From an Afrikaner perspective, a firmly established way of life is at stake in the crisis situation of South Africa. The ongoing struggle centers on two passionately held principles. Taken in tandem, these two fundamental convictions have over the years assumed a quasi-confessional status. The one is freedom (vryheid), the other identity (identiteit).
A fierce determination to preserve its privileged freedom pervades the Afrikaner community. They fought long and hard throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to achieve liberation from the stranglehold of English domination and other opposing forces. Within the ranks of Afrikanerdom this hard-won freedom to exploit their own tradition is as clearly a self-evidently righteous cause as it is a self-serving one in the eyes of others. And they are not about to surrender it easily.