Afrikaner Broederbond

The Afrikaner Broederbond (AB) or simply the Broederbond was an exclusively Afrikaner Calvinist and male secret society in South Africa dedicated to the advancement of the Afrikaner people. It was founded by H. J. Klopper, H. W. van der Merwe, D. H. C. du Plessis and the Rev. Jozua Naudé in 1918 as Jong Zuid Afrika (Young South Africa) until 1920, when it was renamed the Broederbond. Its influence within South African political and social life came to a climax with the 1948-1994 rule of the white supremacist National Party and its policy of apartheid, which was largely developed and implemented by Broederbond members. Between 1948 and 1994, many prominent figures of Afrikaner political, cultural, and religious life, including every leader of the South African government, were members of the Afrikaner Broederbond. Described later as an "inner sanctum", "an immense informal network of influence", and by Jan Smuts as a "dangerous, cunning, political fascist organization", in 1920 Jong Zuid Afrika, now restyled as the Afrikaner Broederbond, was a group of 37 white men of Afrikaner ethnicity, Afrikaans language, and Calvinist faith, who shared cultural, semi-religious, and deeply political objectives based on traditions and experiences dating back to the arrival of Dutch white settlers, French Huguenots, and German settlers at the Cape in the 17th and 18th centuries, and including the dramatic events of the Great Trek in the 1830s and 1840s. Ivor Wilkins and Hans Strydom recount how, on the occasion of its 50th anniversary, a leading broeder (brother or member) said: for understandable reasons it was difficult to explain [our] aims...[I]n the beginning people were allowed in...who thought it was just another cultural society. The precise intentions of the founders are not clear. Some considered that the group was intended to counter the dominance of the British Empire and the English language, whilst others considered that the purpose was to redeem the Afrikaners after their defeat in the Second Anglo-Boer War.