Afrikaners are not right-wing extremists and want to be included in South Africa
Renowned political and economic analyst Frans Cronje said Afrikaners are widely misunderstood and are far from being right-wing extremists.
He shared this information during a discussion about Afrikaner voting patterns on The Common Sense podcast.
He said that many people are surprised that Afrikaners vote overwhelmingly for the DA rather than the Freedom Front Plus.
This, he argues, is because they are misunderstood, particularly by outsiders and more nationalistic Afrikaner political leaders.
“Afrikaners are not a right-wing, isolated community that wishes to separate itself from society,” Cronje said.
Instead, Afrikaners are a very centrist, very cosmopolitan, very moderate community who want to be included in South Africa.
He added that they are not particularly nationalistic and would speak English whenever given a chance.
“The single most dominant motivating force in modern Afrikaner political behaviour is the desire for inclusion,” he said.
“They want to be actively integrated into the broader South African society alongside people who are different from them,” he said.
He explained that the Freedom Front Plus (VF+) only gets 1% or 2% of the vote because its positioning and slogans feel narrow and exclusive.
Conversely, the majority of Afrikaners vote for the Democratic Alliance (DA) because of its broadly inclusive positioning.
Even when frustrated with the DA’s specific policy failures, the foundational desire to be part of a broader South African collective overrides those frustrations.
South African historian, political analyst, and journalist, James Myburgh, added that Apartheid had left Afrikaners isolated.
The broad realisation for white South Africans since the 1980s has been a desire to break out of that isolation and, as a minority, become part of a new majority.
This is evident in voting patterns, where Afrikaners support a traditionally English and liberal party rather than an Afrikaans nationalist party.
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This is a big generalisation, but I suspect it is mostly accurate. The main problem is that Afrikaners were used to well-run institutions and cities. They must now deal with the collapse, which they know is easy to fix. They must accept standards which are well below what they are used to.