Afrikaner

KABWE, Zambia -- Depending on how you look at it, Thys Eloff is either continuing an old Afrikaner tradition or pioneering a new one.Mr. Eloff, 26, left the dry soil of South Africa three years ago to try his luck in more fertile lands. The country he left was on the verge of revolutionary change, about to get its first black government. The land he came to had been ruled by blacks for almost 30 years.In a sense, Mr. Eloff and a handful of other South African farmers now living in Zambia have done as their ancestors did 150 years ago: moved on, in search of land and peace.

PRETORIA, South Africa -- Between classes at Afrikaans Boys High School, students in their shorts, neckties and blazers chatter and laugh, their conversations in Afrikaans echoing off brick arches and across a courtyard. High on one wall hangs the school logo: a sun shining down on an ox wagon of the kind ridden by some of the students' forebears during the Great Trek of the 1830s, when Afrikaners moved deeper into the country to defend their ideas of white dominance. Once meant to groom privileged boys to run a nation, Afrikaans Boys High now teaches that they will have to work harder to succeed.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- The rally of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, the Afrikaner Resistance Movement, for whites to boycott the elections here last week seems like a last gasp instead of a last hurrah now that the election is over.There was a ragtag force of about 250 gathered in a field near the town of Rustenburg as the voting got under way. They were surrounded by troops from South Africa's security forces. With no one else to bother, they pushed around some journalists. Even the rich baritone of their leader, Eugene TerreBlanche, rang hollow.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Many people here recognize the poet's name, maybe even know a line or two of his work. After all, N.P. van Wyk Louw -- whose name sounds like "fan vike low" in the mouth of a fellow Afrikaner -- was one of the greats in South Africa's literary world. Schoolchildren have to memorize his verses; scholars debate his impact. Even the more superficial literary Web sites have short biographies of Louw, usually with phrases such as "forward-thinking," "ahead of his time," or "moderate" -- which, in the new South Africa, is code for "Afrikaner who wasn't a full-fledged racist."

Prieska, South Africa. -- On the face of it, Albertus Vermeulen would never have joined the African National Congress, never even considered throwing his weight behind Nelson Mandela's election campaign.From youth to manhood he had nurtured an iron certainty that the ANC was nothing less than the face of communism, nemesis of the Afrikaner volk, of his Christian beliefs, inimical to his very soul.He'd gone to war against the Communists, or so he'd thought, drafted willingly in the 1980s as a counter-insurgency cavalryman to beat back the Namibian guerrillas who then were still struggling to wrest their country from South Africa's grasp.

PRETORIA, South Africa -- Three years ago, Koos Botha was figuring out how to plant bombs against black progress in the old South Africa. Now, he's figuring out how to build houses in the new one.The story of the transformation of this one-time right-wing radical seems to sum up the struggle for the soul of the Afrikaner, the white settlers of this land who are so full of contradictions.They fought a courageous war at the end of the 19th century against the oppression of the British and then proceeded in this century to unleash their own oppression against black South Africans.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- South Africa faces its first multiracial election without the participation of several major political parties as the Inkatha Freedom Party joined the Afrikaner Volksfront in refusing to register for the vote.Last night was the deadline for parties to declare their participation in the April 27 election. Failure of these right-wing groups -- black and white -- to sign up makes it even more likely that the election will be subject to widespread violent disruptions.

RHINERSPRUIT, South Africa -- Hendrik Robbertze's Afrikaner people once ruled this country as the last entrenched white supremacists on the continent. Now he sometimes feels like an outsider in his own land. From the rolling acres that his wife's family has farmed for generations, he has watched in dismay as South Africa has been transformed from more than three centuries of white domination to black majority rule. A prominent Afrikaner -- a South African of European origin -- he is now part of a white minority that he sees as beleaguered, consigned to the margins of national life under a government determined to make this a truly African state.

HOLLYWOOD -- Hot on the heels of his "Rocky V," director John Avildsen is preparing to jump back into the ring. But this time, heavy themes accompany the heavy punches. The central character of "The Power of One" lives in South Africa, circa 1950, when the country is in transition from an English colony to an Afrikaner state."The story takes place as the curtain of apartheid is descending," says screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen, who previously teamed with director Avildsen for the three "Karate Kid" titles.

SpiderI wassitting so long a spider seized me,dropped his guideline from my sweater,commenced his killer's cartwheelsand lunges, weaving and wanderingin space on silk.I could not let such spinning stop.I sat still and watched him dance designsin the dazzled air.BatThe gray headed fruit bat hangs upside down,bears her baby upside down, panting,showing her assassin's pointed teethin a rosebud mouth.She licks her baby into life, covers himwith her lady gangster's black leather wings.ManThe Afrikaner told how he and other officers shota young black student, made a fire.

PRETORIA, South Africa - As a shaft of sunlight filtered through an opening in the ceiling of the Voortrekker Monument yesterday, two men put their lips to rams' horns and blew, pulling deep, sad notes out of the air. It was noon on the Day of the Vow, the most sacred moment of the year for members of South Africa's white tribe, the Afrikaners. Each year at this granite monument set on a hill outside Pretoria, Afrikaners come to commemorate what they believe was a divinely inspired victory in the Battle of Blood River on Dec. 16, 1838, when 470 pioneer ancestors - with the advantage of guns - defeated 10,000 Zulu warriors.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Residents of South Africa's Northern Province were never entirely pleased by the name of their corner of the country. "Northern" was not descriptive enough to capture the beauty of this land of baobab trees, game parks and sun-filled days, people complained. In fact, it said close to nothing about their home. So provincial authorities announced last month that they would rename the province Limpopo, after the "great, grey-green, greasy Limpopo River," celebrated by Rudyard Kipling, that forms South Africa's border with Zimbabwe.

BAPSFONTEIN, South Africa - The brick crashed through the window of the Meijers' farmhouse late at night, spraying glass across the living room floor. "It sounded like a shotgun," recalls Rina Meijer, who was home with her three children on her family's cucumber farm just east of Johannesburg. A mile away from the nearest neighbor, Meijer knew screaming for help would not save her. "I thought I was about to become another statistic in this country," she says of the recent break-in. "They were climbing in the window."

RHINERSPRUIT, South Africa -- Hendrik Robbertze's Afrikaner people once ruled this country as the last entrenched white supremacists on the continent. Now he sometimes feels like an outsider in his own land. From the rolling acres that his wife's family has farmed for generations, he has watched in dismay as South Africa has been transformed from more than three centuries of white domination to black majority rule. A prominent Afrikaner -- a South African of European origin -- he is now part of a white minority that he sees as beleaguered, consigned to the margins of national life under a government determined to make this a truly African state.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Can a white be an African?The question is at the heart of a national debate here over what makes an African. Is it color of the skin, place of birth, or history and cultural background?The furor, filtered through newspaper columns and radio talk shows for the past three months, started when a prominent white journalist, Max du Preez, a white Afrikaner by birth, declared himself an African.He objected to the way politicians, including Nelson Mandela and his successor as president, Thabo Mbeki, talked of "whites, coloreds, Indians and Africans" in a context in which "Africans" was synonymous with "blacks."

THREE YEARS after the end of its apartheid rule, South Africa's National Party is at a turning point. Its efforts to forge a coalition opposed to Nelson Mandela's African National Congress have failed. Meanwhile, the party is on the verge of self-destruction. It cannot make up its mind about whether it should become a multiracial political organization or continue as the domain of white Afrikaners.Former President F. W. de Klerk still wants to organize a new, broad-based, multi-cultural alliance as an alternative to ANC. But he is against opening the ranks of the National Party to all prospective members, regardless of race.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Among the tasks facing the people trying to make a new country out of the old South Africa is one of the most basic -- drawing the lines on maps that will form the boundaries of the country's new states.Current provincial borders that divide the country into the Cape province, Orange Free State, Natal and Transvaal came about in a similar way to the evolution of state lines in the United States: a combination of traditions, land grants, natural boundaries, military fights between white settlers and natives as well as between British and Afrikaners, and a bit of politics.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- South Africa's proposed new flag hadn't even gotten up a flag pole before someone was trying to shoot it down.The commission responsible for coming up with a flag, an anthem and a coat of arms for the new, multiracial South Africa made its report this week.No sooner had it proposed a flag with a big green swath down the right side, a smaller gold band on the left, separated by a row of interlocking green, gold and red triangles, than the right-wing Conservative Party said it wasn't about to salute.

SpiderI wassitting so long a spider seized me,dropped his guideline from my sweater,commenced his killer's cartwheelsand lunges, weaving and wanderingin space on silk.I could not let such spinning stop.I sat still and watched him dance designsin the dazzled air.BatThe gray headed fruit bat hangs upside down,bears her baby upside down, panting,showing her assassin's pointed teethin a rosebud mouth.She licks her baby into life, covers himwith her lady gangster's black leather wings.ManThe Afrikaner told how he and other officers shota young black student, made a fire.

ORANIA, South Africa -- Riaan Potgieter has found his promised land, a whites-only enclave in the heart of black-ruled South Africa."You have to think `In God I trust,' " he says, enjoying a communal barbecue under a star-sprinkled sky. "He sent us here. We gave up everything and moved down."With his wife, Ena, and their three young children, he came to this remote and arid corner of northern Cape Province seven months ago to escape the changes that followed the 1994 election of President Nelson Mandela.