Voorstellings van die Suid-Afrikaanse oorlog : Afrikanernostalgie in post-apartheid Suid-Afrika

Abstract

The portrayal of the South African War in songs, books, and television series such as Fees van die ongenooides (2008, Katinka Heyns) and Donkerland (2013, Jozua Malherbe) produced after the turn of the millennium can be read as post-1994 Afrikaner nostalgia focusing on the historical trauma of losing the war. By implication, historical trauma is equated to a second loss of political power and privileges in the 1990s, which left some Afrikaners feeling vulnerable. These two series are interpreted in this article as expressions of Afrikaner nostalgia for the apparent certainties of the past in the context of an uncertain present and future in South Africa, arguing that both were released to boost the morale of Afrikaners after the 1994 election, by showing how their forebears, the Boers, addressed loss and the need to survive during and after the South African War. The author considers how the two series depict the recent socio-political situation by looking at the themes of betrayal, the past, music, land, and the relationship between white and black people.