The irony isn’t lost while treading the ox trails of Orania with Afrikaner activist Hofmeyr, says Johnny Masilela.
Velvety-voiced balladeer and Afrikaans cultural activist Steve Hofmeyr is the kind of interviewee with an in-yer-face vocabulary that can drive the most hardened journalist to wonder: hell, does this man really want to say such things?
This interview is part of a research attempt based on conversations between South Africa’s extreme political and cultural viewpoints.
“The greatest antagonist to Afrikaner independence is the Afrikaner himself. They have bought into the most expensive contract for themselves and their children, that of white guilt.”
Irony of ironies, Hofmeyr had earlier entered an Upper Karoo restaurant and smilingly shook hands with me, but demanded to know: what the heck was the role of a white colleague in my company.
Blushing, both I and senior photo journalist Paul Botes had to explain his role.
Later, when asked why he was comfortable to shake hands with a black journalist (and race has to be an issue here) but not at ease with someone of his own race, the musician poured his heart out about what can only be described as the Afrikaner’s betrayal of his own.
“White guilt is propaganda for black acquisition of material benefits. These political freebees succeed only as long as whites embrace it. It is patronising to black South Africans to enforce baby-sitting measures as this will keep blacks in nursery school perpetually.”
Magtig! (good grief!)
But then similarly, perhaps, I personally find it is white people, with specific reference to the Afrikaner, who look the other way and distance themselves from Orania’s so-called “intentional” community model whenever I attempt to engage them on the subject. They would not be seen in a million harvests walking the oxwagon trails of “racist” Orania.
And yet veteran Black Consciousness activist Malose Rampou insists in a separate interview that black people – both as a community and government – have so much to learn from the work ethic of Upper Karoo Orania.
When I mention the name Steve Hofmeyr to a retired black educator, his response was a mere: “Oh, the guy who sings like Neil Diamond.”
No reference to “racism”, just recognition of an artist and the beauty of his velvety voice. Perhaps the mainstream media and its upper middle-class readers are too obsessed with every little of Hofmeyr’s outbursts. Just maybe.
Those of us fortunate enough to have visited Orania can testify to the town’s Afrikaner labourers toiling under extremes conditions.
“The idea of self-determination is not shared by all Afrikaners, even fewer (broader) South Africans.
Ironically, it is a modern sensibility and somewhat hushed constitutional right that only now is beginning to be embraced by those who desire it. A few African tribes are in tow, too. I believe in it; a virtual or spiritual independence first, then a physical one.”
Hofmeyr refuses to subscribe to what he terms “white guilt”, and believes rather in “white pride”, because the former is an open invitation to plunder and the latter a call to context.
To place these views into a proper context, Hofmeyr argues that collective – or rather white – guilt is not a legal term, adding that punishing the white race bordered on unconstitutionality, and was therefore unethical. “The wrong perpetrators (whites) are punished, and the wrong beneficiaries (blacks) are compensated.”
And then, to Hofmeyr’s horror, there are those whites who go about peddling “Struggle credentials”, telling those who care to listen about halcyon days in the underground trenches of the anti-apartheid conflict.
“You must listen to 702. The rest of us cringe at what others (whites) pretend to be proud of.”
On the other hand, he says the Afrikaner trusted and thought the British were fellow Christians, until the Crown’s soldiers “wiped out” a generation of Boer children, and burnt down two Boer republics, those of the erstwhile Transvaal and Orange Free State, during the Anglo-Boer War.
“This time around we bought into the idea of a Rainbow Nation, only to lose everything we were, (what) we stand for, what we want to be.
“I get nailed for distrusting the national democratic revolution. Orania confirmed my suspicions that we have a huge immutable desire to be together (as Afrikaners). Orania compounded with me the international right not to be governed by others.
“It seems like the Zulu does not mind Xhosa rule, and vice versa. We (the Afrikaner) are not like that.”
Travelling further down memory lane, Hofmeyr says the pre-democracy “yes vote” during the whites-only referendum was another Afrikaner mistake of trust – “trusting that you were buying into a mutually beneficial contract settlement of compromise with equals. That was a hoax.”
Of comfort to Hofmeyr is that while a large part of “the white tribe” is in remission, Afrikaners are rediscovering their identity and national worth.
“We have always been deeply cultural. We build monuments. We celebrate heritage without government prompting. We are still proudly gravitating between our calling as the last agents of the West on the one hand and the children of Africa on the other. Rallying this tribe from these different perspectives is essential.
“Our genes speak of defiance, independence and self-reliance. We travel far to attain it, and we travel well,” Hofmeyr, the artist, goes almost lyrical.
It was during this well-travelled journey that Hofmeyr stumbled into yours truly in the middle of the exclusive Afrikaner enclave of Orania.
Did the Orania Movement president, Carel Boshoff jr, the maternal grandson of apartheid architect Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, indicate to Hofmeyr he was to be interviewed by a journalist of the black race?
“No, no, no. He made no reference to the fact that you are black. I was surprised (to see you) as I don’t have many friends (who subscribe to the notion) of (Afrikaner) self-determination, and certainly not from a black observer. You may be an anomaly.”
There are indeed genuine reasons why Hofmeyr thinks this black writer is an “anomaly”.
Among them are the fact that from the outset I made it clear to the musician that, in the spirit of a balanced interview, he would have the absolute freedom to tell the Hofmeyr story in his own words, and not the other way round.
Hofmyer has, with what sounds like brutal honesty, endorsed the idea of conversations between South Africa’s racial and cultural extremes.
“We have enough overlapping psyche to reach through many an intellectual obstacle.
“But you will always have a different conversation with your non-white children, (as opposed) to what I will have with mine.”
When asked if it was appropriate to compare Boshoff and the late Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) firebrand, Eugene Terre’ Blanche, Hofmeyr retorts: “Boshoff is a soft-spoken intellectual. A burly charismatic leader would make Orania look suspect.
“I am relieved it is nothing like that. Orania is courageous but calm. (It is) an idea well thought, sanctioned with familiarity and time. It seeks not to antagonise, and a slow but wise old river feeds through it. Boshoff embodies all that.”
Boshoff himself pointed out in a separate interview that AWB strongman, André Visagie, had turned his back on Orania because he disagreed with what it stood for, in terms of a racial perspective and otherwise.
Asked if there was a relationship with ultra-rightist groupings like the AWB, Boshoff’s answer was a definitive “no”.
Hofmeyr says while their common goal was Afrikaner self-determination, there are many differences between the Boshoff and Terre’Blanche way of doing things.
“Terre’Blanche insisted on the recovery of the old republics.
“He certainly had a sound historical claim.
“He was also an angrier man. Boshoff’s dreams may prove to be more realistic. He is more congenial. It remains to be seen if congenial is the African way.”
* This is an edited version of a book Johnny Masilela is researching, with upper Karoo Orania as the metaphorical nerve centre.
** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media.
Sunday Independent