- The consequences
- The creation of the South-African Union and the triumph of the British Empire
The
conquest and annexation of the Boer republics allowed the British to
dominate the whole of South Africa. In 1910, the United Kingdom
decided to unite the four political entities (Cape Colony, Natalia,
Transvaal and Orange State) in a South African Union, ancestor of the
present Republic of South-Africa. This entity is an ethnic
conglomerate of 4.5 million inhabitants including 1 million whites,
2/3 are Boers. It is a colonial entity in which, as in the rest of
the British Empire, a regime of racial segregation is in place (this
is thus not Apartheid which introduced it in the South African
state). Dominion of the British Empire, the South-African
Union obtained its independence in 1931 with the treaty of
Westminster.
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| The flag of the South African Union |
This process of
unification has been done with the agreement of the Boers, who fought
for their independence since the XVIIIth century. Why?
After their defeat in 1902 and the atrocities of the British terror
which threatened the Boer people of quasi-extermination, the Boer
population understood that the fight for their political independence
was in vain. They resigned themselves to accept the union with
British and concentrated their efforts on the defense on their
ethnical and cultural identity. The defense of their identity was
especially important because their people was now integrated into an
ethnic conglomerate where the Boers were in important minority (and
the white majority). In this sense, the system of segregation
established by the English which gave the majority for the whites was
an opportunity of revenge for them because the Boers represented the
two-thirds of the white people. Abandoning to the English the
economic power, the Boer began trying to take back the
political power in the new South-African union : ultimately, the
main goal of the Boer nationalists is to take the power to restore an
autonomus state for the Boer people, a Volkstaat.
- The Apartheid
So, the ultimate
consequence of the Boer Wars is the Apartheid policy. The strategy of
conquest of the political power by the Boers lead to the victory of
the boer National Party in 1948.
To preserve the identity and future of the Boer people within a
confederation where Bantu populations are largely the majority with
important population growth, the Boer government decided to establish
a policy of “separate development” or Apartheid, characterized by
a strict separation between the populations. Its architect was
Hendrik Verwoerd.
The
ultimate goal of Apartheid is the creation of an autonomous Boer
Volkstaat within a Southern African Confederation including other
states and in particular "black states": the Bantustans.
The segregation period, in
this point of view, is just a transition before the creation of these
two political entities : a black state and a white state which would
have been the new asylum for the Boer population.
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| Hendrik Verwoerd |
But we know there was gap between theory and
practice : racial prejudice and the protestant biblical spirit of the
Boers led them to believe that blacks were far from being ready for
independence and that they had to be beforehand educated by the
"chosen people" of South Africa. Gradually the famous
“Bantustans”, embryos of black states, became kinds of “animal
reserves for humans” while the black suburbs or townships
concentrated poverty. The reason for this
failure is that the Boer nationalists, supported in this by the
majority of the whites and the United States of America (Cold War strategy), wanted to keep as long as possible the benefit from
the wealth of South African territory while making sure, by the
segregation policy, to not being "overwhelmed" by the
blacks ; the goal of the Volkstaat
became secondary. In French, they wanted "le beurre et l'argent
du beurre”, a new Boer ethnic state inside the Confederation and
the wealth of the whole South African Confederation...
In
1966, after the murder of Verwoerd, the final goal of creation of two
states is abandonned and the Apartheid policy, deprived
of its substance, became
a simple segregationnist system that fall in 1994.
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| Map of the "Bantustans" inside the South African Union |
Epilogue : From
democracy to Zulu dictatorship?
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| The president Jacob Zuma |
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| Nelson Mandela |
The defense of their independence at all costs led the Boers to lose
their republics while the defense of their identity led to the
installation of a kind of Zulu dictatorship in South Africa (Jacob
Zuma). Now, South-Africa is a country where the killing of boer
farmers are daily : since 1994, 4000 farmers have been killed. Lot of
them flee the country of their ancestors : the whites are now only 9%
of the population.
Here the Boers persecuted
on the land their ancestors conquered and fought for...
Against the Dutch, against
the British, against the Bantous, the Boer people, by any means and
at any cost, fought for the defense of its existence but,
ostensibily, in vain. Was the Boer War the beginning of the fall and
of the end of the Afrikaaner nation?
Maybe. But the Boers have shown to all the peoples of the earth what was fighting with honor for its land and the legacy of its ancestors.
This is the essential.
