Jaap Marais

Jaap Marais
Jaap Marais
Leader of the; Herstigte Nasionale Party
	In office; 1977 – 8 August 2000
Preceded by	Albert Hertzog
Succeeded by	Willie Marais
Constituency	Innesdal ; Pretoria
Member of Parliament of South Africa
	In office; 1958–1969
Personal details
Born	Jacob Albertus Marais; 2 November 1922; Transvaal, South Africa
Alma mater	Hoër Handelskool Potchefstroom
Profession	Politician

Jacob Albertus Marais (2 November 1922 – 8 August 2000) was an

Afrikaner nationalist thinker, author, politician, Member of Parliament, and leader of the Herstigte Nasionale Party

(HNP) from 1977 till his death in 2000.

Early life and family history

Marais's paternal grandmother was the leader of a group of

concentration camp

.

Jaap Marais was one of nine children, six sons, and two daughters, of whom one brother died in infancy. Marais grew up on the farm Maraisdeel farm in the district of

Boer nationalism, Paul Kruger

.

After school Marais enrolled at the Hoër Handelskool in Potchefstroom, where he received a National Diploma in 1942.

Marais was a member of the Ossewabrandwag.^[1]

Political life

Member of Parliament (1958-1969)

He was elected as a Member of Parliament for the ruling

Broederbond

shortly after the formation of the HNP was formed, alongside other HNP members or sympathisers.

Fighting against concession, and the founding of the Herstigte Nasionale Party (1969-1982)

The HNP found it difficult to make headway against the entrenched and relatively conservative ruling National Party in the 1970s. It succeeded in winning 14% of the vote in the white parliamentary elections of 1981. However, it did not gain any seats due to the electoral system, which was based on a Westminster system of electoral districts rather than a proportional system. Its electoral growth played a role in encouraging the Conservative Party split from the National Party in 1982 under Andries Treurnicht.

Fighting against reform and the dismantling of Apartheid (1982-1994)

Boer republics of the Orange Free State (left) and Transvaal

(right).

Under the leadership of Marais, the HNP challenged the policy of the National Party to negotiate with the

FW De Klerk from handing over the reins of government to the African National Congress. In 1992, a Volksfront was created from the ranks of the Conservative Party, and after 1993 led by Constand Viljoen

.

In July 1993, in an open letter, Marais demanded a whites-only election from president

communists", frequently conceding to the ANC/SACP

alliance.

Resistance in the New South Africa (1994-2000)

After the country’s first non-racial democratic elections on 27 April 1994, which constituted the birth of the new South Africa, Marais’s HNP maintained a policy of non-participation in the formal political and electoral system. Marais propagated the rhyming motto Kies Reg: Bly Weg!, which translates as "Decide/vote Correct: Stay Away!"

In an email teeming with spelling errors, addressed to Oom Jaap niksdoen ("Uncle Jaap Do-nothing")

Hartzenberg and Viljoen, who Buys regarded as "men who sacrifice everything for their People". Buys further expressed his wish that Marais's "role in the dismantling of our People" be "laid bare in court". Marais replied: "Your letter is an interesting experience. I have never before dealt with a case where a writer's level of ignorance is exceeded so clearly by the degree of his rudeness."^[2]

Today, the party still does not recognise the right of the African National Congress government to rule over Afrikaners in South Africa. The party also has not relinquished its claim to the previously white-dominated part of South Africa. It continues to encourage its supporters not to vote, as part of its policy of resistance.

Jaap Marais claimed that it was the British and not the National Party of 1948 who had invented apartheid. Marais also demanded an apology from then UK prime minister Tony Blair for Britain's conduct during the Anglo Boer War of 1899–1902, when it had instituted concentration camps in which 27,000 Boer civilians perished (24,000 children and 3,000 women).

Private life

Marais became engaged to Marie Rautenbach in 1957, and the two were married on 6 January 1959 in Patensie. They had two daughters, Marjorié and Karina, and a son, Japie.

Marais had an affinity for the work of

Dutch and Flemish poets Marnix Gijsen, Henriette Roland Holst, Hendrik Marsman, and Martinus Nijhoff. His favourite English poetry was that of Roy Campbell, T. S. Eliot and John Keats, the latter of whom he described as "evergreen". During the 1950s, Marais translated William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar into Afrikaans

.

Marais was an avid breeder of budgerigars.

Political views

Marais exercised influence as a thinker in right-wing Afrikaner nationalist circles from the 1970s to the 1990s. His thinking was influenced by

Ortega y Gasset

.

Marais considered identity, continuity, and freedom as the three key themes of Afrikaner nationalism. He emphasized that identity rested on each group's preference for its own. Such a group preference implied a related right among members of the group to differentiate and discriminate to exercise a group's preference. Among each people, according to Marais, there was a center of authority that determined who was included and excluded. In the case of Afrikaners, their centers of authority ensured that a racial preference for whites, the Afrikaans language, a distinctive Western culture, traditions and history had formed the Afrikaner identity in southern Africa.

According to Marais, continuity depended on each generation maintaining what had been built up by previous generations and transferring it to the next generation. He emphasized Afrikaners' freedom struggle against foreign domination by British imperialism in the

Anglo Boer War, but also against American and Soviet forces during the Cold War

as well as the various black ethnic peoples in South Africa. In his view, this freedom was linked to the fatherland of Afrikaners, which he defined as the areas of South Africa dominated by whites.