Earlier this year, the small fringe nationalist movement known as the Bittereinders started a little-remarked upon move to challenge the authenticity of the major representatives of the Afrikaner community. They held a small protest in Pretoria, where they handed over a memorandum to the Vryheidsfront Plus head offices, demanding to know why the party had not made any moves to create legislation for the implementation of Section 235 of the constitution.

They also attempted to upstage AfriForum by holding an ill-fated and botched protest in Groblersdal against the prosecution of a farmer for the use of his dogs to attack a trespasser on his property. This move failed in part because the farmer in question had a history of violence as a state security agent covered in the TRC in the 1990s, and because his actions legally constituted unnecessary violent assault, but also because the demonstrators failed to show discipline, and ended up in a scuffle with the police, who exploited the opportunity to press charges against the leaders of the little group.

The Bittereinders are broadly recognised to be somewhat eccentric, radical, disorganised, juvenile, and affiliated with some unsavoury characters. But credit where credit is due, they managed to make one valid point that has yet to be taken on board.

There is a tendency among all South Africans, of which I myself am guilty, which can be characterised by a sort of defeatism. Specifically, it is the (reasonable) assumption that any attempt to ask for reasonable concessions from the state will be met with indifference or hostility, and is therefore not worth the effort.

But any political process, or indeed any process within an organised or bureaucratic environment, even in the private sector, begins with the exhaustion of official processes. Even the ANC went through this dull and painful process before they became known as domestic terrorists and eventually a successful revolutionary movement.

While it is reasonable to assume that any attempt to get legislation granting self-determination for the Afrikaners is likely to result in successful parliamentary opposition form the majority, who are black-nationalist in orientation, it is also true that without initiating this process, any attempt to use legal, organisational, or international pressure to extract concessions from the state is likely to be dead on arrival.

It is precisely the active denial of self-determination by the state that sets it up for challenge from international bodies (after all, the ANC itself ahs signed three treaties affirming rights to autonomy), constitutional appeals (aside from S235, the Constitution also validates international law), and even public pressure. But in order to acquire this foundation for action, we must first extract the denial itself.

The ANC has pushed for self-determination more than any other political grouping in the country, whether for the Western Sahara, South Sudan, or most notably, Palestine, but has been rigidly opposed to any form of self-determination in South Africa’s borders themselves.

This means that they are vulnerable to the exploitation of the norms they themselves have upheld. But in order to exploit this, some political party (and indeed, it must almost certainly be the VF+ who carries this demand) must table a Bill in Parliament which calls for self-determination.

Additionally, the Bill must have the backing of the Solidariteit movement as a whole, and hopefully the rest of the organised representatives of the Afrikaner people, in order to have the weight required, since the VF+ on their own simply does not have the clout to call themselves the official representatives of the ethnic group as a whole.

Fortunately, there is a document already in existence which forms an adequate foundation for this process, and fits the criterion of broad representation.

In April this year, Solidariteit released the Afrikanerverklaring, a manifesto on the desires of the community for cultural autonomy in South Africa.

It was signed by the various branches of the movement (Solidariteit itself, Afriforum, Akademia, SAAI), but also the majority of the organised representatives of the ethnic group, including Orania, the Afrikanerbond, NEASA, Sakeliga, the FAK, the de Klerk Foundation, the Vryheidsfront Plus, and also Schalk Burger.

It is a twelve-point manifesto which makes the following demands (I paraphrase):

1. Afrikaners are an indigenous cultural community in Africa, with roots deeply tied to the continent through language and culture.

2. They aim to work toward a free, safe, and prosperous future for all communities in South Africa through cooperation and mutual respect.

3. The Afrikaners acknowledge South Africa's complex past and take the experiences of black people seriously but emphasize the need to focus on the future.

4. They seek a "normal" society to ensure sustainability, prosperity, and equal opportunity for all, while respecting Afrikaner cultural autonomy.

5. Cultural freedom is seen as essential to democratic freedom and preserving Afrikaner institutions like schools and universities.

6. Afrikaners believe in the equal worth of all communities and reject racial laws that reduce them to second-class citizens.

7. The community advocates for building on historical cooperation between different groups rather than focusing on past conflicts.

8. The Constitution acknowledges the Afrikaner aspiration for cultural autonomy, which some believe requires a territorial base for its realization.

9. They support "unity in diversity," believing national unity can coexist with cultural diversity and autonomy.

10. Afrikaners seek participation in governmental decision-making on matters affecting their community.

11. Economic empowerment and addressing social issues like poverty and unemployment are key goals for Afrikaners to contribute to national development.

12. A cultural accord is proposed to ensure effective communication with the government, reaffirm cultural rights, and build trust.

Now, clearly, this appears somewhat nebulous on its face, and will of course require some adaptation for the purposes of legislation. But the broad-strokes approach may be a beneficial one, since if passed (however long a shot that is), such a bill will establish a principle against which concrete legislation or regulation is measured in the courts, rather than a set of discrete privileges or material boons.

No doubt this will also disappoint the advocates of the old Afrikaner Akkoord. The Akkoord claimed a large swathe of land for the purposes of an independent Afrikaner volkstaat, but which had not been adequately settled or developed to justify the political claim. In the words of Thabo Mbeki at the time of those negotiations, the contemporaneous generation of Afrikaners were asked to “show me the animal”, that is, to produce the reality on the ground which was intended to be recognised.

Orania has gone a long way towards this end, and is the least ambiguous example. But so has the rest of the Afrikaner nation - the establishment of community safety initiatives, educational institutions, private firefighting and infrastructure repair operations, have created a great deal more self-reliance in the Afrikaner people than in any other sector of society.

While the Verklaring cannot in itself define the precise character of any concrete effort towards self-determination, it would establish the grounds for the legal right to do so, against which any effort to curtail Afrikaner cultural autonomy would be severely tested. The requirement for such a bill to meet the other elements of our legal system will no doubt eventually lead to the extension of the principle of ethnic autonomy to all subnational groups who see the need to assert it, and gradually erode the central control of the national government, and increase the powers of provincial and local government, and the private and civic sectors over time, eventually birthing a system through which national government programmes will have to be negotiated more broadly.

With the BELA Act edging ever-closer to implementation (likely only coming into effect with next year’s school intake), the legal grounds for defending Afrikaner cultural institutions becomes ever-more serious an issue.

The leverage which the Solidariteit movement has demonstrated they have, by gaining a seat at the President’s table when members of the governing coalition itself are easily ignored, is impressive in itself. But without legal clout, the ability to curb this destructive behaviour on the part of the national government will be incredibly difficult.

The signs of a coming consociationalist order I have written about in a previous piece are still only signs of potential, but should the VF+ manage to even table a Bill attempting to legally encode the spirit of autonomy into law, the leverage created by this action would set the grounds for a powerful lever against the dangers of majoritarian ethnonationalism, which threaten to tear apart the fabric of society.

What is more, the same sorts of actions can in principle be extended to establish such a position for the Zulu, and for the Cape, and even for Jewish communities, if they so choose. With harder veto powers on the tendency for political overreach which the ruling party has demonstrated in its 30 year tenure, the state may finally achieve the sorts of checks and balances which the liberal framework currently in place has long promised, but failed to deliver.

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