THE SEGREGATIONERA
Afrikaners, predominantly
men of rural origins who had settled in the
towns but had failed to prosper in their new environment.
Other Afrikaners tried to exploit the opportunities created by the Ger-
man victories. German radio broadcasts in Afrikaans were beamed to
South Africa. Afrikaner intellectuals who had studied in German univer-
sities, such as Nicholaas Diederichs (later president of the Republic of
South Africa) and Piet Meyer (subsequently chairman of the South African
Broadcasting Corporation),
wrote articles, pamphlets,
and books and
spoke to enthusiastic audiences, using ideas from German national so-
cialism. A certain J.Albert Coetzee started a pamphlet with the statement,
"The history of South Africa is really the history of the origin of a new
nation-of
how, from different European nations, groups, and individuals
it was separated, cut off, differentiated and specialized to form a new
volksgroep, with its own calling and destiny, with its own traditions, with
its own soul and with its own body."96 The lexicon included explicit rac-
ism. In Rasse en Rasvermenging (Races and Race Mixing), G. Eloff de-
scribed distinct white, black, and yellow races, each with its spiritual as