In the second instalment of an ongoing intellectual exchange between Dr Wikus Buys and Dr Carel Boshoff on the prospects for an Afrikaner economy, Boshoff responds to the critical engagement his book Freedom and Abundance has received. He welcomes the scrutiny, noting that critical difference rather than agreement is the foundation of meaningful growth, and focuses his reply on three key matters.
Boshoff first clarifies the conceptual framework of the first, second and third Afrikaner, emphasising that these distinctions refer not to individual choices but to broad historical phases of Afrikaner existence. The first Afrikaner's rural world was destined to end not merely through British imperial conquest, but because the discovery of the world's richest gold deposits set in motion unstoppable forces of modernisation, urbanisation and industrialisation. The second Afrikaner emerged within the South African state after Unionisation in 1910, with every political strategy operating within that framework until participation in government was extended to all South Africans nearly a century later.
When Afrikaners' special position within the state ended, the question arose whether they would identify primarily as South Africans of a particular kind or as Afrikaners. Attempts to negotiate a nation state failed, largely due to insufficient Afrikaner support. Boshoff acknowledges his assessment since then has been partly correct — a post-state third Afrikaner did emerge — but partly wrong, as this new form would not necessarily be freedom-free.
The central choice Boshoff presents is between two paths: a minority strategy of adapting to current circumstances with minimal disruption, or establishing a distinctly independent Afrikaner order addressing sustainability across demographic, cultural, political and economic spheres. He argues the unsustainability of minority existence is concealed behind three veils — the belief that practical survival can postpone hard questions, the expectation that the majority will eventually adopt more accommodating attitudes, and the reality that a privileged segment of Afrikaners integrates successfully enough to mistake individual comfort for collective security.
Boshoff contends that what many Afrikaners already do individually — emigrating, shifting to English, relocating to the Western Cape, or retreating into private prosperity — amounts to each person entering the desert alone, akin to a new Thirsty Trek. Yet the desert can flourish, he maintains, if Afrikaners undertake collectively what they cannot achieve separately. Small nations need not possess everything large nations have, but they can endure if they combine the right to exist with the will and capacity to sustain themselves on their own land.
For Afrikaners who previously played a dominant role in a large state and economy, this demands far-reaching adjustments and a deep cultural reset. Freedom and Abundance, Boshoff writes, attempts to envision that reset, arguing that what can be conceived can also be achieved. He finds promise in Dr Buys's engagement that the call will not remain merely a voice in the wilderness.
