The 'Doppers': A history of punching above their weight

Dr Lindie Koorts

Is it sinful to dance? Is dans ’n sonde? This question was often asked in jest during my childhood years, in the final days of apartheid. Jokes about this ‘sinful’ activity still abound among older Afrikaners today. Yet it expressed an underlying tone of fear and uncertainty. Who wants to get onto God’s bad side?

I grew up in the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC), to which the majority of Afrikaners belong. It did not consider dancing a moral transgression – although I recall a lingering sense of unease. The Gereformeerde Kerk (Reformed Church), on the other hand, was unequivocal: Yes, dancing is sinful. 

It is a fact often overlooked when considering the Afrikaner community. Afrikaners are traditionally Calvinist, but historically, it has been split into three separate churches – the three sister-churches, each with its own shade of Calvinism.

The Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) is the largest and represents the Calvinist mainstream. The other two, the Hervormde Kerk (HK) and Gereformeerde Kerk (GK), are substantially smaller and rooted in the northern parts of South Africa. Yet, of the three, the Gereformeerde Kerk, whose congregants are commonly called ‘Doppers’, has a long history of punching above its weight. Its most famous members include the president of the erstwhile Transvaal, Paul Kruger, and the last apartheid president, F.W. de Klerk. 

Doppers have often expressed their sense of being a minority on the Afrikaner periphery – and the fact that the rest of the community still mocks their fear of dancing does not help. The Doppers and their theology are perceived as the most rigid and conservative of the sister-churches, and the church remains deeply patriarchal. Even today, the Doppers do not allow women to serve as ministers, and are still conflicted as to whether women are allowed to serve as elders and deacons. As recently as 2023, Dopper churches who had appointed women as elders and deacons were refused representation at the church’s national synod meeting.

The Doppers are traditionally rooted in the old West-Transvaal, in what is today the North West province. The town of Potchefstroom, with its theological seminary, was their intellectual centre. During the course of the twentieth century, the Potchefstroom seminary produced a stream of prolific theologians, the most famous being Totius, whose poetry is part of the Afrikaans literary canon. Crucially, they also produced a stream of tracts on Afrikaner nationalism.

Their writings have often been cited by historians to explain the thinking behind Afrikaner nationalism and apartheid. It was the Doppers who described Afrikaners as God’s ‘Chosen People’. This was not taken up by the mainstream DRC, which considered it counter to its theology. Yet the phrase struck a chord and shaped perceptions of Afrikaners. 

Many historical publications have employed the Doppers’ view of themselves to describe Afrikaners as a whole, especially as Dopper-intellectuals were highly articulate and ‘quotable’. Some of their more extreme writings have become the equivalent of historical clickbait. Yet, when the political networks around the National Party in the twentieth century are analysed, there are very few meaningful links between the Dopper-intellectuals of Potchefstroom and the politicians at the centre of power. Of all the NP leaders, it was only F.W. de Klerk who did not belong to the mainstream DRC. To his credit, he was also the only NP leader with the courage to end apartheid. It is often the outsiders who bring change.

In essence, the Doppers have a long history of punching above their weight and they continue to do so today, through the Solidarity movement. The movement’s top-leadership is almost entirely drawn from the Dopper church and the old West-Transvaal. Flip Buys, Dirk Hermann and Kallie Kriel are all Doppers. Like the church to which they belong, it is notable that there are no women in Solidarity’s top structures. While the movement makes ample use of South Africa’s constitutional democracy to claim their rights, it would be a stretch of the imagination to describe the deeply autocratic organisation as ‘democratic’ in its own management and structures.

Their political roots lie in the conservative movement of the 1980s, represented by the erstwhile Conservative Party (CP) of Andries Treurnicht. By the end of the 1980s, the Conservatives had captured the support of a third of Afrikaners. Whether that number was a ceiling one cannot know, as the watershed brought about by F.W. de Klerk led to its eventual collapse. Its political successor, the FF+, has never succeeded in reclaiming those numbers.

While Solidarity’s religious and political origins lie on the periphery and the right-wing of the Afrikaner spectrum, it is at pains to present itself as the Afrikaner ‘mainstream’. Critics of the movement are frequently dismissed, not on the basis of rational argument, but by labelling the said critic’s views as peripheral. Gauging their true support is nearly impossible, as they juggle their membership numbers to make themselves seem larger than they truly are. 

Over the past decade, anti-democratic right-wing networks have grown across Europe and the USA. Solidarity wasted no time in establishing links with right-wing organisations in The Netherlands, Belgium and Hungary. The USA has been its biggest triumph up to date.

But there is another Afrikaans saying about the perils of punching above your weight and biting off more than you can chew: If a dog chases a car, what does it do when it succeeds in catching it?

Dr. Lindie Koorts is a historian at the University of Pretoria.