Afrikaner Blood / The Born Free Generation
Ilvy Njiokiktjien
Winner of the 2011 Canon Female Photojournalist Award
“Aside from the Aborigines in Australia, the African black is the most underdeveloped, barbaric species of the human race on Earth.”
- Colonel Franz Jooste, leader of the Kommandokorps, South Africa.
An extreme right-wing group is teaching young white South Africans to eschew Nelson Mandela’s vision of a multicultural rainbow nation. The Kommandokorps, a fringe group led by ex-apartheid leader Franz Jooste, holds holiday camps for Afrikaner teenagers, mainly of Dutch and German descent. Jooste teaches them self-defense. He says that black South Africans are their enemy, that they are first and foremost Afrikaners and should deny their South African identity.
The Kommandokorps feeds on anxiety. Though the national crime rate is dropping, South Africans are increasingly anxious. Every day, fifty murders are committed and there are more than two hundred thousand assaults with intent to cause bodily harm. The excessive violence is the primary factor driving the sense of fear.
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As a result, farmers organize themselves into countryside militia and patrol at night to ensure their cattle are not stolen; urban residents form neighborhood watches, and every South African (white and black) who can afford it hires a private security firm which will send an armed response team to the home whenever the alarm goes off. All of this provides fertile ground for an organization such as the Kommandokorps.
After nine days of military style training, the boys return home. They go back to their mixed schools, where their black peers are in the same classroom. Day-to-day life remains, but fear and hate have infiltrated their system. Their parents too seem to be struggling with the “new” South Africa.
Apartheid ended 18 years ago, and the children born since, referred to as the “Born Free Generation,” are now becoming adults in modern-day South Africa, growing up as part of the rainbow nation. In just nine days, boys who could once believe in South Africa's unity, are turned into tough men with racist ideas.
Ilvy Njiokiktjien
