| D.F. Malan is known as the South African prime minister who instituted apartheid. In 1994, a mere fourteen years ago, the party which he led to victory in 1948, relinquished its grip on power in South Africa which paved the way for a revision of Afrikaner history and of D.F. Malan himself. Surprisingly little has been written about D.F. Malan. There are only two biographies in circulation, one published in the late 1960?s and dealing with the first half of his life, the other, published in the 1980?s, focussing on the second half. Not only are they written in Afrikaans, which denies those who cannot read this language access to information about D.F. Malan, but both of these studies are firmly rooted in what is known in South African historiography as the Afrikaner nationalist school. They are, indeed, hagiographies. Malan is portrayed by his biographers, one of whom was a personal friend, as a steadfast and principled visionary, who led his volk to the promised land. Today, scant attention is paid to D.F. Malan, apart from passing references to his dour demeanour and his party?s simplistically racist programme. Thus, views of Malan vary from the one extreme to the other. Not only does this leave a sizeable lacuna in South African historiography, but it also denies the student of South African history a grasp of the complex nature of Afrikaner nationalism in the twentieth century. This study therefore has two dimensions: to gain a better understanding of a man who shaped South Africa?s history and through that, to understand the dynamics of Afrikaner nationalism during the first half of the twentieth century. |
