Charles Prahl on the Relationship Between God and South Africa

By: Charles Prahl

May 14, 2007

In 1948, the National Party of DF Malan won a majority of the seats in the South African parliament. It was an astounding political victory given that the party peacefully managed to gain political control of a country in which its core constituency constituted no more than 12 percent of the population. It was a party that came to power by its careful mobilization of the Afrikaner population along lines of ethnic nationalism, racialism, and an exaggerated history of victimhood at the hands of the British. The concept of the Afrikaner’s unique relationship with God played an important part in the narrative the National Party constructed and which resonated deeply with a broad segment of Afrikaner society. Such sentiments continue to exist, although not expressed in any but the most private of gatherings and then under one’s breath, in South Africa.
When Malan arrived in Pretoria on June 1, 1948 to assume the mantle of leadership he was greeted by a adoring crowd at the train station. He had this to say, "“In the past we felt like strangers in our own country, but today South Africa belongs to us once more. For the first time since Union, South Africa is our own. May God grant that it always remains our own.”" Malan successfully blends the legacy of victimhood at the hands of British imperialists, as well as invoking the possibility that the rise of the Afrikaner nation to political power in South Africa had occurred but for the grace of God.

Indeed, it is to be interpreted as part of God’'s plan that the Afrikaners, so long downtrodden by the British imperialists, should be raised up by God after enduring for so long. In an influential book entitled Rasse en Rasvermenging (Races and Race Mixing), an Afrikaner intellectual cleverly combined social Darwinism with theology when speaking about the distinct races, each with their own spiritual and biological characteristics:

"the preservation of the pure race tradition of the Boerevolk [literally- “farmer people,” a term originally used derogatorily by the British in reference to Afrikaners, it was later appropriated by Afrikaner groups and became central to their self-identification as a minority “victim group”] must be protected at all costs in all possible ways as a holy pledge entrusted to us by our ancestors as part of God’s plan with our People."

In his use of the term “"race"” the author invokes the nomenclature of science and tries to present himself as an objective, impartial commentator; merely conveying what is widely believed by “scientists” prominent in the “scientific field” of social Darwinism. He then invokes the idea of a covenant between God and his racially pure Boerevolke in the same breath as his pseudo-scientific musings. He is attempting to create an air of factuality, of the natural logical connection between his “scientific” claim and his moral/theological claim. Although this is easy to detect and discredit more than 50 years later when social Darwinism's theories have been widely rejected by most, they were very enticing to the Afrikaner electorate at the time.

In the decades after the National Party victory of 1948, the role of religion in the justification of what came to be called apartheid (the term itself is innocuous enough; it means merely “separateness”) only increased. Indeed, the role of religion in the maintenance of the historiography of the Afrikaner-dominated state became ingrained and institutionalized in the day-to-day functioning of the mechanisms of state. All apartheid presidents excepting FW de Klerk were members of the Dutch Reformed Church and fervent Christians. The church provided justification for the murder of “enemies of the state” through its use of army chaplains that preached to the soldiers of the South African army.

Perhaps the most damning evidence against the Dutch Reformed Church was its distribution to soldiers of a Bible that featured the insignia of the South African Defense Force embossed on its maroon cover. There is no more striking example of the official marriage between the apartheid state and the supposed servants of God than this pact as represented by the state-issued, church-endorsed Bibles. Additionally and more shamefully, the inside cover of the Bible carried an inscription in Afrikaans:

Message from the State President P.W. Botha: This Bible is an important part of your calling to duty. When you are overwhelmed with doubt, pain, or when you find yourself wavering, you must turn to this wonderful book for answers…. You are now called to play your part in defending our country. It is my prayer that this Bible will be your comfort so that you can fulfill your duty, and South Africa and her people will forever be proud of you. Of all the weapons you carry, this is the greatest because it is the Weapon of God.

An entire generation of white South Africans were manipulated and persuaded by such perversion of their holy texts. The degree to which the state could convince its core Afrikaner constituency, and to a lesser extent those whites of British descent, that God was playing on their team, influenced directly the power the state would have to maintain the complicity of the white population and recruit the manpower needed to maintain the apparatuses of apartheid.

Consider the example of Eugene de Kock, known today in South Africa by the handle, “Prime Evil.” The commanding officer of the apartheid era’'s death squads at the notorious Vlakplaas facility from the late 1970s until apartheid’'s end, he is currently serving 212 years for crimes against humanity. He was interviewed at length by a prominent psychologist and member of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee about his time as the leader of the most notorious “counterterrorist” group in South Africa.

When asked how he had understood his role as the apartheid state’'s chief assassin, de Kock answered, “"as a crusader"” without hesitation. When asked how he became “apartheid’'s crusader,” he was unable to effectively answer, saying only, “"But your question, —your question, the ‘how,’ I don'’t know.”" De Kock, the leader of the most robust and cruel secret police organization the state had at its disposal, could only offer the religiously-inspired imagery of a crusader against the totale aanslag (total onslaught) of godless, communist, black liberation movements. The entire basis for his justification of his murderous career and for which he was now imprisoned was little more than a concocted religious myth that he had been exposed to since early childhood.

On one fateful day in 1981, de Kock was operating in Namibia, where South Africa was engaged in a bitter struggle with the South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO), and his group came under fire from a group of four SWAPO guerrillas. After killing or capturing them all, de Kock began to go through their supply packs in search of useful intelligence and military equipment. Instead, to his surprise, he found a Bible. He recounted the following to the psychologist interviewer.

"I looked at this, and it was well paged. I mean you could see —it was not neglected. It was read regularly. Here we have a SWAPO man who is supposed to be a communist, who is supposed to be the enemy, the personification of the Antichrist, who also ten-to-one that morning may have read the same Scripture lesson that said the enemy will be given into your hands. Now, on whose side is God now? Even today I sit and— I expect to find a Little Red Book there or one of Lenin'’s condensed writings. And here they had the same Bible that my men and I carried in our rucksacks. They'’ve got exactly the same Bible…”."

De Kock could sit and calmly retell the gruesome details of dozens of murders he had participated in or directed, but somehow it is this story that really shakes him. He trails off without being able to finish his sentence as he relives the experience and attempts to rationalize this experience with the worldview he had come to accept unquestioningly. The problem is, of course, that a worldview in which you believe God to be on your side and your side alone is completely inconsistent with a direct experience that points to the contrary. If you predicate all of your actions on such a construct, than you are doomed to suffer the sort of existential crisis that De Kock will now have to confront as he likely lives out his years in prison and wonders what he was fighting for all along if not for God and country.

Religious convictions can be the motivation for amazing acts of kindness and compassion among people, but they can be bent to far more sinister ends as well. Especially in the case of a people with a perception of history——whether factual or exaggerated——that emphasizes their “people” as being a minority that has been victimized, the danger of being captivated by a violent sort of liberation theology that stresses the unique covenant that exists between God and the oppressed is great.

Although it will never be politically possible for such a situation to exist in South Africa again, one must nonetheless be wary of any struggle for political power between groups that attempt to make God a primary participant in their struggle. Once one begins to slide down that slippery slope, previously unthinkable acts become conscionable and one runs the risk of losing oneself.
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