'Afrikaander circa 1600': Reflections and Suggestions Regarding the Origins and Fate of Afrikaner Nationalism
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2008
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South African Historical Journal
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Taylor & Francis
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University of Cape Town
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Abstract
This article compares two quite different portrayals of, and reflections on, the nature and fate of Afrikaner nationalism in its historical entanglement with the apartheid order. On the one hand, it considers the many and sustained publications of the historian Hermann Giliomee, culminating in The Afrikaners (2003). On the other hand, it provides an analysis and interpretation of a work of art, ‘Afrikaander circa 1600’ (2007), an installation by the visual artist and sculptor Andries Botha. While Giliomee’s ‘biography’ of the Afrikaners remains trapped in their struggle for ‘survival’, it fails to historicise fully the demise of Afrikaner nationalism as a political project. As against this, Botha’s installation, on the analogy of the “Bushman Diorama” in the South African Museum, presents a kind of Afrikaner Diorama in a post-apartheid perspective reducing Afrikaner nationalism and power to historical relics.
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du Toit, A. (2008). 'Afrikaander circa 1600': Reflections and Suggestions Regarding the Origins and Fate of Afrikaner Nationalism. South African Historical Journal, 60(4): 562-578.