Special Hearings — Political Party Recalls — 1997-05-16

DR BORAINE: Thank you Chairperson.  General Viljoen I'd like to begin by expressing my own appreciation for your presentation, not only the written but also the one that you have made today.  I want to ask you a question against the background of your own clear private and public commitment to reconciliation in this country.  I'd love to debate with you the analysis of history in this country but clearly I don't think this is opportune.  I'd rather try to focus on what you, yourself suggested ought to be the main thrust and objective of the Commission, namely, reconciliation.
 I think you are also right in saying that part of the problem is that there is no universal understanding, appreciation of a definition of what reconciliation is all about.  The Act makes it very clear that we have certain tasks to fulfil in order that we may strive for national unity and reconciliation.
 Now you have stated that you are representing the ethnic Afrikaner.  You will appreciate that other parties, notably the National Party differ very strongly and would say that they represent the same group and perhaps a wider group.  Now the question I want to ask, against the search for reconciliation in South Africa, who is included in the definition "ethnic Afrikaner" and who is excluded?

GEN VILJOEN: Chairperson thank you very much.  I think we have to admit that there is within South Africa different communities.  So do we have an Afrikaans-speaking community.  I am a member of the Afrikaans-speaking community.  I think Advocate Potgieter is also maybe a member of the Afrikaans-speaking community.  Such a community is bound together by certain cultural aspects such as language, religion, way of life, value systems etc.  The Afrikaner, the ethnic Afrikaner is part of the Afrikaans community.  It falls within the circle, if you have to draw a circle around it, of the Afrikaans community.
 But it is bound together within that circle by more factors, especially the factors of the historical involvement, bringing togetherness, a sense of togetherness, bringing a sense of nationhood, and this is the difference. And now when we say how do I define this in a new South Africa?  I say I don't define it because an ethnic group, and that is the difference between a racial group and an ethnic group.  A racial group is defined from outside.  It is defined by physical criteria, such as the colour of your skin, origin etc.  But an ethnic group is defined from within, not from outside.  And in defining it from inside it uses criteria such as language, culture etc and the nationhood or the "volk" the 'peoples' actually get formed through the history.  Having gone through a certain amount of trauma and having fought wars together and having accepted the common culture, language etc, people then form a group which I call the "ethnic Afrikaner".
 So there is no need to accurately define this.  There is no need to have election rolls for the ethnic Afrikaner.  It is done voluntarily by the Afrikaners themselves.  And that is what we have done in the previous election.  It was decided that, seeing that Mr de Klerk refused us a referendum in February 1994, it was then decided between us and the ANC that the votes brought out for the Freedom Front, in the provincial vote of 1994 election will be counted.  Those votes will be counted as if it was a referendum.  That brought us to 640,000 votes.  We can take it that those people voted for us on the basis of self-determination, which was our main drive in the election campaign.  That represented just below 40% of all total registered Afrikaners.  So those are the people, but I am not tying them with ropes.  I say it can be free.  
 I don't see the boundary between Afrikaans-speaking and Afrikaners as a rigid boundary.  People that would like to associate with the Afrikaner and accept the history of the Afrikaner and the culture of the Afrikaner he becomes that small group of Afrikaners, but he's still a part of the bigger group of Afrikaners.

DR BORAINE: Thank you very much.  Just a brief follow-up, again it's such a wide subject one could spend an enormous amount of time but we don't have that time and my fellow commissioners would be very angry with me if I took this at great length because they obviously would have questions as well.  So let me confine myself to this.
 In terms of defining an ethnic group language of course is fundamental, it's very important and you yourself have stressed that very strongly.  Religion is another criteria and a characteristic, culture, custom and so on.  What I find difficult to understand, again on the basis of driving for national unity and reconciliation in South Africa, is that people who share your language as a first language, or who may even have great difficulty with any other language, who are members of the Dutch Reformed Church or one of its branches, who share a common heritage in terms of culture and food and the like but who coincidentally happen to be black or brown are, it seems to me, excluded from being an ethnic Afrikaner and therefore excluded from joining you and your colleagues in the search for national unity and reconciliation.  You may say that that they can do but they can do it at a distance.  There is an exclusivity which I think was part of our major difficulty in this country earlier which seems to be entrenched.
 Could I ask the question quite pertinently, and I am really quite, quite genuine in this, I am not laying any traps, I just want to know, in the future as South Africa develops through our transition and as we strive for reconciliation and healing and national unity, do you see a time where you and your party could open its doors to all who wish to join, rather than on the basis of what you have outlined as excluding a very large group of people who share many, many values?