AfriForum Youth is the youth wing of the non-political civil rights organisation AfriForum. AfriForum Youth is based on Christian values. Our mission is to be a meeting place for young Afrikaners on campuses and in towns where AfriForum structures are established, and to act as a mouthpiece where the youth are discriminated against by depriving them of mother tongue education or by violating their constitutional rights. AfriForum Youth strives for the expansion of Afrikaans and Afrikaner traditions and provides education and training to the youth to empower them so that they can take a stand on issues that affect their future.

AfriForum Youth wants to achieve this mission through the following:

1. Oppose affirmative action
2. Promote Afrikaans and mother tongue education
3. Promote quality education
4. Develop the youth’s leadership, knowledge and skills
5. Ensure and enhance the youth’s safety
6. Create a healthy student life
7. Mobilise the youth in towns to make a difference in their community

Development of the youth’s leadership, knowledge and skills is one of AfriForum Youth’s greatest priorities. Marike van As, AfriForum Youth’s National Coordinator for Youth Development, tells us how they use leadership and history hikes to achieve this. One such tour is the Rebelspoorvasbyt (Rebels’ endurance route). In his book Rebelspoor (Rebels’ Route) Dr Louis Bothma writes:

It was the Afrikaner’s darkest hour when the bitter-enders of the Anglo-Boer War locked horns twelve years later: on the one hand, the government forces (Kakies) of Prime Minister Louis Botha and Jan Smuts, his Minister of Defence – on the other the rebel commandos (Boere) of commander-generals Christiaan de Wet and Christiaan Beyers. Only a few months later everything was over. The end was even more bitter than in 1902. De la Rey and Beyers were dead. De Wet, Kemp, Conroy, Wessels and thousands of other heroes of the Anglo-Boer War were in prison. Jopie Fourie was executed on a Sunday morning, just before Christmas. Manie Maritz roamed the world in self-imposed exile. How does a tragedy like this happen? Who are the culprits? How do you see it 100 years later?

In 2016, AfriForum Youth, in collaboration with Dr Louis Bothma, first tackled a portion of the Rebelspoor with busses, trailers and a lot of students. In 2017, we did it again, but with a larger group. One evening around the fire on the farm Zwartmodder, one of the tour members, Michelle Peens, asked: “Why don’t we hike the route?” The idea gathered momentum, and in 2018 we first hiked part of the route. Since then there was no stopping Rebelspoorvasbyt as an excellent leadership and history hike.

The hiking trail covers part of the route that general. J.C.G. Kemp travelled with his commando on their way to genl. Manie Maritz on the border of German South-West. The second part of the route covers the road that the rebel commandos followed to the small hamlet of Nous in the Bushmanland. The tour ends at the Rebellion Tree on a farm between Keimoes and Upington.

The purpose of the tour is to bring together the youth in search of their Afrikaner identity and equip them with knowledge about their heritage so that they can become involved in their communities and in the future of South Africa with passion and pride.

With these tours, we want to claim back our history. We want to know who our heroes were, and we want to know what they had to face for their ideal of freedom – something we still strive for today!

Read Cecilia Barnard’s experience of the Rebels’ endurance route 2019