Jan-Jan Joubert, Relative wealth, influence and confidence in transitional democracies: The case of The Afrikaner in South Africa, 1994-2019

This topic examines how the Afrikaner community navigated the transition from minority white rule to majority rule in the period 1994-2014. The Afrikaner community largely confounded expectations that it would not embrace the new democratic dispensation because of the apartheid government (NP)’s negotiating push for minority rights, and the ‘burden of history.’ Instead, the community emerged as one of the most confident disparate communities in the transitional South Africa. Despite ceding power, the community fully participated in the new democracy’s institutions and constructively worked with the ANC government. Moreover, the community continued to flourish economically and culturally, and shape the public discourse (narrative) in a way disproportionate to its numerical size. Unfolding from this, this paper will ask to what extent the community’s success was due, one, to its continued access to capital and economic opportunities underpinned by sophisticated Afrikaner owned companies and, two, to the scant understood fact that most Afrikaners identify themselves as Africans and as ‘part and parcel’ of South Africa. However, despite their growing wealth, their influence and identification with the continent, figures confirm that Afrikaner emigration figures ebbed and flowed between 1994 and 2019 due to heightening and receding Afrikaner insecurities and fears about South Africa’s future, and their role in it. Through qualitative and quantitative research, this study will examine these phenomena within the global context of the transitional democracy paradigm and discourse, and the analysis thereof.