Romanticising the “Boer”: Narratives of White Victimhood in South African Popular Culture

Abstract

In this article, I present a critical reading of a purposive sample of popular cultural expressions from various sites as they relate to the emergence of narratives of white victimhood in South Africa. The particular focus falls on the resurgence of nostalgic appropriations of the construct of the Afrikaner Boer imaginary, and the concomitant utopian farm ideal. The argument is that this resurgence, in conjunction with popularised, yet unfounded, claims of “white genocide” as it pertains to the murder of white farmers in South Africa, is employed as a means of restoring white hegemony. I contend, moreover, that the globalisation of the genocide narrative gives nationalist, Afrikaner whiteness – which has historically been regarded as a “lesser whiteness” (Van der Westhuizen 2018) – access to global, normative whiteness, thereby legitimising its hegemonic ideals. A counterargument, however, is that these narratives result in the hypervisibility of whiteness, negating its normative invisibility and creating the potential to subvert and decolonise whiteness as a dominant ideology. The research is theoretically situated within critical whiteness studies and, following a deep description of the context, presents analysis and interpretation alongside concrete examples of popular cultural expressions.

Opsomming

Hierdie artikel bied ’n kritiese ontleding van ’n doelmatige steekproef van populêre kulturele uitdrukkings soos wat dit verband hou met narratiewe van wit slagofferskap in Suid-Afrika. Meer spesifiek val die fokus op hedendaagse nostalgiese appropriasies van die historiese konstruk van die Afrikaner as “Boer” en daarmee saam konstruksies van die plaas as ’n verlore utopie. Ek voer aan dat hierdie hernude klem – tesame met populêre, dog ongegronde, narratiewe van wit-volksmoord, soos dit verbandhou met plaasmoorde van wit boere – gebruik word om wit legitimiteit en mag te herstel. Hierbenewens kom ek tot die gevolgtrekking dat die globalisering van die wit-volksmoord narratief aan Afrikaner-witwees, wat histories gesien is as ’n mindere vorm van witwees (Van der Westhuizen 2018), toegang verleen tot normatiewe witwees, wat die hegemoniese potensiaal daarvan versterk. Hierteenoor kan egter geargu-menteer word dat hierdie narratiewe die hipersigbaarheid van witwees tot gevolg het, wat kan lei tot die negering, moontlike ondermying, en dekolonisering van hege-moniese witheid se normatiewe onsigbaarheid. Die analise word benader vanuit die teoretiese raamwerk van Witweesstudies. Ná ’n diepliggende konteksbeskrywing volg my analise en interpretasie wat telkens geïllustreer word deur konkrete voorbeelde van tersaaklike populêre kulturele uitdrukkings.