De/Re-Constructing Borders - University of Minnesota

De/Re-Constructing Borders: Afrikaner Language, Mythology and Nostalgia in the
New South Africa’s Drama
Megan Lewis
University of Minnesota, Dept. of Theatre Arts & Dance
They say there is no place in the universe where one can stand back far enough so
that one can tell one’s story and in the telling can say: here is the truth, exactly as
it happened....a story is always burdened by all the pieces that are lied and
dreamed onto it, and is disfigured by all that is forgotten. But like a child after
nine months in the pregnant belly, disfigured or not, if he wants out, then he must
out. And where was there ever a birthing without a groaning? And without
blood? Yes, blood, because the soul can also bleed...in its own way (3). 1
So Deon Opperman 2 births the story of the Afrikaner in his epic history play in
Afrikaans, Donkerland, or Dark Land, which received a national audience at the
Grahamstown Festival last July and has been heralded as a watershed in South African
drama, an incisive investigation of Afrikanerdom. 3 That this play emerged at a time of
great social upheaval is indicative of a desire to assert a national discourse in a time of
fragmented national narratives. I aim to explore the fragmentation of the social fabric in
the New South Africa and to investigate what a play in Afrikaans, about Afrikaner history,
staged at a principally anglophone festival, says about this new social landscape. I am
interested in how Afrikaners, like those staged in Opperman’s play, who have for so long
played the role of power architects, must now re-stage themselves differently. I then ask, is
this staging really that different?
The Grahamstown Festival offers an annual showcase of amateur, professional,
regional, and national theatre. This event is an aperture through which to view the current
trends and newest plays from around the nation. During its 23 years of existence, the
Festival has mirrored the social field, reflected the social issues. It was established as a
Shakespeare festival in response to what was perceived as “the onslaught of Afrikaner
nationalism.” 4 That a nationalistic Afrikaans play has entered the realm that once
shunned Afrikaner nationalism is quite remarkable. 5
Donkerland received an audience at a time when the euphoria of the post-election
period had subsided, as violence mounted, and as the minute struggles of daily life became
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tangibly strained. F.W. de Klerk resigned as Deputy President in June of 1996, just before
the play opened in Grahamstown. De Klerk’s resignation signaled a definitive shift in
political power that was no longer disputable, particularly among staunch Afrikaners. In
addition, the “New South Africa” is comprised of an open field of varied forces who now (at
least legally) enjoy the same rights and privileges. However, it is still a place of enormous
tension, of struggles that happen on a daily basis between individuals fighting for their
economic and social livelihoods.
Set against the context of the new government, Opperman’s play chronicles the life of
one family: the de Witt’s (literally, “the Whites”), owners of a farm named Donkerland. An
epic history play, Donkerland spans three centuries: from the moment the patriarch stakes
his claim on the land at the tip of the African continent; through the struggles to keep the
farm and the hardships of frontier life in the 19th century; to the nation-building of the
early 20th century; the height and subsequent fall of apartheid; and finally, to the present,
when Donkerland is redistributed to its Zulu heirs under the Land Reappropriation
Commission of Mandela’s new government.
Opperman establishes the complexities of the Afrikaner in the opening monologue of
his play, quoted above. His task is riddled with tensions. The search for Truth, Opperman
recognizes, is not possible. He acknowledges the lies and dreams of the past.
Afrikanerdom is trapped within the boundaries of its own formation and––as Opperman
dares to assert––also dreams of being free of those fetters.
The play is five and a half hours long and was staged in two parts with a dinner
break in between. Opperman selects the most common “signposts” of Afrikaner history,
the key events that punctuate the 300 years of their existence in southern Africa. He
captures the mythology and history’s reverberations through the de Witt family’s actions
and reactions to these events. In this way, he views the political through a personal lens.
Early in Opperman’s play, land––complete with all its associations of ownership
and superiority––is established as a central myth of Afrikaner culture. It is important to
remember that central to the Afrikaners’ sense of identity is the myth of being the Chosen
People, favored by God to inhabit and dominate the Promised Land at the southern tip of
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Africa, to bring civilization to a dark and unruly world. This civilization is a patriarchal,
heavily Calvinist, racist one. With God on their side, the early Dutch and French settlers
claimed the land as their own and land became an essential part of their cultural identity.
By focusing on this central element of Afrikaner mythology, Opperman calls attention to
the colonial legacy of his people. 6 The play echoes with land references: in its title; in the
site of the play; and its the constant battles by each of the characters to claim or detach
themselves from it.
The play begins as the patriarch, Pieter de Witt, plants his land claim marker in the
mid 18th century; it ends with the contemporary Land Reappropriation Act. As Pieter
claims Donkerland, he sets into motion the long struggle that characterizes the narrative of
Afrikaner history and becomes the subject of this play. In Scene Two, Pieter marries
Magriet and the couple establish themselves on Donkerland in a spartan cottage furnished
with the familiar trappings of Voortrekker, or pioneer, life: a limestone fireplace,
springbok-skin floor mats, a musket, and strips of dried beef biltong hanging along the
ceiling. Called away to fight the Zulus, Pieter leaves his pregnant wife at the homestead,
under the care of his Zulu maid and sexual consort, Meidjie. Rivalry between white
mistress and black servant, between sexual competitors for the same man, predominates
the scene. Magriet feels alienated when her husband speaks to Meidjie in Zulu. She
demands that he not do this and requires that Meidjie learn to speak Afrikaans. Before
leaving, Pieter gathers the women around the table and offers a farewell prayer from the
oversized family Bible. Then he kisses his unborn child in Magriet’s belly and says, “My
son...Jacob de Witt...after his grandfather ” (25).
During his absence, Magriet goes into labor but the baby is breached. A neighbor
woman attempts to help her behind an ox skin that separates the bedroom upstage, while
Meidjie frantically carries buckets of water to aid her. Meidjie tries repeatedly to tell the
white woman––in Zulu, in broken Afrikaans, with gestures––that she knows how to turn
the baby but the neighbor barks back at her, “Stand back! Don’t you dare try your
barbarian practices on her....This isn’t your kaffir kraal; this is a white man’s house!” (31).
Pieter arrives as his wife is dying, and under Meidjie’s guidance, tries to save her. In the
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play’s most melodramatic stage moment, Pieter uses his hunting knife to perform a
cesarean on his dead wife’s body. He pulls the male child from her belly and lifts him into
a bright red wash of light as a chorus of Zulu singers chant faster and faster to a climax.
This scene resonates with many elements of Afrikanerdom: the inheritance of a
racist history; an established and revered patriarchy; the secret legacy of miscegenation;
the woman’s role as engenderess of the Volk, or people; the mythology of being the Chosen
Ones; and the symbolic capital of springbok skins, biltong, and Voortrekker heroes. The
baby Jacob is described as “being plucked out of a swamp” (34). That swamp is his
mother’s body, which is presented as a place where male identity is engendered, like the
farm itself that is inseparable from Afrikaner identity.
This tie to the land is developed––and fractured–– later in the play when Mariaan,
the free-spirited and academic-minded daughter, flies the coup for America. She cuts her
traditional ties as reproducer of Afrikanerdom by not staying close to home and having
children. Instead, she pursues a life of the mind, a revolutionary act for a de-Witt (read
Afrikaner) woman. This feeling of self-exile, of seeking “some other place” is a phrase
Opperman repeats over and over throughout the play.
In Part II in the vignette entitled The Salve of Self Glue, Opperman explores the rise
of the official Afrikaner Nationalist Movement and the victory of the Nationalist Party in
1948 (in other words, the beginnings of apartheid). The desire to leave, to break free, is
clearly becoming a tension amongst Afrikaners at the time when their political power is
expanding. The tensions of the social field are manifested through two brothers, one of
whom has stayed on to farm Donkerland, and the other, who has left to seek his fortune in
the city. 7 Ouboet, a Nationalist supporter, has maintained the farm and is the only male
left on Donkerland. His younger brother, Dirk, holds very different political views. He
returns to claim his half of his inheritance after a twenty year absence during which he has
been a teacher in a black school. The intense battle over land and inheritance between
these two brothers, who literally stand on opposite sides of a fence as they speak their
lines, is indicative of the split or rift that politics cause in South Africa and the battle
amongst Afrikaners over who has the right to the land (read here the right to be an
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Afrikaner). The border that stands between brothers, Dirk and Ouboet, is clearly seen in
this exchange about Dirk’s teaching at a black school and their different notions of race:
OUBOET: ‘n Onderwyser?! [A Teacher?! So, you’re a master now.]
DIRK: Mnumzana. [isiZulu for teacher.]
OUBOET: Mnumzana?
DIRK: I taught black children.
OUBOET: ‘n Kaffer skool? [A kaffir school?!]
DIRK: A school, Brother, for children.
OUBOET: Kafferkinders. [Kaffir children.]
DIRK: Kinders.
OUBOET: Kafferkinders (116).
In tangible ways, and at the very site of language and communication, the political
tensions of apartheid during the 1970’s and 80’s manifested themselves on the bodies of
the Afrikaner people. The once unified “nation” is beginning to disintegrate and
Opperman, having established the system in his play, starts to highlight the cracks in its
armor.
At the closing of the play, Opperman quotes a verse from renowned Afrikaans poet
and playwright, N.P. Van Wyk Louw, who reminds us that “this land was not purchased/
merely on loan” (129). The notion of borrowed land, and borrowed time, is especially
poignant in contemporary South Africa. Nelson Mandela lived on borrowed time for 27
years while imprisoned on Robben Island. The time has now come for the Afrikaner to pay
up, and payment is taking effect at the very site of identity: land. Under the recent Land
Commission, properties that originally belonged to indigenous tribes are now being
redistributed to their original owners. Afrikaner farmers, who have worked the land for six
generations, are being required to sell their farms to the government for reappropriation. 8
Opperman leaves the Afrikaner at this moment of landlessness and uncertainty. As
we see the image of Arnold, forlornly staring at a pile of stones on the edge of Donkerland
where Pieter de Witt the patriarch first planted his marker over 300 years before, we hear
the female narrator’s final speech:
... while [Arnold] sat there, a snail slithered across a stone and left a little trail...a
short hyphen of silver in the mighty wilderness; and then it hit him: we...we are
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only here momentarily. The wheels of Africa turn slowly...slowly, but as surely as
death, and one day...someday only a disintegrated little pile of stones will
survive, as witness to the little hyphen of humanity, lost in the grass of
Donkerland (157).
Having established the pathway to Afrikaner identity, by retelling the familiar
stories and reflecting the Afrikaner Self on stage, Opperman then poses the troubling and
dangerous question: Now what? and places the responsibility for answering it in the hands
of the audience: the Afrikaners of today. The tiny trace of vanishing, white humanity has
seen its day. Snails hide in their shells, and many Afrikaners refuse to envision any future
other than the past they’ve known. Opperman warns his fellow Afrikaners not to hide in
their shells or all that will remain is an insignificant trace of white in a dark, donker, land.
Donkerland purports to be a play about the fleeting position of Afrikaners in the
Dark Land of Africa. Yet while it explores the notion that the Afrikaner’s time has run
out––that his hyphen come to an end––in re-enacting his history in an epic play of 5 1/2
hours, it also re-anchors that history. The play conceals its own history-production as it
foregrounds history. To use Pierre Bourdieu’s terms, Opperman is (re)circulating symbolic
capital (that which is material but is not recognized as such) that for so long has formed
the sense of Afrikaner history, truth, and nationalism.
In the traditionally anglophone city of Grahamstown, Opperman’s play represents
both a crossing point and a line drawn in the sand. The play enters the English-speaking
world of Grahamstown, and explores the boundaries of what it means and has meant to be
Afrikaners, and what the future for Afrikaners will be in the New South Africa; as well, by
presenting itself in Afrikaans, it delimits the borders that exist between English- and
Afrikaans-speakers. Within a world where the highly visible, surface borders of apartheid
have been dismantled, the subtler, invisible borders of nationhood are asserted through
the popular medium of theatre and, particularly, through language.
Formerly seen as a language associated with the apartheid regime, Afrikaans is now
seeking to disentangle itself from those negative associations and make its mark on the
new terrain as an autonomous and valid form of utterance. In a country with eleven official
languages, this play reasserts Afrikaans as a language and an ideology. Using the
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engaging expressiveness of theatre, at the country’s most heavily and widely-attended
theatrical venue, Opperman ensures that Afrikaner (nationalistic) interests are being
articulated publicly and in a format that both exposes and shields their political
implications. The play foregrounds politics in its subject matter but also obscures the
political agenda of the play: to re-articulate Afrikaner interests at a time when Afrikaner
power is in question.
So, does this drama do justice to the complex and dislocated field of the New South
Africa, or does it essentially serve a regressive notion of identity as an act of nostalgia? On
the textual level, Opperman tackles the multiplicities that comprise Afrikanerdom. He
dares to ask difficult and painful questions of Afrikaners at the exact moment in which
they are adjusting to a newly-mapped social field in which they no longer wield power. He
interrogates the colonial legacy of whites in South Africa by so faithfully representing the
past on stage and by pointing to its problems. But on the metatextual level, his play is
symptomatic of the state of South Africa after apartheid. It emerged from the anxiety that
comes from political and social transition. As well, it is prescriptive: it forces those who
see it to ask that “What Now?” question. But in the context of a resurgence of Boer culture,
this play is not merely an innocent re-telling of history. The recent proliferation of
nationalist groups such as the Boer Journalist Society that was recently announced, the
internet-happy Boer People’s Republic, smaller right-wing movements such as the Re-
erected Nationalist Party of South Africa, or more powerful and well-known groups such as
the Afrikaner Resistance Movement, indicate a strong sense of nostalgia and a desire to
re-create the mythology of the past, to re-member or re-assemble, a sense of community
amongst Afrikaners. Such movements are often fraught with notions of racial supremacy,
legitimacy to the land, and patriarchal dominance.
My critique of Opperman’s project in no way denies his contribution to “New
Afrikanerdom,” nor does it ignore his courage to question so rigid an identity in a public
manner. But that he writes a play in Afrikaans, about so Afrikaans a subject, at a time
when the Afrikaner no longer holds political power is indicative of a need among New
Afrikaners to find their niche in this Bhabha-esque nation of many narratives.
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Situated as it is in Grahamstown and in the recent political climate, Donkerland,
ends up doing more to avow than to dismantle notions of Afrikaner identity. The
audience’s reaction was one of identification, of solidarity-building. The play functioned as
an act of re-iteration, a labor of re-telling, of re-enacting a cultural identity that seeks
affirmation in a political and social climate in which its existence is tenuous. Within the
text itself, the colonial past is problematized––it explores the schisms that exist within
Afrikaner families and political bodies; it questions the assumptions held by the majority
of Afrikaners about their legitimacy and what makes them a people; and it posits a
dubious and tenuous future for the Afrikaner. Yet in its mode of delivery, a mode that
pulls at the heart-strings with its heroic and epic scope, and is so naturalistic that it
seems as if the audience is watching their own families on the stage, it encourages
audience identification with the all-too-familiar images of themselves, essentially re-
iterating an Afrikaner identity. Staged within the tenuous field of the New South Africa,
this play’s existence asserts a strong sense of Afrikaner pride even if the textual battle
within it attempts to interrogate Afrikanerdom and highlight its shame. Opperman
embraces his past and puts on stage characters that are as much Afrikaners as those in
the audience: he literally ‘re-members’ them, gives them substance. He tries to fathom how
they have had to change and adapt to the ever-changing environment around them. But he
does not forget them, for to do so would be to do the impossible: to accept the fate of that
little hyphen of silvery slime in the darkness of Africa. As the Afrikaans theatre world’s
favorite and most prolific playwright in contemporary South Africa, Opperman cannot, and
will not, do that.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. McNeil, Donald G. Jr. “With Apartheid Done For, What’s a Festival to Do?” New York
Times International: Tuesday, July 16, 1996.
2. Opperman, Deon. Donkerland. Cape Town: Tafelberg, 1996.
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NOTES
1 All textual references are from Deon Opperman’s Donkerland. (Cape Town:
Tafelberg, 1996). All translations are my own.
2 Deon Opperman is one of the popular contemporary playwrights writing in Afrikaans.
Educated at Rhodes and Northwestern Universities, he is as prolific as he is
controversial. His other plays span every genre and have exposed South African
audiences to the taboo subjects of HIV and AIDS, right-wingers and racism, the
trauma of the Border Wars and teenage conscription, and most recently,
homosexuality. Of all his plays, Donkerland received the highest praise and marked
him as an Afrikaans dramatician of the utmost caliber.
3 Donkerland premiered at the Afrikaans-speaking Klein Karoo Festival in Oudtshoorn,
South Africa, in April, 1996. Thereafter, it received a national audience at the
Standard Bank National Arts Festival in Grahamstown in July, followed by a 3-week
engagement at the State Theater in Pretoria. The play was written and directed by
Deon Opperman with a star-studded cast of South Africa’s most accomplished actors.
The production was presented in two parts, each of two and a half hours in duration,
with a dinner break in between.
4 Donald G. McNeil, Jr. “With Apartheid Done For, What’s a Festival to Do?” New
York Times International: Tuesday, July 16, 1996.
5 The term ‘nationalistic’ suggests those activities that a nation engages in to forward its
interests. In this case, the ‘nation’ I refer to are white, Afrikaans-speaking South
Africans known as ‘Afrikaners.’ Afrikaner nationalistic behavior and thought implies
the common national sentiment associated with a group rather than the political or
geographic entity itself. Afrikaner nationalism, on the other hand, refers more directly
to the political activities that lead to, and upheld, apartheid and is strongly connected
to the National Party and its activities. Thus, I consider Opperman’s play a
nationalistic act, in that it is aimed at and serves the Afrikaner sense of nationhood;
in contrast, the Grahamstown Festival was created out of a political climate of
overwhelming Afrikaner nationalism.
6 South Africa’s colonial history is multilayered. Briefly, Dutch and French settlers
colonized the indigenous peoples of the region (Xhosa, Zulu, Griqua, San and Khoi
Khoi) in the 17th century. Seeing a favorable economic opportunity, the British
followed soon after. The longtime tensions between the Boers and the English came to
a head in the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). Suffering a huge defeat, the Boers set
about a project of nation-building that lead in 1938 to the formation of an Afrikaner
national identity and in 1949 to the victory of the National Party and the beginning of
apartheid. After prolonged political struggles lasting decades, South Africa ended its
battle with England by claiming its independence and becoming a Republic in 1961.
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7 The discovery of diamonds and gold in the 1880’s, and the subsequent explosive
growth of cities like Johannesburg, caused a schism amongst Afrikaners
between those who remained farmers and those who broke family tradition to
seek their fortunes in the city.
8 In his use of the Land Commission, Opperman is actually establishing a threat which,
in reality, is not that pressing. Currently, the Commission is completely swamped
with requests and, in light of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, has been
placed on the back burner at this moment in time. The first of thousands of cases was
just recently tried and the official estimates are that the Land Commission will be
busy with its task deep into the next century. Thus, Opperman’s use of this
institution as a metaphor for the fear within the Afrikaner community of losing
identity and land is as a symbolic and dramatic effect that ups the stakes for the
play’s characters and its audiences, rather than an actual social event at this point in
the transition process in South Africa.
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