Re-thinking Afrikaner Identity in the New South Africa: An Exploration of Post-Apartheid Narratives by André Brink, Antjie Krog, and Mark Behr

With the collapse of the apartheid state and the advent of black majority rule in 1994, the pillars that had previously sustained the cultural lie of colonial whiteness began to crumble. In such an unstable and rapidly transforming environment, white South Africans experienced a growing feeling of alienation and inner dislocation, which came coupled with the need to rediscover – possibly legitimise – their roots in the African continent. Especially for Afrikaners, who needed to face the shame associated with the crimes committed in the name of their culture, such a re-negotiation required confronting an outrageous history of hegemony and oppression and redefining the relationship between Self and Other. Against such a socio-political background, this study aims to analyse the literary strategies deployed by writers to interrogate, deconstruct, and re-articulate Afrikaner white identity in post-apartheid South Africa, by focusing particularly on the prose oeuvre of André Brink, Antjie Krog, and Mark Behr. Through examining texts which are marked by tangibly different stylistic traits, this research is interested in investigating the narrative structures and rhetorical devices through which the three authors appear to engage critically with whiteness and Afrikanerdom and envisage new possibilities for speaking and recovering a sense of belonging. Drawing on the hermeneutic categories of Postcolonial Studies and Whiteness Studies, it therefore intends to evaluate (re-)constructions of whiteness which attempt to move beyond a condition, a culture, and a politics defined by whites themselves, and thus pave the way for a re-conceptualisation of Afrikaner identity in emancipatory ways.