The Afrikaners

The Afrikaners: Biography of A People, the first comprehensive history of the Afrikaner people based on—and critical of—the most recent scholarly work, draws on the author’s own research and interviews conducted with leading political actors. Hermann Giliomee weaves together life stories and interpretation to create a highly readable narrative history of the Afrikaners.

The revised and expanded edition also offers a fresh contextualization of apartheid, its paradoxes and its complex effects, and of the increasingly fraught relationship between the ANC government and the powerless Afrikaner minority. Giliomee revises current orthodoxies on white supremacy in South Africa in important ways. The result is not only a magisterial history of the Afrikaner people, but also a fuller understanding of that history, which for good or ill resonates far beyond the borders of South Africa

Reconsiderations in Southern African History