Mariental Culture - The Afrikaaners

In general, going to Mariental has fulfilled one of my goals in coming to Namibia: to experience a culture completely different from my own. I’ve been exposed to both the white culture and the diverse black culture. Just as a disclaimer, let me note that everything I say is based on my week-long observations and very limited knowledge of the history of the region. I am not an anthropologist or sociologist, but I do find people interesting. Also, race is a very pertinent issue. In the US, we generally try to ignore race and pretend everyone’s the same. But going to Namibia, and especially Mariental, has made me realize that it is not the same here. Also being a foreigner and a racial minority. I’ve never been so aware of my whiteness. But really, it’s like this: I’m white. Everyone knows I’m white. Why pretend like I’m the same as everybody else? Why should I never say the words “white” or “black?” So I might talk about race a lot. It’s not “politically correct” by US standards, but it’s real. It’s what’s happening here.

Before, I mentioned that there are farms in Mariental. All of these farms are run by white Afrikaaners that employ the locals to work on the farms. Now the Afrikaaners are interesting. I don’t know too much about their history (I’d like to know more), but they are descended from the original white colonizers of the area. The language, Afrikaans, is sort of a combination of German and Dutch. And let me remind you that Namibia only gained independence and ended apartheid 19 years ago. In Windhoek it’s clear that the blacks have regained power, but a lot of these Afrikaaners in the south still hang onto their roots. Also during apartheid, Afrikaans was the language of the whites. While the cities may have moved on to speaking English, most people in the south still speak Afrikaans and not English. This includes the blacks. Many Afrikaaners refuse to speak English. And it’s obvious that there is still a lot of racism amongst them. We witnessed this at the deli at Spar. The Afrikaaner boss of the deli kept talking down to the Nama employees. We could tell even though she wasn’t speaking English. The attitude was obvious. And we heard from those working on the farms the severe penalties for stealing the crops. To put it in short, the Afrikaaners are all hillbillies. Rednecks. You should even see them. All the men wear short shorts like they were back in the 80s or something. One night we went to the Mariental Hotel for dinner. Then we remembered that a few days ago, a (white) lady in the grocery store handed us a flyer for an April Fool’s Day Dance on April 3rd, which just happened to be that night. So we decided to stick around to see the hillbillies, as we call them. Apparently this Hotel was a gathering place for them. They come down from their farms all the way to Mariental to hang out there. So we wanted to check it out. Now, you might think that because we were white and they were white that they might have been friendly to us. Not. The case. As soon as we walked in everyone was staring at us. Our liaisons at the DRFN, Lucky and Clarence, might have been the only black people there. I was afraid to even go up to the bar. All these huge men in short shorts and their pretty wives and girlfriends just made us feel so unwelcome. But oh well. We were bored after a while, so Dennis and I decided to dance (swing) to the music that was playing. We had seen one couple dance swing to this one song before, so I thought it might be ok if we tried it. I didn’t notice, but apparently everyone was giving us angry looks. Lucky said later that he had seen one Afrikaaner lady say “Where did they come from?” in Afrikaans while we were dancing. We were having a great time, but we were still outsiders. It was interesting. We left once one of the rednecks started playing guitar and singing bad versions of American songs.

So that’s the Afrikaaner culture that I observed. Of course, they’re not all bad. I’ve made a lot of generalizations. But if a white person in Mariental wasn’t racist and redneck, I wouldn’t call them Afrikaaner. And there are plenty of non-racist white people there too. We interviewed at least one farmer woman who was very helpful to our project. I just wanted to throw that disclaimer in there.

Next: My observations on the diverse black culture of Mariental.