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2 (1900-1905)

THE FOREIGN STUDENT

It was on a sunny Wednesday afternoon in September 1900 that Malan boarded The Briton along with his brother Koos and eight other young Afrikaners – all of them bound for Europe to pursue their studies. The ship remained moored in Table Bay for another hour, waiting for the mail to arrive from Natal. When it arrived, Malan received a telegram from his friends with these words from Deuteronomy 33:27: ‘Underneath are the everlasting arms.’ It comforted him as he wrote in his diary: ‘Farewell friends, everyone, Stellenbosch, who will always remain dear to me, and beloved, sunny South Africa.’[1] At half past four, the ship steamed out of the harbour.[2]

At first, the voyage was pleasant. The weather was warm and sunny, and even though he was aware of his stomach, Malan was happy that he did not become seasick. He even started a diary – the only one he ever kept, which revealed a young man of intense personal piety – and spent most days on deck, reading The Sign of the Cross and pondering the similarities between contemporary society and the declining Roman Empire. ‘A new moralising and civilising force … in a living, active Christianity’ was the solution, he decided. ‘May God help us,’ he wrote.[3]

But his fellow South Africans, and especially his brother, soon shattered his moralising bliss. ‘For one educated in a pure and Christian home, the language heard and the acts seen on the ship are simply loathsome and sickening,’ he noted in his diary. ‘May God preserve us.’ But it became even worse: ‘The most depressing fact is that the majority of our Africanders on board take the lead in swearing, drinking and using filthy language,’ he lamented. ‘Oh God: have mercy on our poor people and our young men studying abroad.’[4]

At least he was not completely alone. One of the other young Afrikaners, whom Malan simply called Van Schalkwyk, shared his piety. Together, they held devotions in their cabin, which they shared with Koos and another young Afrikaner, Rousseau.[5]

The latter two must have found their cabin-mates rather stuffy, since they soon moved to another cabin.[6] The next few days were quiet and pleasant enough. By this time the ship was sailing through the tropics, but they were able to cope with the heat. Malan befriended a West Indian – with whom he played quoits and draughts – as well as a Russian officer, with whom he could talk politics.[7] By the end of the week, the peace was shattered. Malan was probably writing about Koos when he lamented to his diary that it was ‘A very unpleasant and sad day. I never knew he too would go in for the sweepstakes. May the merciful God have mercy upon him and us. A big row.’[8]

Mulling over the temptations of the world and the uncertain future ahead of him, he stood on deck and watched a lighthouse on the shores of Cape Verde. He could not help but see some symbolism in the lighthouse on the dark shores of the Atlantic Ocean as he prayed: ‘May God be the light of our lives to reveal to us our straying and to guide us in the night and warn us of the danger and may he pilot our frail vessel in safety through the angry deep to the safe haven of our destination.’[9]

When the ship reached European waters the sea became stormy, but Malan was able to keep the ever-looming seasickness at bay and continued to admire more lighthouses that were beaming at him from the coast.[10] On Friday morning, 5 October 1900, the ship docked at Southampton.

The next twenty-four hours turned into a blur. They took the train from Southampton to London, where they arrived late that same afternoon. From there, they travelled to Liverpool Station, where Malan said farewell to Koos. Then Malan travelled with the Continental Express to the east coast port of Harwich. It was already dark when he boarded the Dresden, which sailed across the English Channel to Rotterdam. That night the sea was rough, and this time Malan became violently sick. The next morning, the ship docked at the Westerkade in Rotterdam, and Malan was in Utrecht before lunch.[11] As it became quiet around him and he was finally alone, he was overwhelmed by loneliness and once again turned to God for refuge: ‘“What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me?” Lord: guide my ways. I want to entrust my preparation for your work in your hands completely. Let me be a light to your glorification here as well. Amen.’[12]

His prayers evidently provided some consolation, as he wrote in his diary: ‘I am a stranger in a strange land, but the Lord is with me and shall support me.’[13] When he dared to venture out into the city for the first time, he was overwhelmed – not by wonder, but again by loneliness. Once back in the safety of his room, he recorded his first impressions:

As I walked through the streets and the thoroughfares of the City, I felt a sense of absolute loneliness creeping over me. Amid all the noise & activity of the streets, the endless stream of human beings sweeping through the streets, I felt as if I was alone and forsaken. As I scanned the faces as they hurriedly passed me, I knew none nor had I even the faintest hope to meet one I knew. No acquaintance, no home, no friend. Was it a wonder then that my thoughts were not here, but far away in the distant South.[14]

During his first week in Utrecht Malan stayed in the Hotel la Station, since his landlord, Professor Valeton, could not accommodate him immediately. He continued to explore his surroundings, and was gradually able to absorb more of what he saw. The city of Utrecht was completely different to anything he had ever seen before, and he tried his utmost to describe this new world to his parents:

Utrecht is a beautiful city. The streets are all paved with hardbricks and are kept very clean. There are also waterways, which people navigate with small boats. The city is big, a lot bigger than Cape Town; it counts over a hundred thousand inhabitants, and has beautiful buildings. The ‘Dom’ tower is the highest in the Netherlands. There are beautiful avenues and gardens, such as the ‘Maliebaan’ and the Wilhelmina Park. But here, and for that matter, all over the entire country, everything is even – no hillock that is even high enough to be called a ‘kopje’ … People here speak nothing but good Dutch. In order to be understood, I have to try and climb as high as I possibly can. Yes, sometimes I speak so high that I find it very difficult to understand myself. Here, even the small children speak high. And even the dogs and the horses understand only High Dutch.[15]

There was one comfort, though: in spite of the unfamiliar landscape, buildings and people, and difficulties with the language, Malan found that he was politically at home. ‘Our cause receives much sympathy here,’ he wrote to his parents. ‘Here there are no Jingoes or Jingo Newspapers. People here are even more heated than the Afrikaners themselves. Everyone knows the Transvaal’s national anthem and it is sung very frequently.’[16]

Malan now found himself in the most pro-Boer country in Europe where, unlike in the Cape Colony, there were no social sanctions on public displays of support for the Boers. Since the outbreak of the Transvaal’s first war with Great Britain in 1880, the Dutch had taken a great interest in the Afrikaners, whom they regarded as their stamverwanten (kinsmen). In hindsight, it is clear that this interest was not so much about feelings of kinship as about using the Boers’ military feats against a mightier power as a rallying symbol in an effort to revive flailing Dutch nationalism. Some even dreamed of the restoration of earlier imperial glory, and the expansion of the Dutch culture, in which the Transvaal would play its part by merging into a Nieuw Nederland (New Netherlands). These high hopes had waned somewhat by the 1890s, but the South African War unleashed a new outpouring of public emotion that far surpassed the enthusiasm of the early 1880s.[17]

Malan witnessed this at first hand. A few days after his arrival in Utrecht he decided to travel to Amsterdam, where Paul Kruger’s birthday was to be celebrated. As he entered the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, the sight that greeted him was one that he had never seen before: the enormous venue was filled beyond capacity after people had queued in the rain for more than three hours prior to the proceedings. Never before had the young man from small-town South Africa seen a church so full. To his astonishment, he also saw people fighting among each other for a place. He found the speeches inspirational, and fervently wished that he could write them all down. The enthusiasm that he witnessed filled him with hope. As he wrote to his parents, ‘It warms an Afrikaner’s heart to see so much enthusiasm for our cause.’[18]

Malan soon discovered that being an Afrikaner in the Netherlands resulted in special treatment. In general, the Dutch did not distinguish between Afrikaners from the Cape Colony and Afrikaners from the Boer Republics; they considered all of them to be Transvalers.[19] A chance encounter with a Belgian evangelist led to an excursion: the evangelist was so excited to meet an Afrikaner that he took Malan all over the city to introduce him to his friends, and promptly invited Malan to visit him in Brussels.[20] Malan also visited the elderly poet Nicolaas Beets. Beets, whose grandson was fighting on the Boers’ side, received him warmly, spoke enthusiastically about the Boers’ inevitable triumph in their cause, recited some of his poetry, and invited Malan to visit him again.[21]

Despite these warm and enthusiastic receptions, Malan still felt lonely. Even though the Dutch were very friendly towards him, he could not shake off his sense of alienation. ‘This is not my fatherland and these are not my people,’ he wrote to his parents.[22] The weather was also doing its part to depress him:

It is becoming terribly cold here. I am almost always wearing a thick coat. A few nights ago snow fell in the streets – and winter is only just beginning. If only I could have some of South Africa’s abundant warmth here … It rains here nearly all the time – I cannot stand it. The longing for our glorious climate and lovely sunshine is terrible. [23]

These feelings of loneliness and depression were compounded by his family’s slowness in answering his letters. By the end of October, they had not even acknowledged a letter that he had sent when the ship anchored in Madeira. Mimie was not much of a correspondent, Mother was too busy, and Fanie and Father were not in the habit of letter writing – or so he reasoned. He was elated when he finally received a letter from Cinie. Now, he hoped, he would receive more news from home.[24] But it was not only family news that Malan longed for. He was also hungry for news from South Africa. This problem was solved with far more ease than were his pleas for more letters from his family. He wrote to Cinie that:

I keep myself well up to date with regard to politics, especially that from South Africa. There is a nice library here, where, for 9 guilders a year, one can read all the local – and many foreign – newspapers, magazines and pamphlets. I have become a member, and regularly visit it every morning for an hour.[25]

In these newspapers he would inevitably have read reports and opinions about the war in South Africa, as it was a prominent issue in the Dutch press. In general, the Dutch press took clear sides in the South African conflict. The war was not treated as a mere military conflict, but rather as a colonial, and cultural, struggle between the two white races for ultimate control of the Transvaal. The Boers were given the moral high ground and were heralded as noble and heroic, while the British were condemned as war criminals. Any war crimes committed by the Boers were glossed over or justified.[26] Emily Hobhouse’s reports on the concentration camps were published as soon as they reached the Netherlands, and the shocking picture taken of a starving Boer girl, Lizzie van Zyl, was widely disseminated – including being printed on postcards. Concentration camp mortality rates were printed on large posters and pasted all over a number of Dutch cities – next to the mortality rate of that particular city, which let the shocking disparity hit close to home. In general, the Dutch accused the British of using the camps as a method to exterminate the Boer race, with the word volksmoord (genocide) doing the rounds.[27]

The news was not always reliable, as the British tried to control the flow of information as much as possible. During the first stages of the war, the Dutch used Ons Land as their main source of information, since the mail services from the Cape Colony were far more reliable than those from the two Republics. Ons Land took a clear stance in support of the Boer Republics and condemned the British army for its scorched earth tactics. This did not last very long, as its editor, F.S. Malan, was jailed for libel in early 1901 after printing a letter by a Boer woman that accused General John French of war crimes against civilians. After this, reliable news became ever more difficult to come by.[28] Malan, for one, was not always certain whether or not the reports coming from the Cape Colony could be taken at face value. He was rather dubious as he wrote to his parents:

Judging from the cablegrams, the Cape Colony must be very restless. It was cabled a few days ago that there is a reign of terror in the Dutch towns, the English dare not open their mouths any more, that the students of Stellenbosch openly unfurled the Transvaal flag and are openly singing the Transvaal anthem, that the mail train encountered no less than seventy obstructions south of the Orange River, etc. I don’t know whether all of this is true, but I immediately thought that it is exaggerated with the aim of getting martial law proclaimed.[29]

Malan may have had reasonable grounds for his suspicions, but there was another important dimension to the reports about the Cape Colony. The Dutch hoped that there would be a general uprising among the Afrikaners in the Cape, who would then assist their kinsmen in the north. If this could happen, their combined numbers would not only outnumber the British presence in South Africa, but it would also open up a second front. The Dutch press noted the failure of this pipe dream with some disappointment. They blamed the Cape Afrikaners’ failure to join their kinsmen on their anglicised school system – which had earlier served to alienate the two communities on either side of the Orange River from each other. They condemned the Cape’s political leaders, especially ‘Onze’ Jan Hofmeyr, for their cautious position – although Hofmeyr, who had in fact tried to prevent the war at the negotiating table, now found himself walking a political tightrope. In all fairness, the Dutch newspapers took cognisance of the harsh treatment of Cape rebels, who faced, and received, the death penalty for high treason if captured.[30]

As more and more reports of British atrocities were magnified by the Dutch press and the debate about the Cape Afrikaners’ position raged on, Malan became increasingly agitated, especially after receiving a letter from a friend who expressed similar sentiments. To his sister, he wrote:

I can write you volumes about the war, because my heart is more than full, but where would I end? I fully agree with a friend who wrote to me that we have to stop talking and protesting, which helps less than nothing, but we now have to do something. I add to it that we are not only justified, but that it has become a duty.[31]

Malan also wrote to his father to express his sentiments on the matter: ‘In any event, I think now that the English are worse than the Kaffirs [sic] in going about this war, it is not only justified, but it has also become a duty for the Colonial Afrikaners – for the sake of humaneness and humanity – to intervene with violence.’[32] It is unfortunate that we do not know what the father replied to his son’s hot-headed words. It was most certainly not an encouragement to return to South Africa to take up arms, as there was never any question of Malan abandoning his studies in the Netherlands. Malan did not repeat his pleas for intervention in any of the letters that followed. To Nettie, he lamented: ‘With South Africa in such a sad state, I find life to be as bad here, for me at least. Sometimes, when I see how much is suffered, I feel half ashamed of my own comparative comfort and safety.’[33]

His frustration was not entirely confined to his own feelings of powerlessness. He was also angered by the Dutch state’s resignation to its own impotence on the world stage. He soon realised that the roaring public support for the Boers was nothing more than that: public support. Dutch diplomatic policies remained unchanged. These policies, framed in the face of necessity, rested on three principles: staying out of the larger European nations’ power politics; maintaining a policy of neutrality in international conflicts; and promoting free trade.[34]

In short, the Dutch chose to confine themselves to cultivating their own niche in international relations as upholders of peace and international law. It was a far cry from their heyday as a superpower. In the aftermath of the Scramble for Africa – in which the Netherlands did not take part – at a time when colonial possessions determined international status, the Netherlands’ last claim to national pride and international status lay in its Indonesian colonies.[35] For this reason, there was no question of military intervention in the war. Alienating Britain meant endangering its possessions in the East Indies, as Britain dominated the international trade routes. Furthermore, it was thought that Britain’s military might served as a deterrent to German and French expansion in the direction of the North Sea, since it was believed that Britain – as a maritime power – would not allow its continental rivals to control the strategically significant Netherlands. The Dutch found themselves in a diplomatic love-hate relationship with the British: on the one hand, Britain was a natural ally; on the other hand, it was a superpower that was not to be trifled with.[36]

In the face of the public’s impassioned support for the Boers, the Dutch government’s main concern was to avoid confrontation with Britain and, at the same time, prevent public opinion from turning against it.[37] It succeeded in this aim through a ‘masterstroke of publicity’.[38] It offered to assist Kruger to leave the Transvaal and provided a cruiser, the Gelderland, to transport him to Europe. His voyage and his subsequent tour through Europe received mass publicity, and his presence drew crowds wherever he went.[39]

In reality, the crowds and the publicity only served to mask Kruger’s diplomatic failure. Kruger had hoped to appeal to Germany for assistance, but Kaiser Wilhelm II refused to receive him. Unfortunately for Kruger, the Germans and the British had held secret talks during the summer of 1898. The outcome of these negotiations was that they would divide the Portuguese possessions in Africa between them, as it was thought that the Portuguese state was nearing bankruptcy. As part of their cordial relationship, they undertook not to allow the South African issue to cause any further divisions between them.[40] Instead of heading for Berlin, Kruger was forced to travel to the Netherlands where, in December 1900, he stopped in Utrecht on his way to The Hague. Malan went to the station to see him. ‘There was such an incredibly large and excited mass of people that I was nearly flattened by the Dutch,’ he wrote to his parents. ‘Shouts of “Long live Kruger, Long live the Boers” were so incessant that the speeches were inaudible, even to the speakers.’[41]

The public’s enthusiasm filled Malan with cynicism. After only two months in the Netherlands, he had observed enough to write to his parents that ‘Nothing is to be expected from the European powers. Here, self-interest reigns supreme. Besides, they mistrust each other too much to work together. We will now have to do ourselves what we expect others to do for us.’[42] In his diary he noted: ‘The salvation of South Africa lies in and has to come from South Africa.’[43]

Despite Malan’s preoccupation with politics, he had to concentrate on his reason for being in the Netherlands in the first place: his studies. He was already counting the years and months until he could return to South Africa – by December 1900 he calculated that he had two years and nine months to go.[44] Unbeknown to him at the time, his stay was to be longer.

The first hurdle was that the University of Utrecht did not recognise his previous qualifications, so Malan busied himself with preparations for the exams that he had to retake. Most of the work was a repetition of what he had done before, but he resigned himself to it. At least it gave him time to consider his future plans. He was still uncertain as to whether or not he would undertake doctoral studies.[45] This raises the question of why he went to the Netherlands in the first place, and what he would have done if he had not decided to pursue doctoral studies. Unfortunately, this is a question that the surviving documents leave unanswered, but one may speculate that he left for Europe precisely because, even after completing his theological studies, his nagging feelings of inferiority left him convinced that he was not adequately prepared to lead a congregation.

Nevertheless, at this stage, he decided to prepare for the doctoral admission exams in case he decided to pursue a doctorate after all. In the meantime, he wanted to make full use of the opportunity to learn as many new things as possible that could be of value to South Africa. He decided that he did not care much for sightseeing – unless it provided him with an opportunity to learn something. He was initially struck by the extensive charity work undertaken in the Netherlands – South Africa, for one, would certainly need similar charitable institutions after the war, as there would surely be much poverty and deprivation in its wake. Malan resolved to make a special study of these institutions during one of his longer holidays.[46] What he would have found was a society that was changing its approach to poverty alleviation.

The last quarter of the nineteenth century, and also the first decade of the twentieth, was a time of extensive socio-economic change in the Netherlands. The country’s economy began to industrialise, moving away from trade capitalism to a broader, modern capitalism. The growth of cities and the proliferation of factories served to make the poor more visible than ever before. This resulted in new perceptions regarding poverty. Instead of treating it as something to be left to the charities, poverty became a broader social issue that needed to be addressed through government policies and legislation. Education was regarded as a key solution to the problem, as the Netherlands was a country where a modernising democracy was giving the working class an ever-growing political voice. At the same time, the growing power of the middle class meant that society was dominated by bourgeois values, and education was seen as an important means of transmitting these values to the masses.[47] This bears striking similarities to both Malan’s, and the general Afrikaner nationalist, approach to the poor white problem in South Africa, which was to occupy an important place on the South African social and political agenda for the first half of the twentieth century.

As part of his ‘project’ Malan visited the largest orphanage in the Netherlands, as well as a socialist colony, which he thought was quite novel. ‘The latter is an attempt to improve society by abolishing all private property. Everyone in the colony works for the common purse, from which each then receives what he needs,’ he explained in a letter to Nettie.[48]

This experiment in socialism did not inspire Malan – although it left him well informed. In later years, he would publish a lecture on socialism which demonstrated that he had a firm grasp of Karl Marx’s theories.[49] The Dutch railway strike of 1903 filled him with revulsion, not solidarity with the plight of the working classes:

The railway employees suddenly got it in their minds to stop working. The hotbed was in Amsterdam. For a few days, not a single train could reach Amsterdam. The government concentrated troops from other areas in Amsterdam in order to be prepared for all eventualities, but the railway employees flatly refused to serve any train containing a soldier. By cutting off all access, the price of articles escalated – it was as if the city was under siege. It could not go on any longer and – the workers got their way. As if they have the power in their hands! Thus, slowly the workers are becoming the ruling class in all European countries. Over the past few years, the socialists in Germany have increased threefold. If the Kaiser is not careful, he will get it on the head! That in itself would not be bad, only, I would not like to see it happen before he helps England to its downfall. There is indeed every chance of that happening. That it will be the clash of the first twenty years is unmistakeable.[50]

These words reveal so many aspects of the Afrikaner nationalist politician that was to come. He had a bourgeois mistrust of the mobilisation of the working class, supported Britain’s enemies – not because they merited support but because they would help to punish Britain – and, moreover, he had a keen insight into the intricacies of power politics and their inevitable outcome.

Malan gradually became accustomed to his new world. After about seven months in the Netherlands, he could report to Nettie that he was becoming used to the Dutch and their habits, and no longer felt ‘like a fish on dry land’.[51] Yet, as is typical of any foreigner, Malan’s observations were always in relation to his own country, and in his eyes, the Netherlands did not compare favourably, as he wrote to Nettie:

I’ve often wondered how it is possible that such a level country intersected by hundreds of canals, with a gray mist usually hanging over the landscape, ever could have inspired such great poets as the Netherlands have produced. And that too in a country where woman, who so often is the object or inspirer of poetry, does not command that position of power and influence in society she has with us. By the way, you know that it is a fact that nowhere in the world does woman occupy such a high position in the public estimation as among the Africanders. This not only on the ground of my own observation, but on the authority of our great South African historian Theal. So I would advise you not as yet to set on foot or join in a movement for the emancipation of woman.[52]

In contrast to his disdain for the Dutch, Malan’s reverence for his own nation continued to grow, as he romanticised and extolled their virtues: ‘My experience thus far is that, in spite of their civilisation here, of which they are so proud, our poor old oppressed little nation is in most respects far, far superior to any with whom I have yet come into contact.’[53]

In the midst of the Dutch winter, Malan found himself longing for another landscape, far away in the south:

I can hardly, when I look out of my window on the roofs and trees and streets all covered with a thick layer of snow, picture to myself the oakshaded [sic] ‘stoep’ of Allesverloren, the green vineyards and orchards laden with the delicious fruit of summer, and the people gasping for breath on account of the heat. To see the trees covered with snow is really one of the finest sights I’ve seen in Europe. This certainly makes up a good deal at any rate for the plain scenery of Holland. Holland certainly is beautiful in summer with its green meadows and shady forests and avenues but in winter it is dull and gloomy. A South African, born and bred in a rugged country cannot but love the wild and romantic Alps, he is almost sure to get poetical, but the tameness of the Dutch scenery soon wearies. I feel that being already naturally rigid, I’m here growing more prosaic every day, living as I do in a prosaic country among a prosaic people.[54]

Malan might have grown accustomed to his surroundings, but he could not identify with the Dutch. Coming from a more undifferentiated society, he believed that it was impossible for their social order – with a monarchy, and a more rigid class structure – to produce prominent personalities. He could not become used to some of their social habits, such as drawing up a list of the gifts that they would like to receive on their birthday. He found the society’s elaborate rules of formal etiquette constricting,[55] and in his letters to Nettie, poked subtle fun at these conventions.[56]

Malan’s friendship with Nettie grew during his years in Utrecht. In her, he discovered a faithful correspondent. Their friendship was cemented when she and her sister Coosie travelled to Europe during the summer of 1902. Coosie was suffering from a throat ailment and needed to seek treatment in Germany.[57] The three of them spent part of the summer in Bavaria, where they stayed at the picturesque resort of Reichenhall.[58]

Much friendly banter seems to have passed between Malan and Nettie. She teased him about his lack of romantic prospects, while he enjoyed extolling the virtues of girls for whom she had shown disdain, and joked about her becoming his housekeeper one day.[59]

One cannot help wondering whether there might have been a serious undertone in Nettie’s teasing. She displayed a particular interest in subjects that interested Malan, and asked him to recommend books to her – and even sent him some money to buy these recommendations for her.[60] Malan responded enthusiastically, teasing her about possible admirers and praising her intellectual endeavours:

And what is this about your two suitors, Netta? I am becoming very afraid that I might have to miss your good services in my house. And that I wouldn’t want, especially since I, now that I have heard that you are study­ing Calvin, with much profit to myself, can discuss all kinds of things in my own work with you. It has always given me great pleasure to see your interest in all sorts of scholarly subjects, and I must say that talking to you about these things has set me thinking about more than one point.[61]

Yet, at the same time, he dashed any hopes that she might or might not have had. She teased him about his seeming inability to go courting, especially since both his younger brothers were engaged by that time, but he responded that he had given up on romantic prospects.[62] Nettie was a friend, and nothing more.

Back in Utrecht, Malan threw himself into his work, but theology was never the only interest in his life, and his years in Europe were not necessarily defined only by his studies. Malan’s presence in Utrecht afforded him the rare privilege of meeting the Boer leaders when they visited Europe. By this time, Kruger was living in Utrecht, and Malan used the opportunity to visit him. More than fifty years later, he recalled (and maybe even romanticised) the scene that greeted him: an old, bent figure, with the Bible open in front of him.[63] He also witnessed Kruger’s decline. As the war reached its final months, Malan wrote to his parents that ‘Oom Paul’ was very quiet and kept to himself. He only left his house on Sundays to attend the nearby Dopper church. ‘His time has passed,’ Malan concluded.[64] Malan found Kruger’s last public appearances tragic. Within months after the conclusion of the war, the Boer generals Louis Botha, Koos de la Rey and Christiaan de Wet visited Europe. Utrecht held a special meeting for them in the Domkerk, which Malan attended. Here he witnessed the passing of the older generation and the rise of the new generation, whom he himself was to succeed:

At the close the ‘oubaas’ himself ascended the pulpit and addressed the generals and the audience … Though he said nothing particular, yet it was a most imposing and pathetic spectacle to see the oldman [sic], so strong and mighty in his days, now bowed down with age and disaster stand up before an audience perhaps for the last time. In the evening, the generals addressed a meeting in a large hall, and spoke well and made a favourable impression. De Wet especially spoke well … About the reception in Paris and Berlin you would have read. In spite of the Kaiser and his government, it is freely stated that Berlin has not seen the like in the last thirty-two years.[65]

Malan now joined the Dutch in their near hero worship of these men who had stepped forward as the new generation of Boer leaders. Christiaan de Wet, in particular, had been the darling of the Dutch press throughout the war. He was hailed as the architect of the guerrilla campaign, and his ability to outwit his adversaries and escape their ‘drives’ to hunt him down time and again kept the Dutch public enthralled.[66] The Dutch public’s admiration for the generals filled Malan with pride and reinforced his belief in the Afrikaners’ moral superiority to the European nations:

The generals are making a profound impression everywhere, especially because of their faith and their simplicity. In a society that is paralysed by faithlessness and where they are taught since childhood to feign behind a mask of so-called civilised etiquette, the appearance of three men so world-famous – and yet so unpretentious, so natural, so full of faith and so forceful – is a true wonder.[67]

In contrast to his admiration for the Boer generals, Malan had nothing but disdain for the Cape politicians and their tradition of conducting politics in the tolerant and accommodative manner that he had known all his life. In Stellenbosch the younger generation had already demonstrated that it was less tolerant than its elders. Now, in the immediate aftermath of the war, Malan’s words showed that his tolerance was gone, as he rejected the ways of the older generation:

In the Cape Parliament our case seems to be doing excellently thanks to the foolishness of the ultra-jingo party. The only thing that I find very hard to stomach is that there is apparently so much sacrificing of principles, so much trading in principles. Of course it is all for sound political reasons, but that does not take away the immorality of it all. But the struggle between politics and principles is as old as Ahab and Elijah, and no one has ever succeeded in uniting the two.[68]

This condemnation of politics as something that was immoral and irreconcilable with principles was not only Malan speaking. It was a sign of the influence of his new mentor, his landlord Professor J.J.P. Valeton Jr.

Valeton specialised in the history of religion and literature in Israel as well as the Old Testament and was a prominent Dutch theologian, one of the three leading representatives of the ‘later’ Ethical theologians. He published a number of pamphlets on Ethical theology, but these were not his only publications – he also wrote religious tracts, and pamphlets that dealt with mission work and Old Testament history. His most specialised works concentrated on the prophets of the Old Testament.[69] In April 1900, six months before Malan’s arrival in the Netherlands, Valeton delivered a lecture entitled ‘De strijd tusschen Achab en Elia’ (The battle between Ahab and Elijah).[70]

In this lecture, Valeton created a dichotomy between politics and religion. The biblical story of Ahab exposed the difference between worldly and political views and motives on the one hand, and religious, spiritual values on the other.[71] Ahab was a shrewd political strategist – especially in his creation of alliances with his neighbours, be it through marriage or through showing mercy to those whom he had defeated in war.[72] Elijah was Ahab’s antithesis: the man of God whose only concern was service to his Creator. Elijah regarded politics and the interests of state – which were Ahab’s main concerns – as inconsequential.[73] To Valeton, the rivalry between Ahab and Elijah was the personification of the even greater rivalry, ‘the battle between politics and religion, between the interests of state and faith, between opportunism and principle’.[74]

Valeton saw a clear correlation between the story of Ahab and Elijah and the nature of his own society. If the story were to be retold in plain historical terms, without the moralising influence of Bible teachers, contemporary society would applaud Ahab as the ‘liberal’ man, the man of his times. Elijah would stand in stark contrast to Ahab:

Elijah is the narrow-minded man, one who has but one end in mind, and who sacrifices everything for its sake. Elijah is intolerant and hard, well, yes, great and impressive, but in a manner that inspires respect but also indignation. He sacrifices everything for an idea, human lives are nothing to him … the interests of the state are also nothing to him. What a man! A gale-force wind, a bolt of lightning, all-conquering and all-destroying, to be admired from a distance and when close by, to be avoided as far as possible.[75]

Despite the public’s inevitable disapproval of such a hard and narrow-minded prophet, Elijah was clearly the better man – one who did not seek his salvation in the state, but in God who was eternal and unchanging. Valeton invoked the old biblical maxim: ‘For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’[76]

Valeton portrayed politics as something dirty, something that could not be reconciled with religion. He created Elijah as the ideal man: one who was unbending, unpopular and isolated, but nevertheless one who was superior to a likeable man, as personified by Ahab. Elijah was a man who was willing to serve his principles without expecting to see the results in his lifetime. In Valeton’s eyes, Elijah was equal to Moses, the man who had led his people to the Promised Land.[77]

It is unmistakable that Malan had made these ideals his own. He too began to regard religion and politics as two irreconcilable poles. He became convinced that the only way in which one could be successful in politics was by adhering to the compulsion ‘to be silent, to cloak, to cover up, to almost approve of, and to applaud, the criminal’.[78] Even worse, in his eyes, were those politicians who played on their supporters’ religious beliefs in order to get ahead:

Religious principles … according to my insight, should pursue and defend justice and truth in the name of God, and therefore all injustice and crime and sin in friend or foe, in a single individual or an entire nation, should be exposed and condemned. And when one drags religion by its hair into politics in order to obtain political capital, one is sacrificing eternal interests for the temporary – one humiliates religion.[79]

In the aftermath of the South African War, as the Afrikaners began their quest to regain political power through constitutional means, Malan grappled with the nature of that endeavour. At this stage, only the Cape Afrikaners were enfranchised – the first elections in the Transvaal and the Free State would only be held in 1907. The Cape political tradition of tolerance and accommodation was the only means of political expression, and the only means to power. Malan found it difficult to reconcile this with his now firmly entrenched belief in non-negotiable principles and the primacy of eternal interests over temporal ones. He could not refrain from condemning Cape politics, even if it was an avenue to political power. It was no longer a matter of obtaining power. Instead, it was the manner in which power was obtained that was important:

That we will regain political power is not entirely impossible, but then it will have to take place according to the precedent set by Cape politics – through concessions in terms of nationality, by hushing up the existence of the Afrikaner nation with its own history, nationality, language, and customs to death – and if this precedent is followed – given our nation’s well-known inability to stand on its own feet – in thirty years’ time there will be little reason, which is now still the case, to speak of an Afrikaner nation. If I have to choose – and it seems to me that our nation is increasingly faced with this choice – between having political power on the one hand, and on the other hand the preservation of our own nationality, which rests on our own national calling and our own history which on our part is not born out of racial hatred nor longs to dominate another nation, but which is the embodiment of a higher principle – a history which may therefore never be buried under sweet conciliation talk; if I am given the choice, then I for my part will still choose the latter – nationality without political predominance.[80]

To Malan, power had to be obtained without compromise, or not at all. At the same time, he was convinced that the Afrikaners faced extinction in the face of British cultural dominance. Somehow, the Afrikaners had to maintain their own nationality. What they needed were men like the biblical Elijah – much like the one that Valeton described. This idealised image now became Malan’s own role model. He now knew that he wanted to devote his life to the preservation of the Afrikaner nation. He confided his aspirations to a close friend:

Our nation, in spite of the praises of the non-English-speaking world, is substantially deprived of men of principle. We have many reapers who are all too ready to collect the fruits and the honours. But we have few sowers, who know that they will not reap but who nevertheless sow as if they shall reap. Everyone grasps at that which is at hand, he stretches his hand out to what is nearest, he pursues that which he himself can see and can enjoy. Few are content to build, unseen and unknown, the sure and stable foundations of a building whose completion they will not see, to live for an idea, to die for an ideal whose realisation they can prepare for but which they themselves will not see. I have undertaken to myself to use my weak powers to work for the Afrikaner nation and not to budge one inch from my path. To make it clear to the nation that God is also the Sovereign of its history, and that He needs to be recognised as such in the national life – this is as much an extension of God’s kingdom as it is to preach the Gospel to the heathens. But lately nothing has become clearer to me than that the man who wants to work for the Afrikaner nation’s ability to develop itself on its own terms, so that it can be an own nation with its own history, language, character and ideals, that would in its own manner embody the Kingdom of God in itself, that that man would be held up by heavy resistance, not least from his own nation. He will be seen as an extremist, a fanatic, one who is petty-minded.[81]

Malan wanted to be like Elijah: a man of principle, who was not interested in temporal rewards but only in the eternal, even if it meant that he would not see the fruits of his labour in his own lifetime, and even if it meant that he would be labelled an extremist. He could not guess how prophetic his words would turn out to be. Years later, when he had to wrestle with a choice between politics and the church, Valeton’s Ahab and Elijah would come to haunt him again.

Malan’s admiration for Elijah suited his temperament. Although he clearly had leadership abilities, Malan was always quiet, serious, and rather apart from the crowd. When all the Afrikaner students were gathered together in Utrecht and, as students typically do, discussed the merits of their professors, Malan remained silent while his friends became animated about the intellectual splendours of their learned masters. He waited until they had just about reached the height of their admiration before finally making his contribution: a good professor was merely a good student. If he was not a good student himself, he could not be a good professor. These words more or less sobered up the conversation, which then ran out of steam.[82]

However, like any other student, when it came to exam time, Malan fretted about his professors. To Nettie he wrote: ‘I am not afraid of old man Valeton – he is too much of a jolly chap to save the most difficult things for me. And of Lamers not too much either. But I shudder before Van Veen and especially Baljon with his bald brow.’[83]

As Valeton’s tenant, Malan knew all too well what a ‘jolly chap’ the old man was. To his sister Cinie, Malan described Valeton as ‘very amiable and childlike, and … just as interested in the question of the number of eggs his hens have laid as in the question of whether the book Isaiah was written by one or two prophets’.[84]

Malan’s most important theological education took place in Valeton’s living room. Here the two of them would drink their ‘customary three cups of tea’ and talk.[85] Malan regarded Valeton as the university’s finest theologian,[86] and readily absorbed his views on Ethical theology and Higher Criticism.

Valeton’s practice of theology revolved around his concept of revelation. All knowledge of God was based on revelation: either through the ‘general revelation’, which was manifested in nature and in history, or the ‘exceptional revelation’, which was manifested in Israel’s history and in the person of Jesus Christ. In that sense, the Bible was a means by which God revealed himself. Valeton rejected the notion that the Christian faith depended on church dogma or the historical accuracy of the Bible. Faith was based on personal experience and not on academic historical arguments. This personal experience originated from God and could therefore not be separated from him. For this reason, Valeton believed that true theological knowledge was only accessible to the faithful.[87]

Since his own faith was rooted in the experience of God, Valeton was able to accept the findings of the historical-critical method, which was a controversial issue in theological circles at the time, without regarding it as a threat to the basis of his faith. Although it was not the main focus of his own research, he used it as a tool to study the workings of God’s revelation in the history of Israel.[88]

The historical-critical method, which is also called Higher Criticism, did not approach the Bible as a source of supernatural revelation, but as a document that was rooted in time and space and which called for critical study. This meant that advances in the fields of archaeology, linguistics, mythology and the like became important tools in studying the religion of Ancient Israel.[89] Valeton, for example, identified traits that Israel’s religion shared with the beliefs of the other Semitic nations. This did not threaten his own faith, as Israel’s faith differed from that of the other Semitic nations in one important aspect: it was guided by the Holy Spirit and formed part of the exceptional revelation to Abraham and his descendants, as it had fallen to them to carry God’s message to the nations.[90]

These views brought Valeton into direct conflict with Abraham Kuyper. Kuyper was the leading representative of Reformed theology (which has also become known as neo-Calvinism) in the Netherlands, and rejected Higher Criticism in favour of an uncritical acceptance of the Bible’s historical accuracy – everything in the Bible was true and accurate ‘because it is written’.[91] This was his indignant reply to Valeton’s and others’ questions on the problematic aspects of biblical interpretation. Because of Valeton’s prominence as a theologian and his role as an articulator of Ethical theology, he became the focused target of Kuyper’s attacks in the press. These attacks were part of Kuyper’s broader campaign against all established theologians, as he was in the process of establishing the Free University of Amsterdam and used the polemic to attract prospective theology students.[92]

Abraham Kuyper, who became prime minister of the Netherlands in 1901, was the antithesis of Valeton’s dichotomy between religion and politics. A theologian-cum-newspaper editor-cum politician, Kuyper combined politics and religion throughout his illustrious career.[93] Kuyper was able to justify this through the principle of ‘sovereignty in each sphere’, which dictated that society was composed of separate spheres, but that each had to adhere to God’s authority. Thus, the spheres of state and politics were also subject to religious principles.[94]

At this stage of his life, Malan chose his mentor’s side. In later years, although he owned a copy of Kuyper’s Het Calvinisme, along with a number of other standard works of theology, he never expressed much enthusiasm for Kuyper’s theology, and he never had much sympathy for the Doppers[95]– members of the South African Reformed Church who embraced Kuyper’s Neo-Calvinism. But even more important, under Valeton’s guidance, he embraced the practice of Higher Criticism, which set him apart from Kuyper and his Dopper adherents.[96] Back in South Africa, the tension between Neo-Calvinism and Higher Criticism would later erupt into the Johannes du Plessis case, which scarred the Dutch Reformed Church and the Stellenbosch seminary in the early 1930s.[97]

Valeton’s assertion that all knowledge of God was the product of his revelation found resonance in the topic that Malan chose to pursue for his doctoral thesis. In April 1903, Malan could write to his parents to inform them that he had passed his doctoral exams with flying colours and that he was now a doctorandus – the latter part of the word meant that he was not yet a Doctor, but he was well on his way.[98]

With his eyes always fixed on South Africa, Malan had hoped to write a thesis on South African church history, but this was impossible for two reasons: firstly, because similar work was already being undertaken in South Africa, and, secondly, because all of the archival material that he would have needed to consult was in South Africa. Instead, he settled for a philosophical topic: Bishop George Berkeley’s philosophy of idealism. Even though he had always enjoyed philosophy, the prospect of writing a doctoral thesis on such an abstract concept was a daunting one. He was apprehensive of the task ahead of him,[99] but nevertheless set about to work on the topic. His first step was to visit London, where he collected material. The city and its people filled him with revulsion:

The city is large and bustling, but dirty. I don’t want to live here. Otherwise, there was enough to see that would infuriate an Afrikaner. I have never seen greater audacity from this nation, which believes itself to have a calling to rule, civilise, and Christianise the world. Thus they have, among other things, a museum where they display their loot. There one also finds an S.A. collection. A great part of this consists of family Bibles, which they have stolen from our homes … At the Crystal Palace there are more hideous images, Steyn, Kruger, and Mrs Kruger as ‘South African knock-them-downs’, the target of common Englishmen. Indeed, they forgive and forget.[100]

It was a stark contrast to the euphoric adoration of the Boers that he had witnessed in the Netherlands. To Malan, British imperialism represented all that was detestable. It was the opposite of cultural pluralism, which he regarded as the ideal. This ideal was cemented in his mind by what he experienced at the World Conference of the Students’ Christian Association, which he attended in Denmark in August 1902 as the representative of the South African branch.[101] The conference made a profound impression on him, as he described it to his sister:

As far as nations and languages are concerned, it is a true Babel, but not a Babel that separates and drives apart, but one that reunites under the banner of Christ. The Chinese and Japanese travelled halfway around the world to attend the conference. Among others we also have such specimens of humanity as Hungarians, Portuguese, Russians, Norwegians, Swedes, Italians, a Syrian, a Bulgarian, a few Fins, and even an Icelander. The languages that are spoken most are English, German, French, Danish and Swedish. To me, this meeting is such a beautiful promise for the future of humanity. Every nation is allowed here, and it is also expected from each to follow its own methods, to preserve its own national peculiarities. No dominance by the stronger, or trampling or denying the rights of the weaker. No imperialism or dead uniformity, but federation and rich variety. In this way, God’s kingdom of righteousness and peace will come when every nation is itself and no other, and thereby fulfils its God-given place and calling. Yet, all are together and are also bound to one another in the acknowledgement of God’s Kingship and in loyalty to him and his service. There is no other unbreakable bond between the nations than this one.[102]

Decades later, when Malan was explaining the apartheid policy to his supporters, it was precisely this ideal that he evoked. Malan’s interpretation of the conference was in keeping with the South African Dutch Reformed Church’s approach to mission work. It was founded on the notion of a volkskerk (national church), a church that would take cognisance of its members’ linguistic, cultural, and social peculiarities. It followed this route through the institution of segregated worship in 1857, and the establishment of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church for coloured congregants in 1881, thereby contributing to the social order that characterised twentieth-century South Africa.[103]

The Dutch Reformed Church was influenced by the assertions of German missionary societies that the nations of Africa and Asia had to be given the opportunity to become Christians within their own cultural framework. This belief, that separate national churches – which respected and preserved their members’ mother tongue and traditions – had to be established, can be traced back to the influence of German Romanticism.[104] Respect for the cultural distinctiveness of every nation and the preservation of the mother tongue was the hallmark of the German Romantic philosopher Herder. Malan never made any reference to Herder himself, but he admired the work of Fichte, who echoed Herder’s ideas about language. In this context, language was not merely a means of communication but an expression of the national soul. It was seen as the key to human happiness, as it united those who understood it, and enabled the self-definition of both the group and the individual.[105]

To Malan, language became all-important. He fiercely resented British cultural hegemony and the dominance of the English language, which he believed was intended to smother the Afrikaners. In his view, the solution was twofold; it lay in language and education:

If we are going to have any chance at keeping our nationality, then first of all we need to busy ourselves earnestly with the question of education. The English are focusing precisely on that matter in order to deal us the final blow. They will see to it that English is the only medium of instruction in all government schools, and Dutch will only be tolerated as a foreign language. There is no surer way to achieve our anglicisation. If the situation of the past continues in our Colonial government schools, the extinction of our language is as certain as two times two is four. The best we would then be able to be are English Pro-Afrikaners – but that is not what we want. We want Afrikaners. If we can’t have Dutch as the medium of instruction in our Afrikaner government schools, then it is high time that our schools tear themselves away and stand on their own feet. It will be difficult, but our nationality is worth it. Such Afrikaner schools, independent of the state, with Dutch as the medium of instruction, is what the Transvalers want to establish.[106]

In his belief that the nation’s key to survival was education, Malan was echoing Fichte, who had the same conviction. Malan’s focus on language and culture was typical of classical nationalism, since most nationalisms start out as cultural crusades long before they are political in the sense of having the means to form their own governments.[107]

To Malan, the key to Afrikaner identity did not lie in the Dutch language. For the time being, Dutch was far better than English, and the Afrikaners could use it to hold their own, but the true future lay in Afrikaans. Afrikaans belonged to the nation; it evoked its love like no other language could.[108] Malan was adamant that Afrikaans had to be elevated to the position of a national language, even if there were many who did not even regard it as a real language and condescendingly referred to it as ‘Kitchen-Dutch’. In a letter to a Dutch newspaper editor, he wrote:

Give Afrikaans the status it deserves, as mother tongue of the nation, the language that can express like no other that which is in the heart of the nation, the language which mirrors the national character. Teach the nation its language, not to despise its own language, not to regard it as a kitchen language, not to be ashamed to write her, to speak her in the kitchen and in parliament, in the stable or in the drawing room, to appreciate her and to love her as an all-important part of its national possessions.[109]

In the same letter, Malan also stipulated how the relationship between the English and the Afrikaners ought to be:

One can point to the fact that there exists a broad basis – love of South Africa as fatherland and the maintenance of her interests above those of all other countries – on which English speakers and Afrikaners can work together … What I mean is this: that the government has to acknowledge that S.A. is a country inhabited by two white nationalities who stand independently alongside each other, and that both are free and do not reign over one another … together, Afrikaner and English South Africans form a South African nation on the broad basis of ‘South Africa my fatherland’. The nation thus consists of two sections or, rather, two different nations, who do not stand opposite one another but independently next to each other. You would have noticed that I distinguish between Afrikaners and South Africans.[110]

The last statement, that there was a difference between Afrikaners and South Africans, is of great significance. Malan used the term in an exclusivist sense – only Afrikaans speakers could be called Afrikaners. The concept ‘South African’ was a broader one, and it was here that Afrikaans and English speakers could meet. This was in contrast to the ideas expressed by General J.B.M. Hertzog, the man who was to establish the National Party. Hertzog often caused confusion, as he never made it clear what precisely the term ‘Afrikaner’ entailed. At times he used it in such a manner that it included English speakers who were loyal to South Africa, rather than to Britain.[111] While Hertzog was vague and ambiguous in his use of the term, Malan’s meaning was plain.

Malan had yet to meet Hertzog – the man under whom he would serve a large portion of his political career – but they were already bound together by a mutual friendship: that of the former president of the Orange Free State, M.T. Steyn. In the aftermath of the war, Steyn’s ailing health forced him to seek treatment in Europe. Accompanied by his family, he spent the summer of 1903 at Reichenhall in Germany. By that time, Malan, desperate to make some progress with his thesis, decided to find a quiet place to work.[112] He chose to return to Reichenhall, where he knew he would meet the Steyns. They, in turn, promptly incorporated him into their large and extended family.[113] He gushed about his first encounter in a letter to Nettie:

I visited President Steyn and his family and was received very warmly … Their house is just like any other Afrikaans home. With family members and friends, the family numbers about fifteen. The Pres. said that I should just walk in and out of his house, in true Afrikaner fashion, so that I won’t have any shortage of company … He is cheerful and full of jokes.[114]

A few days later, he wrote to his father with delight:

Pres. Steyn is looking very well. He and his family are very friendly. I visit their house quite often. I ate there today. He is in every respect a great man. Tomorrow (God willing) I will go on an outing in the neighbourhood with some of his companions. Mrs Steyn is a very friendly and modest Afrikaans woman and the President himself is exactly like one of our typical Afrikaner farmers. There is as little formality with him as with the most humble Afrikaner. It is so wonderful to see an Afrikaner family again. I believe it is the first time since I left Africa.[115]

Compared to the strict Dutch social etiquette, the informality of the Steyn family was not only a breath of fresh air, but also like a breeze from home. Malan, true to form, would have talked politics with the elder statesman. Steyn was one of the Bittereinders, a leader who had urged his generals to stay in the field as long as possible and exhorted them to the very last not to sacrifice the Republics’ independence.[116] The friendship that was formed during the summer of 1903 would last for the rest of their lifetimes, and the Steyns would remain a source of encouragement to Malan throughout his political career.

As the summer drew to a close, Malan returned to Utrecht to evacuate his room. He had decided to spend the next few months working in Edinburgh and he could not expect Professor Valeton to keep it for him during his extended absence. By the end of September Malan arrived in Edinburgh,[117] where he buried himself in his work. It was not without its frustrations. By January 1904, he lamented to Nettie that he still did not have a single word on paper.[118] By March, however, having settled back into Utrecht – this time in new lodgings – his writing was well under way.[119] He found most of the work intensely boring – ‘as dry as a piece of cork’[120] – but there were at least moments when it lightened up and became interesting.[121]

Malan’s study dealt with the philosophy of the Irish bishop George Berkeley. Berkeley’s idealism – or immaterialism, as it is otherwise known – was very abstract and difficult to grasp. His most controversial and notorious assertion was that matter did not exist – which prompted the illustrious Samuel Johnson to kick a stone with all his might, thundering: ‘I refute it thus.’[122] According to Berkeley, one perceived an object only through one’s senses and since one’s senses were rooted in one’s mind, it was impossible to perceive – or ascertain the existence of – anything without the use of a mind. Therefore all existence was by virtue of the mind and nothing could exist independently of the mind. Esse est percipi: to be is to be perceived, was Berkeley’s grounding principle. This did not mean that an object ceased to exist when one was no longer engaged in perceiving it – in order for it to exist, it was only necessary that some mind perceived it. God’s perception guaranteed the continued existence of all objects.

God was central to Berkeley’s philosophy. At a time when rapid advances in science made atheism all the more attractive, Berkeley tried to emphasise the world’s dependence on God.[123] He argued that all perceptions or ideas originated in God’s mind. Malan absorbed many of Berkeley’s ideas. Years later, he would refer to God as ‘an Omnipotent Brain’, a great Engineer who had designed the road on which the Afrikaner nation travelled.[124]

In the meantime, Malan felt overwhelmed by all the reading that he had to do. To Nettie he complained that all the ‘isms’ were enough to make anyone dizzy – idealism, realism, immaterialism, nominalism – there seemed to be no end.[125] It forced him to make his grudging peace with the fact that his stay in the Netherlands would have to be longer than he had initially hoped.[126]

Unlike his relationship with Valeton, Malan did not have a close relationship with his supervisor, Hugo Visscher, a political appointment whom Abraham Kuyper had foisted on the university’s theological faculty in 1904.[127] He was probably appointed as Malan’s promoter shortly after his return from Edinburgh – after Malan had already formulated his thesis topic and conducted most of his research.

Malan found the writing process arduous and the topic so tricky and extensive that he struggled to keep all the loose ends together.[128] In the spring weather he kept his windows open as wide as possible,[129] but the clarity in the air did not give him the same clarity of thought. He was never satisfied by the amount of work that he had completed, and at times found himself struggling to concentrate and unable to get anything done, which made the situation even worse.[130] By the time summer arrived, Malan decided not to go anywhere, but instead to finish his thesis.[131] He simply wanted to go home.

The strain began to take its toll. His handwriting became unshapely and difficult to read. In a letter to Nettie, he was unable to write in proper paragraphs, but merely wrote a list of his main points. One of the points simply read: ‘Fifthly: it is hot here.’[132]

His parents were worried about him, but he tried to dismiss their concerns in a letter in which his characters were noticeably misshaped – a far cry from his usual legible handwriting that is such a pleasure to read, and surely a sign to his parents of his mental state:

You should not think that I am at death’s door. I believe that if I had written that I am deadly ill, you immediately would have said: No, nonsense, it cannot be that bad, it is only idle talk. However, now that I write to you saying that I need a bit of rest and want to forget about a long and monotonous labour for a week or so, now you suddenly think: the man is close to death. Well, luckily there is no reason to be concerned. I went to the doctor for safety’s sake and he said that there is nothing radically wrong with me. The only thing is that my nervous system is a bit out of sorts, which, with a bit of care and carefulness and a change, will repair itself. He advised me to go and work outside the city for a while at a place where I can also undergo a cold water cure.[133]

Malan followed the doctor’s orders, and booked himself into a sanatorium near Arnhem for about six weeks. Here he obeyed his caretakers’ instructions to get a certain amount of sleep and to go for long walks in the scenic surroundings. He was told what to eat, and was only allowed to work for four hours a day. Malan now realised that his obsession to complete his thesis as quickly as possible had driven him to this point.[134] His stay at the sanatorium helped, and by early October most of his thesis had gone to the press. In a letter to his parents – in a much calmer tone than the one before, with his characters back to their old, legible shape – Malan expressed his newly acquired wisdom that ‘it is much easier to prophesy that one will write a thesis within a particular time span than to actually do it’.[135]

Back in Utrecht, Malan could finally prepare for the event that he had been looking forward to for more than four years: his return to South Africa. His promotion ceremony took place on 20 January 1905 and was a great success. Malan answered his professors’ questions calmly and clearly, and received his degree cum laude.[136] Afterwards he and his friends were received at Professor Valeton’s house, which was regarded as an exceptional gesture. Such was the relationship between mentor and protégé.[137] Malan booked his passage on a German ship, the Kroonprinz, the same steam liner that carried former President Steyn and his family back home.[138]

His time in the Netherlands had shaped Malan into an articulate young Afrikaner nationalist, the product of a Continental education. He had become an independent thinker, who had witnessed the nationalism that dominated the Continent before the ravages of the First World War. In this way, his Afrikaner nationalism was shaped by nineteenth-century European nationalism. Once back in South Africa, it would be the example that he would endeavour to follow.