-Caveat Lector-
2 Hertzog
The morning of November 6 1935 dawned fresh and clear in the Orange Free
State. In the dusty rural constituency of Smithfield, there was much
activity because that afternoon the member of Parliament was to make a
speech. At any time this would have been a highlight of the local farming
community's year. On this occasion interest was heightened because the MP
had been ill and the meeting put off several times.
The MP was the Prime Minister, General Barry Hertzog, the veteran
Boer campaigner and an architect of the guerilla tactics the ragged farmer
army had used with devastating effect against the British some 30 years
previously.
Now in coalition with General Smuts, he was ardently pursuing the
goal of national unity in South Africa, trying to weld English-speakers and
Afrikaans-speakers into one Afrikanerdom, pledged to put "South Africa
First." The Fusion policy of the two Boer generals was proving a viable and
vibrant force in South African politics.
But there were new forces growing among Afrikaners; restless,
rebellious mutterings against the reconciliation politics of Hertzog and
Smuts; forces of exclusive nationalism that wanted nothing to do with
outside, foreign influences; forces that in their time would destroy both
Hertzog and Smuts. It was a new nationalism on the march under the banners
of D F Malan and similar intellectuals in-cluding NJ van der Merwe, T E
Diinges, Eric Louw, C R Swart, J G Strijdom, H F Verwoerd.'
This new breed of nationalists had little in common with the two
generals governing South Africa at the time. They lacked war
experience, they had been born in the platteland, and had studied at South
African and European universities. They had become members of a new
political intelligentsia emanating from the btrrgerstand. The remodelled
National Party held them together, but so did an older and in a sense more
inclusive organisation, the Afrikaner Broederbond.2
53
By 1935 the Broederbond was a flourishing concern. Its membership
had grown from small beginnings in the Transvaal 17 years previously, to
include members from all the provinces apart from Natal - disparagingly
known as the last bastion of the British
Empire. By 1935 it had harnessed to its exclusive nationalist, re-publican
cause significant numbers of farmers, civil servants, rail-way workers,
budding businessmen and politicians. It also en-joyed the support of a large
number of Afrikaner dominees and
schoolteachers. With the spiritual and educational leaders well and truly in
the fold, it was beginning to shape up as a durable power in South African
affairs. At that stage, South Africa as a whole was unaware of this growing
force in its midst. The secrecy on which the organisation's founding fathers
had so strictly insisted ensured that.
However, when the sun set over Smithfield that clear November day
the carefully nurtured, closely guarded secrecy lay shat-
tered. The venerable old Boer general, Hertzog, had launched a blistering
attack on the Broederbond and poured scorn and con-tempt on its creators'
claims to be better Afrikaners than anybody else.
The echoes of that speech, delivered in a strained and croaking
voice by Hertzog, who was suffering from a throat infection, were to
reverberate around South Africa for years to come. Even today, the
organisation must look back at what became known as the Smithfield address
with a shuddering distaste for the unwelcome memories it recalls. Smithfield
was a watershed for the Broeder-
bond, from which it has never fully recovered. It launched a wave of
suspicion and mistrust which has worried the organisation ever since.
It also marked the beginning of the end for Hertzog, who had given
his all for his people and country. At Smithfield he joined battle with a
force that was to prove more than a match for him and drive him into lonely
defeat. Author W A de Klerk3 sets the
scene. "For more than 30 years, Hertzog had accepted the growing burden of
serving his people and country . . . In the Anglo-Boer War he had been among
the successful commando leaders who had invaded the (Cape) Colony, and had
ultimately managed to establish Boer control over a large part of the
north-western terri-tory . . . He had led a ragged band of burghers over
the endless
Karroo, often being forced to proceed on foot, because of horse sickness. In
many encounters with the British, his'commando had
54
miraculously survived. His most notable victory had been the capture of
Calvinia on January 10 1901. This town was later to be rep-resented in
Parliament by D F Malan. Meanwhile, his wife had suffered deeply in a
British concentration camp.
"After the war, in the days of the Orange River Colony, he had
fought and won the battle for equality of the languages in the
schools. At De Wildt, in 1912, he had stood under a korri tree and had
announced his championship of the eie (literally, own). All who gave their
unconditional loyalty to South Africa, he said, were Afrikaners. In 1924, he
had formed a most successful coali-tion with the English-speaking
Labourites. He had fought for and established iron and steel and other
industries. He had expanded the railways. He had cared for the dispossessed
of his people. He had fought, against the most impassioned opposition, for a
national flag. He had been the decisive factor behind dominion sovereign
independence and diminishing colonialism. South Africa had been hit by
drought and depression and his people had suffered. He himself had gone
through difficult times, but he had always survived. He was still deeply,
reverently attached to the eie and to the ideal of national unity. He
visualised both great cultural traditions flowing in two parallel streams.
With Smuts, he had found a modus vivendi. They were fully agreed on the deep
necess-ity of encouraging a true South African spirit, a feeling of national
self-respect. After the many years of unrelenting political conflict, the
country overwhelmingly supported Fusion.
"The only serious opposition came from the Cape Nationalists, under
the leadership of Malan. In a speech at Stellenbosch on June 29 1934, Malan
had openly accused Hertzog of dealing on his own initiative with Smuts, who
had been rejected by the volk, at the cost of principle. 'Principles?'
Hertzog angrily expostulated. What did these political parvenus know about
principles when they libelled a man of the stature of Smuts in the way they
did? They, the Malanites, were, according to themselves, the only true be-
lievers. Hertzog himself had become 'the poor old general . . .'
"Hertzog himself gave no quarter. His intolerance and angry
invective towards his former political comrades remained unsur-
passed. His abhorrence was unmitigated and complete. What, Hertzog was to
inquire with mounting bitterness, had these 'super-nationalists' ever done
for their country to warrant their fantastic claims? All they ever seemed to
do, he might have
thought, was to gather in the Koffiehuis in Cape Town. There
55
they sat, morning after morning, listening to the pronouncements of a man
who had watched the Anglo-Boer war from the comfort of the Netherlands
(Verwoerd) . . .
"Hertzog was right in judging the behaviour of the new political
intellectuals as being - to use a modern term - one-dimen-
sional. They were concerned only with Afrikaner ascendancy in an Afrikaner
nation. But he was wrong in trying to explain every-thing in terms of an
unadorned power struggle. What he failed to recognise was the intimation of
revolutionary thought among the political intellectuals of the expanding
btrvgevstand. Increasingly it became for him a personal struggle. In the
Koffiehuis, discussions tended to be directed to the idea of a completely
new South Afri-can order. It would not only be a republic, it would be an
Afrikaner republic of a particular kind. Its shape could not yet clearly be
seen, but it would be fundamentally different from what had always been
obtained. What was being discussed in the Kof-fiehuis was only a reflection
of ideas being deeply considered in the Broederbond . . ."
On November 7 1935 at Smithfield, then, Hertzog went to the heart of
the new force spreading unease in the South African pol-itical scene - the
Broederbond itself. Said The Stari- headlines that afternoon: "Aims of the
Afrikaner Broederbond - Secret Society Backed by Nationalists - Dangerous
Policies - Folly of Domi-nation By One Race in Union." The following
morning, the Rand
Daily Mail followed up in the peculiar, multi-tiered headlines fashionable
at the time: "Premier Denounces Underground
Racialism - Secret Anti-British Broederbond Attacked - Misuse of Voortrekker
Movement Alleged."
The Star, from which the bulk of this account is drawn, began its
report: "In his speech at Smithfield this afternoon, the Prime Minister,
General J B M Hertzog, referred at length to a secret society, known as Die
Afrikaner Broederbond, and pledged to se-cure dominance of South Africa by
the Afrikaans-speaking section, or, as it had appeared recently, by the
'purified Nationalist
Party.'
"In this organisation, which had originally been cultural, but was
now frankly political, Dr Malan and his lieutenants were prominent members.
The Broederbond, stated the Prime Minister, sought to advance its members in
the civil service and in pol-itical life and to induce Afrikaners to buy
only from shops owned by Afrikaners.
56
"General Hertzog described this movement as a dangerous attempt to
spread disunion in the country and said it was a further reason why the
people should back the United Party solidly."
General Hertzog went on to apologise for appearing before his
onstituents somewhat later in the year than usual. The "vicissi-
tudes" of his advancing years were making an increasing impact on his life,
he said. Then he dealt at length with farming matters, how to combat weeds
and erosion, rural housing schemes, pro-visions for labourers, the
availability of food, clothing and the
"usual necessities of life," wages, and labour conditions generally, the
state of the gold mining industry, prosperity in the Union - all matters of
vital importance to a South Africa emerging from the debilitating years of
Depression.
Winding up the "state of the nation" part of the speech, General
Hertzog said no unprejudiced person could doubt that the success which had
crowned the efforts of the Government and the circum-stances which had made
these efforts possible were due above all to the fact that the grave
problems which had been solved so suc-cessfully were made the
responsibility, not of a party political roup, but of the whole nation
joined together in one united national party, and operating through a
Government which could ct, and did act, as an authoritative body on behalf
of, and in the interests of, the whole South African nation, the
Afrikaans-speak-ing as well as the English-speaking sections.
Emphasising the vital importance of harmony and cordial relations
between these two sections of the population, General Hertzog continued:
"Unfortunately storm clouds are already beginning to gather and, unless we
are on our guard, the foundations of our whole state structure - freedom,
language equality and the rest - will soon be wrenched asunder and our state
structure will crash to pieces in its fall.
"What do we see about us today? Restless and feverish attempts n all
directions to create dissension among the people; to incite one race against
the other in irreconcilable aversion and hate to-wards each other; to
exploit our cultural possessions, our language and our religion, our history
and our derivation as inimical means of attack and for the purpose of
fighting, libelling and abusing one nother. The political platform is no
longer looked upon as a place or opportunity for imparting information or
guidance to the eople, for reasoning and convincing, but rather for
malicious emonstrations, for incitement and fisticuffs.
57
"Why all this nervous excitement, these ill-mannered cad displays?
Does not every one of us feel that this is an unusual
phenomenon, something foreign to the nature and character of the
frikaans-speaking South African? Why then this passionate poli-tical
disorderliness, in which even fist assaults on men and de-fenceless women
are no rare occurrences? What lies behind all these outbursts, accompanied
by excessive political activities?
"That the division among the Afrikaans-speaking section of our ation
is the contributing cause towards all this misconduct and
nation-violation is responsible for this division among our people is
therefore of the greatest importance.
"We shall thereby not only discover with whom the fault lies, ut
also what the aim and motives are of those to whom the guilt
attaches, while we shall further be placed in a position to exercise the
necessary restraint on the mischief that is at present threatening our
entire national existence."
At this point Hertzog quoted at length from previous speeches y
Malan showing that the latter had declared himself on numer-ous occasions to
be in full support of attempts to unify English and frikaans-speaking
sections of the South African population.
Then, said Hertzog bitterly, within four months of pleading for national
unity, Malan had spoken at the Federal Council of the National Party in
Pretoria, where, in collaboration with Dr NJ van der Merwe, he did all in
his power to wreck national uniftca-
tion. When he found he could not do this, he had isolated himself in a
separate party of purified nationalists. Instead of proceeding with his plea
for a united Afrikanerdom, Malan had suddenly swung round and become the
champion of division and con-troversy among Afrikaners. He accused Malan of
being motivated by racial animosity in deciding not to take part in
unification.
He went on: "Before I proceed to deliver proof of what I have
ust said, however, permit me to inform you of a disclosure made to me
recently. It affects a secret society called Die Afrikaner Broe-derbond and
the relation in which Dr Malan and other prominent leaders of the Purified
National Party stand to the society. Die Afrikaner Broederbond is a society
established in 1918. At incep-tion it was entrusted with the task of
guarding the cultural interests of Afrikaans-speaking Afrikanerdom, with the
definite provision in its constitution: 'Party politics are excluded from
the
Bond.'
"No objection could, therefore, be raised against the Broeder-
58
bond restricting its membership to Afrikaans-speaking persons, nd I want to
accept that, as a purely cultural body, the Bond did good work.
"So long as the Bond remained a purely cultural body, with urely
cultural objects, no particular objection could be taken
against its establishment as a secret society, except that it might be
misused - as so often happens with secret organisations, owing to their
nature - for purposes other than its defined objects and thus become a
danger. Unfortunately, this was precisely what was soon to happen with the
Bond. In the long run party politics could not be kept out of it and as the
influence and political views of a certain section in our public life gained
ascendancy in the Bond, it was converted from a cultural to a party
political organisation.
"In August 1932, the Broederbond had proceeded so far along the road
of party politics that the chairman of the Executive Council, which is the
highest authority of the Bond, could, as chairman of the Bond's congress,
make the following statement with the eneral approval of the congress. 'Our
Afrikaner Broederbond must not withdraw its hand from the cultural work,
merely be-cause sufficient vigilant defenders have now come to the fore. But
for a start, provision has been made for that primary national need.
"'In conformity with this new situation we find that the
Broe-derbond is gradually making over its cultural work to its consider-ably
bigger son, the FAK4 and I think that we should be acting wisely if we
pursue this course also at this Bond council. I consider that national
culture and national welfare cannot unfold fully if the people of South
Africa do not also constitutionally sever all foreign ties.
"'After the cultural and economic needs, the Afrikaner Broeder ond
will have to devote its attention to the constitutional need of our people.
Added to that, the objective must be an entirely independent, genuine
Afrikaans form of government for South Africa
. . . a form of government which . . . through its embodiment in an own
personal head of State, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh
. . . will inspire and cement us to irresistible unity and strength.'
"But the Bond was soon to proceed much further along the political
course. On January 16 1934 a circular letter was issued by the highest
executive authority of the Bond, namely, the Executive Council, signed by
the chairman, Professor J C van Rooy, and the general secretary, Mr I
M Lombard. This letter, which was directed to all members of the Bond, reads
as follows, 'Our test for
59
brotherhood and Afrikanership does not lie in a political direction, but . .
. in aspiring after the ideal of a never-ending existence of a
separate Afrikaans nation with its own culture.
"'It has been made sufficiently clear at the previous meeting of the
Bond council that what we expect of members is that they should have as
their object the Afrikanerising (verufrikuansing) of South Africa in all
aspects of its life. Brothers, your Executive Council cannot tell you to
promote party political fusion or union, or to fight it . . . but we can
appeal to every brother to choose in
the party political sphere that which, according to conviction, is most
helpful for the Bond's object and the Bond's ideals as out-lined above and
as is known to you all.
"'Let us focus our attention on the fact that the primary
consideration is whether Afrikanerdom will reach its ultimate destiny of
domination (baasskup) in South Africa. Brothers, our solution for South
Africa's ailments is not that one party or another shall obtain the whip
hand, but that the Afrikaner Broederbond shall govern South Africa.' (The
organisation began recruiting Afrikaner Nationalist political figures about
1934. Among the first nationalist MPs to join the Broederbond were D F
Malan, C R Swart, J G Strijdom, N J van der Merwe, and H F Verwoerd.
Later, through the organisation's active participation in the Re-publican
struggle, "the Afrikaner Broederbond bound itself more
closely to the national organising of the political struggle for State power
. . ." The document also boasts that after the clash with
Hertzog, "with the leadership of the National Party . . . in the
hands of Broeders, the Afrikaner Broederbond was in the fortu-nate position
of being able to discuss any differences of a serious nature with our
Broeder leaders in the political field . . ." Still later in the document,
in a remarkable example of "double-talk", the statement is made: "The
Afrikaner Broederbond as a non-party political cultural organisation devotes
its support more and more to the National Party's political struggle . . .")
"In order to realise the precise tendency and meaning of the words I
have just quoted from the address of the chairman and from the circular of
the Executive Council of the Bond, it must be explained here that a person,
in order to be admitted to member-ship of the Bond, must conform, inter
uliu, to the following demands: (1) He must be Afrikaans-speaking; (2) His
home language must be Afrikaans; (3) He must subscribe to the ideal of a
never end-ing existence of a separate Afrikaans nation with its own culture.
60
"As stated by Professor van Rooy, Mr du Plessis and others on
various occasions, the word 'Afrikaner' in Broederbond circles conveys the
exclusive idea of a Dutch Afrikanerdom. This is also made abundantly clear
in the constitution and other articles of the Bond.
"Now, when we consider that wherever these two Potchefstroom
ministers of religion use the words 'Afrikaner' and
'Afrikanerdom', they mean Afrikaans-speaking Afrikaner and
Afrikaans-speaking Afrikanerdom, and when we consider, more-
over, that the membership of the Broederbond is strictly confined to
Afrikaans-speaking persons, then the words of Professor van Rooy as well as
those of Mr du Plessis, allow of no doubt as to what is intended by it all.
"The Broederbond's high ideal and aspiration, according to what they
themselves inform us, is to let Afrikaans-speaking Afrikanerdom attain
domination in South Africa, and to get the Afrikaans-speaking Broederbond to
govern South Africa. Very
pretty, surely! Flattering to the soul of Afrikaans-speaking Afrikaners
such as you and I! But it suffers from one great deti-ciency - a deficiency
that must of necessity lead to the downfall of the Afrikaans-speaking
Afrikanerdom itself, if this form of Afrikaner jingo self-glorification is
persisted in. It is forgotten that there are also English-speaking
Afrikaners in South Africa, who are also entitled to a place in the South
African sun.
"When will that foolish, fatal idea cease with some people that they
are the chosen of the gods to govern over all others? The
English-speaking section has tried this with the Afrikaans-speak-ing
section, but they did not succeed. The Afrikaans-speaking sec-tion has also
tried it with the English-speaking section, but they also have failed.
Neither the one nor the other will ever succeed in a policy of domination,
and where the Potchefstroom fanaticism is out once again to incite
Afrikaans-speaking Afrikanerdom to a repetition of the past, I want to ask
Afrikaans-speaking Afrikaner-dom - my own people - whether South Africa has
not suffered sufficiently in the past from Afrikaner strife and dissension?
I want to ask you whether our language and our freedom are of so little
value and significance to us that we should once again stake it in a gamble
from pure racial animosity and fanaticism?
"When I exclaimed, 'Very pretty, surely flattering to the soul of
the Afrikaans-speaking Afrikaner such as you and I,' I had unfor-tunately
forgotten one thing - that it is clear from the provisions
61
of prescriptions of the Broederbond as well as from the circular letter of
the Executive Council, and of Professor van Rooy, that where they speak of
the Afrikaner, or of Afrikanerdom, which must dominate in South Africa, you
and I, who are not brothers, are not included. You and I will have to be
satisfied that we shall never have the privilege to share in the Broederbond
domination in South Africa. We are not Afrikaners.
"But, what is more, not even all the brothers count as Afrikaners or
are considered worthy of sharing in that superlative privilege of
domination. According to the test laid down by the Executive Council and
Professor van Rooy, for true Afrikanership nobody can have a claim to
Afrikanership other than persons who have set themselves the ideal of the
Afrikanerising which excludes the English language and the English-speaking
Afrikaner. The Fusion
brother, such as you and I, and any other protagonists of national unity are
isolated from the privileged circle of true Afrikaners pre-destined by
Professor van Rooy and his Executive Council for domination in South Africa.
"By this opening address of Mr du Plessis and the circular letter
of the Executive Council signed by Professor van Rooy, the cul-tural mask of
the Afrikaner Broederbond has been removed, and it has entered the political
arena with no ambiguous battlecry. As will be clear to you in a moment, the
Broederbond has been con-verted into a secret purified National Party that
is occupying itself with that secret propaganda work for the promotion of
the interests of the purified brothers and of the purified National Party.
As could be expected, the Bond has been put at the disposal of the Purified
National Party in ever increasing measure since 19325 and its doors have
been thrown wide to all who can pass as leading or prominent purified
nationalists. But the wider the doors of the Bond are opened for the
purified party, the tighter they are closed on the United Party, so that
since 1932 not a single leading political person taking an active part in
politics and belonging to the United Party, has been taken up by the Bond.
"The membership list of the Broederbond has been swelled almost
exclusively by prominent musket-bearers and propagandists of the Purified
National Party. The Broederbond has, since that time, fallen almost
exclusively into the hands of the purified Nationalists, while all brothers
not belonging to the purified party have been pushed aside as far as
possible. It is the purified national-ist brothers to whom must be ascribed
the fact that the Bond, since
62
that date, has been misused in various ways for purposes and objects for
which it was never intended and which have shocked the feelings of right and
justice of those among the brothers who do not belong to the Purified
National Party to such an extent that some were obliged to take part in
active protest.
"I have just said that since 1932 the Bond has been placed more and
more at the disposal of the Purified National Party and its objects. How, it
is asked, was this possible without the joint knowl-edge of the Fusion
brothers in the Bond?
"The answer is simple. The non-purified section who were known not
to sympathise with purified politics or known to be ac-tive Fusionists were
simply ignored and shunned as apostate brothers and kept in the dark as much
as possible as to what was
transpiring. Where, thus, it concerned matters in the interests of the
purified National Party, they were not consulted, and were left in ignorance
of what was being done.
"How easy it is for a section or branch to intrigue to its heart's
content is evident when I tell you that it is an instruction to every member
of the Bond that each member must be well known to every other member in his
section. Everyone knows, therefore, who is a Fusionist or not, and who must
be shunned as apostate. No matter what the cultural object and striving of
the Afrikaner Broederbond may have been in the past, in the light of what I
have submitted to you here today, there can be no doubt that in the
Broederbond we now have to do with a secret political society ac-cessible
only to, and consisting only of Afrikaans-speaking
Afrikanerdom to domination in South Africa, ignoring the rights and claims
of the English-speaking section of our population . . .
"Of this secret Broederbond, which has as its ideal dissension
among the Afrikaner nation, through the exclusion of the English section
from the government of the land, Dr Malan has been a member and brother
since coalition. It must be clear to everyone why Dr Malan was suddenly
converted from a protagonist to an antagonist of Afrikaner national unity.
His membership of this anti-English movement of necessity compelled him to
depart from the policy of national unity, which included the
English-speaking Afrikaner; he was further compelled by his connection with
the Broederbond to pursue the course of national division and strife.
"Three things emerge crystal clear from what I have just divulged:
(1) that membership of this secret society is entirely in
63
conflict with co-operation for the establishment of a united Afrikanerdom of
English-speaking and Afrikaans-speaking sec-
tions; (2) that Dr Malan, by becoming a member of this secret society, had
of necessity to become disloyal to his earlier doctrine of a united nation
and had of necessity to refuse co-operation with the United Party; (3) that
when Dr Malan denies that he was influ-
enced, and is still influenced, in his refusal to co-operate with the United
Party and national unity, by racial animosity and the desire to dominate
over the English section of our population, he makes an inaccurate
statement.
"The question with which I commenced my address on this subject has
now been answered. We know now decidedly who and what is responsible for the
national division and strife among us. What a pathetic figure Dr Malan
strikes in this sorry episode of our national history!
"But what I have said here about Dr Malan applies no less to his
first lieutenants, Dr van der Merwe, Advocate Swart, the Rever-end C W M du
Toit, Advocate Strydom and Messrs Werth, Haywood, Martins and others, all
members of the Broederbond and thus all obliged, with Dr Malan, not to
support any national unity in co-operation with the English section of our
fellow citizens . . .
"We see now in what close relationship the Afrikaner Broeder bond
stands to the Purified National Party. The leaders and mov-ing spirits of
the one are the leaders and the moving spirits of the other. There can be no
doubt, therefore, that the secret Broeder-bond is nothing less than the
Purified National Party busy work-ing secretly underground, and that the
Purified National Party is nothing but the secret Afrikaner Broederbond
which conducts its activities on the surface. Between the two, the
unification of Afrikanerdom is being bartered for a
republican-cum-Calvinistic Bond.
"By departing from the sphere of national culture and mixing in
politics, the Afrikaner Broederbond has shed its youthful innoc-ence and has
suddenly become a grave menace to the rest and peace of our social community
as well as to the irreproachable pu-rity of our public life and of our civil
administration, even where it operates in the economic-cultural sphere.
"To realise the nature and extent of the danger with which we are
now being threatened by the secret machinations and activities of the
Broederbond, it is necessary for me to impart to you certain information
from secret documents of the Bond regarding its or-
64
ganisation, members and several other particulars. The strictness
with which the Bond's activities are kept a secret appears from the fact
that only very few persons outside its organisation know of its
existence, although it has existed for 17 years and although there are few
towns or villages in the Free State where it is not in oper-
ation, or where it has no organisation.
"The members of the Bond are not many - at the outside 2 000. But
the power of the Bond does not lie in its membership, but in its secret
organisation, which, for instance, is spread over the whole Free State like
a network for the purpose of active propa-
ganda. In this network, every vestige of information of any sort that may be
useful to the National Party, true or untrue, is caught up and disseminated.
The sort of propaganda that emanates from this network is of a nature
similar to that employed by Die I/d&-lad and Die Btrrger.'
"In this network of secret propaganda lies the main power and
influence of the Broederbond. Not solely in this. It is closely con-nected
secretly with a number of institutions deliberately ex-ploited by interested
politicians and semi-politicians to be used se-cretly as instruments for the
furtherance of secret motives. The Federasie van Afrikaanse
Kultuurverenigings, the Handhawers-
Bond, the Helpmekaar, the Voortrekkers, the Republican Bond, the Calvinistic
Bond - all these, no matter how useful and neces-sary some of them may be to
the Afrikaner nation and its interests, are systematically used and misused,
through the medium of the Broederbond for those ends.
"Each member, under solemn promise, is obliged to maintain the
strictest secrecy. Nothing affecting the Bond, its existence, its members,
its activities, or its organisation dare be divulged. The Bond is organised
into local divisions or branches of at least five members each, each branch
having its own executive and its own domestic rules. For the rest, each
branch stands by itself and acts as its executive thinks fit as a separate,
independent entity, if neces-sary without the knowledge of the rest.
"At the head of the Bond is an Executive Council of nine mem-bers
elected annually by the Bond council or congress and vest-ed with
illimitable power of control over the affairs of the Bond. To become a
member, each person concerned must under-go a very strict and secret test on
the lines of the Freemasons . . .
"In the secret manual of instructions, printed for the use of
members of the Bond, it is laid down that brothers must endeav-
65
our to support the interests of brothers, and that brothers should support
one another's undertakings as far as possible. The spirit of preference
between brothers and their interests is obvious throughout the rules of the
Bond and controls the relationship be-tween brother and brother everywhere.
So much so that in the domestic rules of certain branches of the Bond, which
have re-ceived the approval of the Executive Council of the Bond, the
fol-lowing, inter lia, is definitely laid down: 'The promotion of each
other's interests in the community . . . shall be the duty of Bond members .
. . brothers shall, wherever possible, support one anoth-er's business
by word and deed, and be one another's intercessio-nary wherever the
opportunity offers.'
"Even if the Broederbond had never become a political society and
had contined to exist as a purely cultural body, gross injustice would have
been done whenever a brother furthered the interests of a fellow brother
along secret channels to the detriment of a non-brother who might have equal
or greater claims to support. Hence the Bond is a secret body with the
strictest injunction against each member to maintain the utmost secrecy of
what happens, and it is therefore impossible to discover what is transpiring
behind the
scenes; there is no protection for the non-brother against the secret
supporters of the brother.
"Generally, there is nothing to prevent the Bond from being misused as an
instrument of organised injustice towards non-brothers
-or even as an instrument of organised action in conflict with the best
interests of the State and the public service.
"As an instance of how the Broederbond abuses its powers as a secret
political society, I must remind you of what happened re-cently when the
so-called Le Roux motion' was before Parliament. While the motion was being
discussed, the Broederbond set to work secretly and a secret organisation
was set afoot by broth-ers on the platteland for the purpose of making
propaganda in sup-port of the motion. The brothers, encouraged by the
Purified Nationalists in Parliament, succeeded in manoeuvring matters in
such a way that numbers of telegrams were sent to practically every
platteland member of Parliament for the purpose of bring-ing pressure to
bear on him to support the motion.
"Through this secret activity, the Bond endeavoured to create the
impression that the members of Parliament had to do with a spontaneous
expression of feeling on the part of the people of the respective
constituencies. The Bond in this instance, therefore, de-
66
liberately assumed a role in a play of deceit, by which it endeavoured to
influence the free vote of members of Parliament in favour of the purified
Nationalists in Parliament. The Broederbond, a secret society, deliberately
availed itself of its secret nature to mislead representatives of the people
of the Union in the ex-ecution of their national duties.
"Another instance of the secret interference and the secret misuse
of the Broederbond is provided by the following. The purified brothers in
Parliament were apparently embarrassed in Cape Town recently by a lack of
co-operation among themselves on a matter in which it was desired that they
should all vote against the Government. To obviate a similar occurrence in
the future, some of the purified brothers, without the knowledge of other
brothers, agreed to avail themselves of the secret existence of the Bond
with its secret authority and influence.
"Suddenly one day the brothers in Parliament received notice that a
certain gentleman from Potchefstroom had been appointed, or would be
appointed, as political commissioner for the Bond in Parliament, and that he
had been entrusted with the task of attend-ing the sittings of Parliament
from a vantage point somewhere in the gallery, with power to issue
instructions from time to time to Parliamentary brothers, telling them how
to.vote etc. This was a bit too much for the brothers in Parliament who were
not pre-pared to submit themselves as puppets to a Bond dictator. Mutiny and
revolt on the part of Fusion brothers was the result, and the Broederbond
had to pocket its commissioner and depart.
"The Fusion brothers in Parliament deserve our compliments.
But I cannot help warning them that those who wish to dine with the devil
must provide themselves with long spoons. From this again it transpires how
much the Bond and the purified National Party is one and the same body,
functioning in two separate com-partments - the one underground and the
other above ground.
"What is there to prevent brothers seeking to promote one another's
interests in respect of appointments and promotions in the public service to
the detriment of more deserving non-broth-ers? Has this not already happened
without its being discovered? I put it to you, what protection have you and
I and our children, who are not members of the Broederbond, against the
misuse of secret influence by brothers whereby we are prevented from
at-taining what is legitimately and rightfully our due?
"This I do know, that brothers have urged their prior claims
67
over non-brothers before responsible officials of the State, who are also
members of the Broederbond. If I understood the matter
aright, these claims of brothers went so far as to demand that the
prescriptions of the Broederbond should weigh more with broth-ers occupying
responsible positions than the legitimate rules of the public service.
Fortunately, these attempts failed, by reason of the courageous opposition
which these presumptious demands met at the hands of the officials
concerned.
"If the prescriptions of the secret manual of instructions to which
I have referred, or of the domestic rules of the branch quoted by me, are
strictly carried out, then a brother who has a shop can lay claim to the
support of his fellow-brothers. This would be a Bond obligation as expressed
in the rules quoted by me. Wherever an opening in the (public) service
occurred, either for an appointment or for promotion, one brother would have
to exert himself to get a fellow-brother competitor appointed or pro-moted.
"This would be a Bond obligation in terms of the rules. To the
Broederbond and the brother it would matter little what your or my claims
may be for support for our shop, or what claims you or I may have to an
appointment or for promotion. We are not brothers and we therefore do not
count at all. In the meantime, we are deprived of the opportunity of acting
honestly and openly in the protection of our threatened interests. All
measures adopted against us are conducted in secret, underground, where you
and I cannot possibly discover what is being done to deprive us of what is
due to us.
"With reference to the Broederbond, I have to address a very serious
word to our teachers. Recently, I addressed a circle confer-ence of the
United Party at Oudtshoorn, and when the conference had gone into committee,
a number of persons unexpectedly com-plained of the participation of
teachers in politics. At the end of the discussion an earnest appeal was
made to me by a prominent del-egate in the following terms. 'In the name
of God, General, we
mothers appeal to you to do all in your power to prevent that our children
should be incited on the school benches against their
parents. You have no idea how bad it has become.'
"These complaints of improper influence imparted by teachers to
children on the school benches have reached me before here in the Free
State. What are the facts of the case? If these allegations are true, then
all I can say is that a grosser and more serious abuse of
68
position and profession is hardly conceivable. Whether it is true or not, I
cannot tell, but what I do know is that the number of teach-ers in the
Broederbond comprises more than one-third of the Bond's membership.
"I know also that there are very few towns or villages in the Free
State where the Bond has not created for itself a little nest of five or
more brothers, who must serve as the focal point for Bond propaganda. I know
furthermore, that there is hardly one of these nests on which one or more
teachers are not brooding. Assuming that there is an average of only two
teachers to each of these little nests in the Free State, we can form a fair
idea of the subterranean activities and machinations that are being
conducted by teachers in respect of the children. When to the number of
these subterranean purified teacher Nationalists is added the number of
surface puri-fied teacher Nationalists, then I can imagine that the parents
of children from non-purified homes will have a lot to complain of.
"Is this a condition of affairs that can be tolerated by the State?
We have seen that the Broederbond is a secret political society which has as
its object the domination of the Afrikaans-speaking section over the
English-speaking section, and whereby the nation has been torn apart into
dissension and bitter strife.
"Should one allow the teachers, who are paid by the State to educate
the children of the nation, to abuse the opportunity thus provided them of
coming into contact with the children, for the purposes of commotional
political propaganda? But, what is
more, is it right that a teacher should be allowed, by membership of the
Broederbond to reveal his inimical attitude towards the
English-speaking section of parents whose children have been en-trusted to
his care, bearing in mind also that the English-speaking parents pay the
salaries of the teachers as well as the Afrikaans-speaking parents?
"The vulgar public participation of some teachers in ordinary party
politics has already been so objectionable to the parents and to the
educated public in general that protests - which have led to a measure of
restraint - have had to be lodged against this state of affairs. Now,
however, that the impression has been created in the mind of the parents of
a secret devotion on the part of the teacher to the ignoble task of bringing
the youthful mind secretly into re-volt against their parents, the whole
matter may easily lead to a most deplorable loss of that respect and
goodwill, which the pub-lic has entertained towards the teachers as a class.
69
"Membership of a secret society must of necessity immediately place
the person concerned in a position of suspicion, as against his fellow
beings, and cause him to be lowered in proportional measure in that trust,
if not the respect of his environment. Where suspicions of that nature are
evinced in the direction of parental fear for corruption of the youthful
minds of their children, they will unfailingly give rise, in whatever
measure, to a feeling of hate and disdain.
"The deeply unfortunate aspect of disdain or hate of this nature is
that it does not confine itself to the guilty individual, but spreads and
rapidly embraces the whole class to which that individual be-longs. It is to
be expected that this will be the outcome to teachers as a class arising out
of the relationship some of them bear to the Broederbond.
"Where the teacher is today acting in secret, he must come out into
the open. There is nothing which requires the clear daylight so much to stay
sound as our education. The teaching class has never yet received anything
but the biggest and most upright friendliness and respect from me, and as
long as they remain the trusted keepers of the happiness and education of
the youth of South Africa, they will continue to receive that friendship and
re-spect from me. But, as has again appeared here this evening by what I
have just said, it cannot be expected from me that I shall keep silent in
regard to individual pedagogic abuses and misdeeds on the ground of my
goodwill towards the teachers as a class.
"That an outcry occurs every time I draw attention to abuses and
misdeeds perpetuated by individual teachers, as was the case at the recent
Free State Teachers' Congress, cannot deter me from doing my duty towards my
nation. I am prepared to leave it to the judgement of men and women who
still harbour sentiments of honesty and decency as to whether I was
justified in speaking as I did at the congress in Bloemfontein two months
ago and as I have spoken here again today.
"Suffice it further for me here to impart a little communication to
the head committee of the Orange Free State Teachers' Associ-ation that will
interest them. In August of last year they were so kind as to give me the
unsolicited assurance, through their secretary, that they as a teachers'
association have never taken part in party politics and they did not approve
the active participation of teachers in politics; further, that they were
not aware of teachers in the Free State having actively participated in
party politics.
70
"I accepted this assurance. Now, however, that better
information has come into my possession, I wish to inform them that they
would not have given me this assurance had they not been deceived and kept
in the dark by their fellow-teachers who are members of the Broederbond. The
head committee will forgive me if I inform them of the fact that just
recently I had in my hands the minutes of a Broederbond congress together
with an agenda, no less inclusive of all manner of political and party
political mo-tions than one associated with any party political congress;
and that congress was attended by no fewer than 21 teachers, among the
hunderd or so delegates including six teachers from the Free State.
"The facts I have submitted to you today reveal a state of affairs
that will wring from everyone who loves South Africa and who possesses a
sense of responsibility the question: Has the Afrikaner nation sunk to so
hopeless a level that it must seek its salvation in secret conclave for the
furtherance of race hatred, or national dis-sension and of strife among
brothers? Is there no higher aspiration for the sons and daughters of South
Africa, no nobler task, than that of racial strife and dissension? Is there
no higher ideal for our children to attain than that of racial domination .
. .?
"We are confronted here by a question that affects not only the
Afrikaans-speaking Afrikaner. The same racial feelings of ill-will and
aversion which are actuating Dr Malan, Dr van der Merwe and their followers,
the same passion for racial domination, are also prompting Colonel Stallard,
Messrs Coulter and Marwick and their followers.
"The one, as much as the other, finds inspiration in blind race
animosity; which secretly seeks racial domination and bossism
(baasskup); and while the better self of each is ashamed of the mo-tives by
which he is actuated and guided, they must all eventually resort to
inevitable secret associations and subterranean activities that cannot stand
the test of honest and open criticism."
Hitting out at both the Purified Nationalists and Colonel
Stal-lard's Dominion Party followers, he warned that their extreme courses
could lead to violence and eventually, national ruin and self-destruction.
He thanked God that the majority of South Afri-cans had demonstrated clearly
that their sentiments were fully be-hind the United South African National
Party, a state of affairs that he confidently predicted would continue.
History shows, however, that he was wrong. In four years the Fusion was
split by
71
the war, Hertzog himself was in the wilderness and nine years after that Dr
Malan was Prime Minister of South Africa.
General Hertzog wound up his Smithfield address with the words: "The
Purified National Party, with its purified leaders, now stand revealed in
all their racial nakedness, covered only by one single fig leaf: secrecy!"
It was out at last. The Broederbond lay exposed and vulnerable.
It reacted in two ways: it burrowed deeper underground to repair the broken
defences of its secrecy; and it swore vengeance on Gen-eral Hertzog.
As large numbers of Hertzog supporters quit the organisation, a
special meeting of the Broederbond Executive was called and un-dying
vengeance sworn against the Prime Minister. He had com-mitted the
unforgiveable sin and a dire nemesis was planned for
him.*
One of the first gratifying fruits of this vengeance campaign came
soon, when the Broederbond managed to force General Hertzog to withdraw from
the centenary Oxwagon Trek in 1938,' a terrible humiliation for the
venerable Afrikaner and erstwhile hero of the Free State." Later that year,
the electorate gave over-whelming support to the Hertzog-Smuts coalition.
But the div-isions among Afrikaners grew deeper.
General Hertzog, says his biographer C M van den Heever" was deeply
sorry that he could not bridge the gap. He was, how-
ever, equally adamant that he would not sacrifice his firm belief in unity
and co-operation between English and Afrikaner sections of the population -
that unity he so ardently sought to achieve through his rallying cry of
South Africa First.
About this time, General Hertzog's son, Albert, was a hotblooded
Purified Nationalist - and a member of the Broederbond. On behalf of a group
of young Afrikaner intellectuals, all of them almost certainly members of
the secret organisation, he wrote to his father demanding action to restore
Afrikaner unity. In reply, Hertzog wrote a remarkable letter, which was
released to the Press at the time, reaffirming his firm commitment to foster
good English-Afrikaans relations.
"I want to assure you," he wrote to his son and the young
intellectuals, "that under no circumstances will I ever in politics give my
co-operation to people who are not prepared to recognise and accept the
principle of complete equality and equal rights between our Afrikaans- and
English-speaking national components on the
7
basis laid down in the programme of principles of the United
Party."
He too longed for the unity of the Afrikaans-speakers, but was not
prepared to buy that unity at a price which would inevitably doom the whole
of Afrikanerdom to an endless condition of divi-son and dissent with
eventual self-destruction as its result. Al-though he did not go so far as
to name the Broederbond in his letter, it was a clear repudiation of the
sectional interests the organis-ation was energetically pursuing and must
have strengthened the
organisation's deep antagonism and, correspondingly, its resolve to exact
revenge.
World War Two intervened, however, and for a short while the
Broederbond suppressed its drive to repay its debt to Hertzog. For a time
they were in accord: both Hertzog and the Broederbond were implacably
opposed to South Africa's entry into the war, while Hertzog's Fusion
partner, Smuts, argued strongly for involvement. The matter was put to
Parliament and Hertzog's neu-trality motion was defeated by 80 votes to 67.
Hertzog resigned as Premier; Smuts took over the reins of government and
immedi-ately began to prepare for war. Hertzog and Malan came together in a
brief but uncomfortable union in the form of the Herenigde Nasionale Party.
But the Broederbond had not forgotten Smith-field and the campaign to
destroy Hertzog proceeded.
A whispering campaign was started to the effect that Hertzog was a
member of the Freemasons, an ironical charge in the light of his Smithfield
attack on the Broederbond. According to C M van den Heever, Hertzog's
biographer, the so-called Freemason Let-ters used against Hertzog were
supposedly found in a box in Bloemfontein. According to the charge against
Hcrtzog they re-vealed a plan by him and Smuts to establish an English
republic. The malicious smear story was skilfully spread by a "confidential"
whisper campaign (Generaal] B M Hertzog, pp 722-3).
It was an effective tactic and the final act of vengeance by the
Broederbond. In 1940, following this consummate plotting and
manoeuvring, Hertzog failed to secure election as chairman of the HNP
congress in Bloemfontein, a degrading snub right on his home gound. When
English-Afrikaans relations - the ideal to which he had devoted so much of
his political career - was made an issue, he walked out of the congress in
disgust. On December 11 1940, General Hertzog and his trusted friend,
confidante and
lieutenant, Klasie Havenga, resigned as members of Parliament.
73
He was approaching a devastatingly lonely road. Hertzog was
thereafter spurned and rejected by the Afrikaners whom he had loved and
served through war, famine and hardship, and whose cause he had sought to
further in the way he considered best: union with the English-speaking
section of the population.
Hertzog withdrew to his farm Waterval, where he lived in soli-tary
seclusion. C M van den Heever12 described his new lifestyle poignantly.13
"On the farm General Hertzog was now alone, and the rare visitor
that in a time of petrol shortage arrived there must have been deeply struck
by the loneliness in which the former Prime Minis-ter now lived as the
simple farmer of Waterval. In his woodcut-
ter's jacket he was sometimes to be seen on his horse as he rode through the
warm fields of his huge farm; then again, he gave work to a native close to
the house and there he stood by, a thin and made-lonely figure amongst the
thorn trees."
One night, alone, he arrived at a Pretoria hospital and asked to be
admitted. The nurse, taking down personal details, did not rec-ognise the
frail, bespectacled man with a bushy moustache standing before her. He gave
his name as J B M Hertzog, farmer. Shortly afterwards, on 21 November 1942,
back on his farm Waterval, he died.
After Hertzog's death the Broederbond tried to claim that he had
come to accept the organisation. They obviously realised that they could not
break his image and that history would judge him as one of the greatest
Afrikaners ever. It was asserted14 that after the Smithfield address two
executive members of the organisation had had a meeting with him where they
had enlightened him about the "real" facts of the Broederbond and had
convinced him of its innocence.
That he found some modus vivendi with the Broederbond is, however,
unlikely. Its ideals and his were too far apart. As far as can be
ascertained, he never retracted anything he said at Smith-field and it seems
highly improbable that his forbearing to follow up his Smithfield attack can
be ascribed to tacit approval of the or-ganisation whose objectives he so
staunchly scorned.
1. De Klerk, W A, The Puritan in Africa, p 114.
2. ibid, p 114.
3. The Puritanss in Africa, pp 115-l 17.
74
4. Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurverecnigings.
5. When Hertzog went into coalition with Smuts.
6 Newspapers sympathetic to the Nationalists' cause.
7. Part of the no-confidence debate in 1935, it was vehemently anti-Fusion.
8. Malherbe, E G, Educatian in South Africa, Vol 2 p 24.
9. See chapter 4.
10. Malherbe, E G, Education in South Afvica, Vol 2 p 29.
11. Generaal J B M Hertzog, p 887.
12. A fascinating aspect of van den Heever's biography is that it nowhere
mentions the Broederbond. Even in the account of the Smithfield address
there are no references to the organisation, raising the possibility that
van den Heever was a member.
13. Generaal J B M Hertzog, pp 758-759.
14. Hansard. March 21 1945, Co1 3919.
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