In February 2010, the Dutch public broadcaster VPRO uploaded a relic: a 1960 television program titled Boeren en Bantoes: Apartheidspolitiek. It was meant, with no apparent sense of irony, to mark the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. The gesture says less about Mandela than it does about Europeans centering themselves.

The program is fronted by G.B.J. Hiltermann, once treated in the Netherlands as a kind of oracle on global affairs. At the time, he hosted De Toestand van de Wereld — “The Condition of the World” — a title that now reads less like authority and more like unintended satire. VPRO itself, rooted in the Netherlands’ liberal Protestant broadcasting tradition, presumably imagined this archival offering as sober reflection. What it delivers instead is a masterclass in evasion, though it couldn’t conceal the truth about apartheid South Africa at the time, even if it tried.

You can watch a part of it here.

To summarize, Hiltermann introduces apartheid South Africa as a “multicultural country,” which is one way — an impressively blunt way — to launder a racist authoritarian state. Dutch colonialism is handled with similar sleight of hand. The Dutch East India Company appears briefly, stripped of its historical role as an architect of slavery at the Cape (the dominant social and economic form for the first nearly 200 years of European presence there), recast as little more than a footnote. South Africa itself is framed primarily as a former British colony, as if the Dutch role were incidental rather than foundational.

To his credit — formally, at least — Hiltermann declares opposition to apartheid. But what follows is a sustained exercise in sympathetic translation. He rehearses the white regime’s talking points, rationalizes the Bantustan system (where the government wanted to and was partially successful in banishing some black Africans), and extends a curious generosity toward its architects. The effect is not critique but accommodation: apartheid explained, softened, made legible — above all, made reasonable.

And then there is the language. Hiltermann recounts conversations with “negers” who are, he notes, “min of meer ontwikkeld en bepaald niet dom zijn” (more or less developed and certainly not stupid). Even praise arrives condescendingly, framed by surprise that Black South Africans might meet the minimum requirements of intellect.

But”Boeren en Bantoes” is also remarkable  for other reasons:

For all its evasions, the program is not without value. It contains rare footage of resistance leaders delivering short, pointed statements outside the Supreme Court in Pretoria during a trial; one of the many show trials based on trumped-up charges the regime pursued against its enemies — moments that cut through the surrounding apologetics.

Among those interviewed are a very young Nelson Mandela and the academic and ANC leader, Z. K. Matthews. The program also includes so-called “representatives” of Indian and Coloured left organizations: a young Ahmed Kathrada, and a figure identified only as “die heer Lawless.” It concludes with a statement from Helen Joseph of the Congress of Democrats, the white leftist organization aligned with the ANC.

H/T Bart Luirink.