An Afrikaans song lauding an old Boer general has become a surprise hit among South Africa’s Afrikaner people, raising the ire of the country’s liberal intelligentsia. ‘De la Rey’ by folk rock singer Bok van Blerk has proved so popular it is now sung at rugby matches, school sporting events, and wherever Afrikaners gather. 180,000 copies were sold in six months, and former president Nelson Mandela has hailed van Blerk as his “favourite singer”. Nonetheless, the song has sparked controversy and perhaps even outrage among liberal intellectuals, who disapprove of the perceived undertone of the song as an Afrikaner call-to-arms. The song’s lyrics cry out “De la Rey, De la Rey, sal jy die boere kom lei?” [De la Rey, De la Rey, will you come to lead the Boers?], calling for the long-dead commando leader of the Boer War to come and lead Afrikaners today. The fact that the singing of the song is often accompanied by the waving of South Africa’s old Union Flag, has hightened the leftists’ ire. But who exactly is this “De la Rey” of whom Afrikaners young and old now proudly sing?

Jacobus Herculaas de la Rey is more often known as General Koos de la Rey. His grandfather, the patriarch of all the de la Reys in South Africa, had settled in the country from Utrecht in the Netherlands. With countless other Dutch-speaking colonists, the de la Rey family took part in the Great Trek into the South African wilderness, in search of a new land free from British rule. It was in 1847 at Doornfontein in the Orange Free State that Koos de la Rey was born. Like many of his fellow Boers, he grew to be a deeply religious man, and had ten children after marrying and settling down on his farm.

The Great Trek did not solve the Boers’ problems, as disputes between Afrikaners and Britons continued, augmenting severely after the discovery of diamonds and gold in the two Afrikaner republics. Thousands of British colonists from the Cape Colony shifted to the Transvaal in hopes of striking it rich. Fearful of their influence, President Paul Kruger of the South Africa Republic (as the Transvaal was officially known) made sure to deny these “uitlanders” (foreigners) any political rights or say in government.

Koos de la Rey was a prominent member of the faction in the Volksraad (parliament) opposing President Kruger. They argued instead for a conciliatory policy towards the uitlanders. De la Rey argued passionately against the brewing conflict with Great Britain, but when war finally erupted, many were surprised to find De la Rey fiercely committed to war’s prosecution. In battle, he emerged as an effective general, and became known as a leader of the first commando units ever assembled.

De la Rey was also well-known for his chivalry and decency in conflict, even towards the enemy who burnt Boer farms and starved Boer wives and children in concentration camps (another world first from the Boer War). When the British Lieutenant-General Lord Metheun was captured by De la Rey, he proved so wounded in the battle that the rudimentary medical aid the Boers had at hand would prove ineffective. De la Rey, realizing that only expert British medical military attention could save the Baron’s life, released him and returned him to the British lines.

Meeting in parley with Lord Kitchener in 1902, the two formed a strong friendship that helped bring about the peace talks which finally ended the Anglo-Boer War at Vereeniging later that year. De la Rey spent the aftermath of the devastating conflict touring Europe with his fellow generals Louis Botha and Christiaan de Wet raising money for Boers impoverished by the scorched-earth policy of the British.

Years later, when the First World War erupted, General Botha sent soldiers of the now-united South Africa to seize the neighboring German colony of Sud-West Afrika (today’s Namibia). A great many Afrikaners were angered at the prospect of going to war on behalf of the British Empire, of which they had become a part, agains the German Empire, which had been sympathetic to the Boer cause during the previous war. Military officers threatened to resign their commissions or, worse, engage in mutiny. The Afrikaner officers summoned the old Boer general to the Potchefstroom military camp. At the same time, the vicious Foster Gang of thieves and murderers struck across the country. The police had set up roadblocks hoping to catch the criminal gang after one of their exploits. De la Rey, in his rush to get to Potchefstroom and quell tensions sped through one of the roadblocks. A policeman shot at his car, striking and mortally wounding General de la Rey.

How then did he come to be the subject of a folk song which has alledgedly roused Afrikaners from their slumber? Could it be as accidental as the rhyme of his name? Sean Else and Johan Vorster own the record company that produces Bok van Blerk. Else had asked Vorster to write a song about any of the old generals from the Boer War. “You can’t make Kemp rhyme”, admits Vorster. “You can’t make Beyers rhyme, much les some other surnames.” And so, Koos de la Rey, whose status as a peace-loving warrior was a welcome addendum to his rhymable name.

The song is written from the perspective of a Boer soldier in the field and talks of “my house and my farm/ burned to ashes,/ so they could catch us”. The Boer is fightining “Because my wife and child are perishing in a concentration camp/ and the Khakis’ [British] reprisal is poured over a nation that will rise again”.

The song speaks to the confusion surrounding the place of the Afrikaners in the larger South African community. Afrikaners were from 1948 until the end of apartheid in 1994 the top tribe in South Africa, excluding non-whites completely and politically dominating the English, the country’s other major group of European origin. Now they, along with English South Africans, find themselves being replaced, sometimes arbitrarily, from the top positions in the country by Zulus, Xhosa, and other black South Africans. As in the United States, racial discrimination has been written into the law as ‘affirmative action’.

“There is an element here I think of a search for identity, of a search for pride”, says newspaper columnist and author Max du Preez. “They had to go back a hundred years to find a hero to praise because there was nothing in between. After the Anglo-Boer War there’s nobody in Afrikaner history that you can glorify, apart from maybe [rugby players] Frik du Preez and Mannetjies Roux.”

However, editor Tim du Plessis argues the song is part of the process of Afrikaners becoming part of a greater South Africa. “Many people in the Afrikaans community are these days looking at the country and they say ‘I don’t feel at home in this country anymore’ and now… this very song about their past about a very respected and almost a revered figure from their past a very catchy tune and they say ‘I listen to this song and I experience a sense of belonging’”.

“It’s indicative of the migration of the Afrikaans community from the old South Africa to the new South Africa,” du Plessis argues. “It has to do with the fact that people in the Afrikaans community are starting to find their voices and this is especially in the younger generation”.

Sociologist Dr. Andries Bezuidenhout, however, is not impressed with van Blerk’s song. “In a way this is about finding victimhood for Afrikaners. They’re seen as these perpetrators of history and what the Anglo Boer War gives them is victimhood… it’s trying to get away from ideas of guilt and historical guilt.” Dr. Bezuidenhout himself, as ‘Roof’, is one half of Afrikaans rock duo Brixton Moord en Roof Orkes.

“The parents are the ones who would have become the mayors, the ministers, the CEOs and they feel that that’s been taken away from them. They’re bitter, and their kids don’t remember apartheid, they didn’t grow up under apartheid so they get this nostalgia from their parents about the good past and that’s poison. That’s a poisonous combination. So I think that in part explains the deep, deep feelings of insecurity and a sense being threatened”.

Tim du Plessis disagrees with Dr. Bezuidenhout’s analysis. “It’s unfair on the Afrikaans community whenever they want to do something that is an expression of their cultural identity to say they have a rightwing backlash here. Is there a big problem are there Afrikaners mobilising again. I think it’s unfair. It simply not happening”.

The singing of ‘De la Rey’ is not only often accompanied the waving of the old South African flag, but is frequently followed by impromptu renderings of Die Stem, the old national anthem. But both the flag and the anthem, while now predominantly associated with the apartheid, predate the imposition of apartheid in 1948. Indeed, South African soldiers, including the great Field Marshal Jan Christiaan Smuts, fought Nazism under the very flag which opponents of ‘De la Rey’ claim is a symbolic legacy of racism. Van Blerk himself has opposed to waving the old flag, and often sings ‘De la Rey’ wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the current flag of the republic. “It makes me a little angry,” Mr. van Blerk admits, “but I can’t say what people should wear or what flags they can carry”.

Again, however, Max du Plessis disagrees, claiming that Mr. van Blerk and Mr. Else, the song’s writer, are “clearly so politically naïve and now they can’t very well turn their back on the product… There’s a strong commercial influence and they don’t seem to fully realise that there is the potential for this thing to be so hijacked to lead to things they don’t agree with”.

But is the song actually a call-to-arms and an implicit incitement to violence? Following the surprise popularity of the song, the South African Ministry of Arts and Culture went so far as to issue a warning reminding that incitement to treason is against the law.

Kallie Kriel of AfriForum, an Afrikaner advocacy group, derides claims that ‘De la Rey’ is a call to violence as “total rubbish”. “The song represents a reawakening of Afrikaner pride,” Mr. Kriel said. “It is not the reaction to the song that worries me but the reaction to the support the song has received which is alarming”.

Devotees of the song have pointed out that Jacob Zuma, the controversial deputy chariman of the country’s ruling African National Congress party, makes use of a song called ‘Umshini Wam!’ or ‘My Machine Gun’. Mr. Zuma, not frequently an ally of the Afrikaners, has come out in support of the song. “Umshini Wam is a song of my history,” he says. “Why should Afrikaners not remember their heroes?”

But Mr. Kreil believes that the ANC government, of which Mr. Zuma is a leader, is trying to erase the historical and cultural influence of Afrikaners and Afrikaans-speakers (about half of whom are racially-mixed).

“Afrikaners are indigenous to South Africa and we have to find a place here but the government has replaced the reconciliation of the Mandela era with retaliation.”

Mr. Kriel cited the “Africanizing” of South African placenames, changing the traditional names of towns and cities to new, invented names in native languages. “By erasing all Afrikaner names, they are essentially sending the message that we are not Africans”.

“You cannot expect an entire culture to fall away,” one young woman told a reporter from VOA Radio. “That’s why you have major music festivals - a rebirth in the cultural aspects or the aspects of the Afrikaner culture.”

Journalist Diane de Beer recently reported one such manifestation of an Afrikaner cultural revival, the Klein Karoo Arts Festival. “Perhaps the most poignant picture of the night was a young black boy a few rows in front of me,” Ms. de Beer wrote. “Surrounded by a group of white friends, he sang with as much fervour as the rest of the gang”.