Introduction
This is a sequel to these prior posts:
I introduced a conspiracy theory that I’d grappled with fifty years ago.
It concerned a secretive organization in South Africa known as the Broederbond.
To provide context, I summarized South Africa’s history from the time of the first white settlement in 1652 to the end of the Boer War in 1902.
In that installment, I …….
described the founding and operation of the Broederbond;
took the reader through South Africa’s experience of WWII;
touched on the National Party’s victory in the 1948 election; and
ended with the introduction of the policy of racial segregation known as apartheid.
Into the lions’ den
In the early 1970s, when I was in my late teens and early twenties, I’d left my home country of Swaziland1 and was living in next door South Africa, first as a university student and then as a newly married young woman.
Having grown up in the relatively free atmosphere of Swaziland, I found South Africa’s system of apartheid incredibly oppressive and offensive.
Since the Afrikaans people were the main proponents and instigators of apartheid, I mostly blamed them for it.
Brutes
Growing up as an English-speaker, I didn’t quite regard Afrikaans-speaking people as Neanderthals2. However, I didn’t consider them to be that far evolved from Neanderthals either.
I’m about to use some American examples as illustrations of the South African situation during the apartheid era. These comparisons will necessarily be oversimplified. All the same, I hope they’ll help the reader to visualize, in broad brush strokes, the differences between English-speaking and Afrikaans-speaking whites in South Africa.
If we go back to the American Civil War, the way a naive rendering of history portrays Northerners is slightly akin to the reputation that English-speaking whites enjoyed in South Africa. In the same vein, the way a one-dimensional telling of history portrays Southerners is analogous to the perception of Afrikaans-speaking whites in South Africa.
In other words, Northerners had more virtue attributed to them than they perhaps deserved, and Southerners had more vice attributed to them than they perhaps deserved.
The reality on the ground is more nuanced than a telling of history has time to include.
Suffice it to say, within South Africa’s internal politics, the English-speaking contingent enjoyed a better reputation than it probably had earned. The Afrikaans-speaking contingent, for its part, did not deserve all the blame that was laid at its feet.
During the early decades of my opposition to apartheid, I had what I now regard as too simplistic an antipathy towards Afrikaans people and, indeed, towards white South Africa as a whole.
Whispers
As a young adult in South Africa, I heard occasional references to a shadowy concept referred to as the Broederbond. According to some, it was a secret society that ran South Africa behind the scenes. If we were using today’s terminology, I suppose we might call it South Africa’s version of the Deep State.
Back then it sounded like a crazy idea, even to someone like me who had a keen interest in finding out the truth.
The Broederbond was rarely spoken about, and when it was, it was thrown out as a joke. I think the jocular way in which the Broederbond was mentioned was akin to the way in which the second gunman on the grassy knoll used to be tossed out as a throwaway line.
I don’t mean to offend Americans. I take President Kennedy’s assassination very seriously. What I’m trying to do is illustrate the way in which the Deep State minimizes conspiracy researchers. One of the ways in which it does that is to ridicule their enquiries and turn them into the butt of jokes.
Confirmation
In the late 1970s, after I’d immigrated to Canada, I was able to get my hands on a book that was banned in South Africa.
It was:
Brotherhood of Power : Expose of the Secret Afrikaner Broederbond
by J.H.P. Serfontein
The author had done a tremendous amount of sleuthing. He confirmed information that I’d been able to piece together only from snippets that I’d collected from here and there — and he revealed much more besides.
In short, Serfontein made an excellent case for the Broederbond’s existence and laid out its modus operandi.
All that information came tumbling out later, when the ruling National Party buckled, released Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990, and opened the franchise to the majority black population of South Africa.
Then the conspiracy theory about the Broederbond was a theory no more.
The Broederbond was revealed to have been an ACTUAL conspiracy.
Freedom
My motivation for leaving South Africa in the late 1970s was to escape apartheid.
At the time, South Africa was ruled by what seemed like an iron-fisted regime. It looked so well fortified that I couldn’t visualize a day when it would no longer be in power.
Dissidents were so ruthlessly snuffed out that I couldn’t see a way of effecting change from within.
Back then, Canada’s gentility seemed heavenly by comparison.
When Canadians asked me where my accent was from, I made sure to say that I was from Swaziland.
I was ashamed of South Africa, because of its apartheid policy, and was eager to avoid association with it.
To be continued
Perhaps that’s enough of a bite for us to chew on for now.
Conspiracies I’ve known - Part IV will cover:
How my understanding of history and my opinions evolved over time.
My perception of similarities between the Broederbond and Q.
The differences that I see between the Broederbond and Q.
What I believe was well intentioned about the Broederbond.
The mistakes I believe the Broederbond made and the lessons we can learn from them.
Subseqeunt installments will address:
How South Africa’s majority black population fits into this story.
Books that provide insight into South Africa.
In 2018, Swaziland changed its name to eSwatini. In the siSwati language, it means “the land of the Swazi people.” It has the same meaning as Swaziland. Except it’s in the Swazi people’s own language. Which I think is entirely appropriate. And, besides, eSwatini avoids confusion with Switzerland.
I use “Neanderthal” in the colloquial sense, a word that denotes a savage. Apparently, that impression of Neanderthals is erroneous. In more recent years I’ve read that Neanderthals were gentle. One might say they were the hippies of paleolithic times.