The construction of a 'Bitter Hedge': narrative, nationalism, and the construction of Afrikaner identity in the Voortrekker Monument

TL;DRAbstract

During the early settlement of South Africa, the governor, Jan Van Riebeeck, grew a hedge of Bitter Almond to divide the fledgling colony from the local population. The journey of the Voortrekkers who escaped British rule into the interior would become an important focal point of Afrikaner nationalism, and the single most important event in Afrikaner history and mythology. The construction of the Voortrekker Monument, and the narrative it presents, are important for understanding how the Afrikaners constructed and used their past. Afrikaners clung to their imagined past in a present where everything seemed doubtful, and in so doing they attempted once again to cut themselves off from the world around them. Through Afrikaner nationalism Jan Van Riebeeck’s ‘Bitter Almond hedge’ returned to South Africa in the twentieth-century.

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