Rave New World: Trance-Mission, Trance-Nationalism, and Trance-scendence in the "New" South Africa

In one of his most famous speeches to the South African nation, D.F. Malan, the first apartheid-era Prime Minister, said, "Seek in the past everything that is good and clean and build thereon your future" ([1948] 1961). ¹ Malan was quoting Paul Kruger, the legendary founder of Afrikaner nationalism and leader of the Boer struggle against the English at the turn of the 20th century. By evoking Kruger, who believed that the Boers were the "chosen people," Malan legitimized his "purity" campaign, which not only excluded an alliance with the English but also became the core of the apartheid ("apartness") system.

Today, in the "new" South Africa, DJ Heine du Toit, borrowing the name of Afrikaner poet D.J. Opperman as his stage name, mixes Malan's words with trance music for a young, Afrikaans-speaking crowd. Along with samples of Malan's 1948 speech, he cuts in the voices of a familiar Afrikaans storyteller, a well-known rugby commentator, and several other Afrikaner nationalistic icons of his generation's youth, embarking on a journey at once critical, celebratory, and healing. As the featured act at a party in December 1999, Du Toit/Opperman triggered not only aural memories, but also visual memories. He projected symbols of Afrikanerdom onto huge screens that served as a backdrop for the dancers. The streaming images included mostly monuments, memorabilia, figureheads, and logos, but significantly, this "family photo album" also included the tragic image of the dead 13-year-old Hector Peterson being carried in the arms of his classmates. This image of the first student killed in the 1976 uprising against Afrikaans instruction in the black township of Soweto was projected at the point in Malan's speech where he says the goal of his new government is "om billikheid, reg en geregtigheid aan albei twee blanke taalgroepe te laat geskied, asook teenoor die nie-blanke bevolking van ons land" (to achieve what is right and fair for both the white language groups and the non-white people of our country). As the images sped up they fell out of sync with the music. In this dizzying combination of aural and visual stimuli, Du Toit/Opperman succeeded in submerging the revelers in the dream space of their youth, while propping one eye open to a sardonic vision of the past.

I witnessed Du Toit's act at no ordinary party, but one billed as an Afrikaans rave "that will put Afrikaans in a whole new context" (Matthews 1999). Bringing together Afrikaans-speaking musicians from varied racial and cultural backgrounds, the rave effectively repositioned Afrikaans from its place as the language of the oppressor to the lingua franca of cutting-edge sound. "The implication is that Afrikaans is now no longer God's holy chosen language, but a versatile, modern, and extremely adaptable communication tool [...] uniquely positioned to be symbolic of how achievable unity is in South Africa," said Manie Spamer (1999), my host for the evening. To emphasize this inclusive flexibility, the event combined the hardcore deejay music, the subversive tone, and the drugs-and-dance aesthetic common to raves, with the mind-bending techno trance music, the rustic outdoor space, and the hippie aesthetic common to trance parties. ² The young Afrikaners who organized the rave hoped it would propel a new movement redefining Afrikaner identity in the wake of apartheid's demise. To that end, my presence as a foreigner was most welcome--Afrikaners rarely have an opportunity to improve upon their less-than-favorable international reputation.

I arrived at the party, which was held at Barn Celos, a converted abandoned barn in Melkbosstrand (located about 40 minutes outside of Cape Town), at around 10:30 P.M. The atmosphere at the bar was casual, and the tripped-out dancers never left the floor, even between bands...