of apartheid can be untouched by the affective demands of those who bear the burden of remembering. The legacy of apartheid of which they speak is of undiscovered bodies, of bodies denied a proper burial. They seek the help of the Commission in rectifying this state of affairs. What we hear when we listen to those witnesses is this: apartheid was a proscription on mourning, specifically of the other. Can we then not say: apartheid is, at least for those who remember the worst deeds committed under it, and who attach to them a particular affect, a proscription on mourning the other? Viewed from a purely forensic point of view, it is far from clear that we possess evidence to impeach this testimony. [End Page 60]Apartheid was/is, in the most general terms, an interdict against the development of a social formation. Although Afrikaner-nationalist politicians and intellectuals sometimes frightened the volk with images of being swamped by the vast black African mass or of being ploughed under as a people [see Louw 1: 505], the nature of that social formation was never outlined in precise terms. Versions of racial degeneration and bastardy were proffered by apartheid theorists, but what the ideology of race purity and the power that hid behind it really entailed was a foreclosure of the other, and thus of any historical possibility of another social formation—of what Breyten Breytenbach, alluding in Dog Heart [69] to the novelist Jan Rabie, calls "other-making" (andersmaak).In Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), Sigmund Freud offers an account of the social formation that, although standing on the shoulders of conservative nineteenth-century writers such as Gustave le Bon, does not depend upon racial, cultural, linguistic, or other characteristics that, singularly or together, formed the core... (shrink)

On April 5, 2012, the North American Nietzsche Society held a session, chaired by myself, at the American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Meeting in Seattle on reading Nietzsche as a figure within the history of philosophy. Paul Loeb commented on papers by Michael Green and Gary Shapiro. Professor Green’s contribution, published in this issue, argues for the importance of Afrikan Spir’s work for understanding the “falsification thesis” about empirical judgments that he attributes to Nietzsche; here, he responds to Nadeem Hussain’s (...) work on Nietzsche and Spir and brings us a closer look at the arguments of Spir’s.. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article:The Art of Biblical Poetry. By Robert AlterThe‐ Demise of the Devil: Magic and the Demonic in Luke's Writings. By Susan R. CarrettEchoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul. By Richard B. HaysJesus and Postmodernism. By James BreechThe Genesis of Doctrine: A Study in the Foundations of Doctrinal Criticism. By Alister E. McGrathOrdination Rites of the Ancient Churches, East and West. By Paul BradshawMystagogy: A Theology of Liturgy in the Patristic Age. By Enrico MazzaLiberation Theology: (...) A Documentary Histoty. Edited by Alfred T. HennellyThe Gospel in a Pluralist Society. By Lesslie NewbiginThe Sacred in Life and Art. By Philip SherrardThe Ideology of the Aesthetic. By Terry EagletonThe Justification of Science and the Rationality of Religious Belief. By Michael BannerReturn to Reason. By James Kelly ClarkThe Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrares, Together with Notes of Schelling's Berlin Lectures. Edited by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong‘For Self‐Examination’and‘Judge for Yourself’. Edited by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. HongSimone Weil; Utopian Pessimist. By David McLcllanThe Making of Orthodoxy: Essays in Honour of Henry Chadwick. Edited by Rowan WilliamsThe Apostolic Fathers. By Simon TugwellChristian Spirituality: Post‐Reformation and Modern. Edited by Louis Dupré and Don E. SaliersThe Ignatian Personality of Gerard Manley Hopkins. By David Anthony DownesMissionaries Go Home? A Sociological Interpretation of an African Response to Christian Missions. By E. M. UkaChristian‐Nationalism and the Rise of the Afrikaner Broederbond in South AfricaThe Diocesan Seminary in the United States: A History from the 1780s to The Present. By Joseph M. WhiteThe Correspondence of Erasmus: Letters 1252 to 1355. Translated by R. A. B. MynorsCatholics Against the Church: Anti‐Abortion Protest in Toronto, 1969–1985. By Michael W. CuneoThe Return of the English Benedictines to London Ealing Abbey: 1896 to Independence. By René KollarThe Theater of Devtion: East Anglian Drama and Society in ttw Late Middle Ages. By Gail McMurray GibsonMary Tudor: A Life. By David LoadesMany Tables: The Eucharist in the New Testament and Liturgy Today. By Dennis E. Smith and Hal E. Taussig. (shrink)

The last two presidents of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republic and the Republic of the Orange Free State, S.J.P. Kruger and M.T. Steyn, both stood in the tradition of the Christian Afrikaner. Kruger as the symbol of Afrikaner republicanism in the 19th century and Steyn as a younger and more modern Afrikaner, tried to base their policies openly and clearly on Biblical and Christian principles. Kruger as a member and recognised minister of the Reformed Churches in South Africa formulated his views in (...) a typical Dutch neo-Calvinistic way, while Steyn used Reformed concepts combined with his academic background in jurisprudence and the law of nations to foster the same ideas. Kruger and Steyn trusted one another, agreed on core issues and worked together rather well. Each strived to maintain the independence of his republic. (shrink)

In May 2017, yet another South African university became a site of hate speech. Three students chose to display Nazi-inspired posters, which advertised an ‘Anglo-Afrikaner student’ event, under the motto ‘Fight for Stellenbosch’. That the posters provoked the response which it so obviously sought, was evident in the student outrage, and the swift condemnation from university management. Neither the prevalence of hate speech, nor its predictable responses, is new. The central concern of this article is to consider the extent to (...) which tolerance can offer a plausible response to hate speech. The questions which arise, however, are: Does the right to divergent viewpoints hold the same legitimacy as antagonistic ones? When is the boundary between legitimate and hate speech breached? Does a democracy imply the tolerance of all forms of speech? Or, are there limits to the forms of speech that a democracy ought to tolerate? (shrink)