religion, between the interests of state and faith, between opportunism and principle’.[74]
Valeton saw a clear correlation between the story of Ahab and Elijah and the nature of his own society. If the story were to be retold in plain historical terms, without the moralising influence of Bible teachers, contemporary society would applaud Ahab as the ‘liberal’ man, the man of his times. Elijah would stand in stark contrast to Ahab:
Elijah is the narrow-minded man, one who has but one end in mind, and who sacrifices everything for its sake. Elijah is intolerant and hard, well, yes, great and impressive, but in a manner that inspires respect but also indignation. He sacrifices everything for an idea, human lives are nothing to him … the interests of the state are also nothing to him. What a man! A gale-force wind, a bolt of lightning, all-conquering and all-destroying, to be admired from a distance and when close by, to be avoided as far as possible.[75]
Despite the public’s inevitable disapproval of such a hard and narrow-minded prophet, Elijah was clearly the better man – one who did not seek his salvation in the state, but in God who was eternal and unchanging. Valeton invoked the old biblical maxim: ‘For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’[76]
Valeton portrayed politics as something dirty, something that could not be reconciled with religion. He created Elijah as the ideal man: one who was unbending, unpopular and isolated, but nevertheless one who was superior to a likeable man, as personified by Ahab. Elijah was a man who was willing to serve his principles without expecting to see the results in his lifetime. In Valeton’s eyes, Elijah was equal to Moses, the man who had led his people to the Promised Land.[77]
It is unmistakable that Malan had made these ideals his own. He too began to regard religion and politics as two irreconcilable poles. He became convinced that the only way in which one could be successful in politics was by adhering to the compulsion ‘to be silent, to cloak, to cover up, to almost approve of, and to applaud, the criminal’.[78] Even worse, in his eyes, were those politicians who played on their supporters’ religious beliefs in order to get ahead:
Religious principles … according to my insight, should pursue and defend justice and truth in the name of God, and therefore all injustice and crime and sin in friend or foe, in a single individual or an entire nation, should be exposed and condemned. And when one drags religion by its hair into politics in order to obtain political capital, one is sacrificing eternal interests for the temporary – one humiliates religion.[79]
In the aftermath of the South African War, as the Afrikaners began their quest to regain political power through constitutional means, Malan grappled with the nature of that endeavour. At this stage, only the Cape Afrikaners were enfranchised – the first elections in the Transvaal and the Free State would only be held in 1907. The Cape political tradition of tolerance and accommodation was the only means of political expression, and the only means to power. Malan found it difficult to reconcile this with his now firmly entrenched belief in non-negotiable principles and the primacy of eternal interests over temporal ones. He could not refrain from condemning Cape politics, even if it was an avenue to political power. It was no longer a matter of obtaining power. Instead, it was the manner in which power was obtained that was important:
That we will regain political power is not entirely impossible, but then it will have to take place according to the precedent set by Cape politics – through concessions in terms of nationality, by hushing up the existence of the Afrikaner nation with its own history, nationality, language, and customs to death – and if this precedent is followed – given our nation’s well-known inability to stand on its own feet – in thirty years’ time there will be little reason, which is now still the case, to speak of an Afrikaner nation. If I have to choose – and it seems to me that our nation is increasingly faced with this choice – between having political power on the one hand, and on the other hand the preservation of our own nationality, which rests on our own national calling and our own history which on our part is not born out of racial hatred nor longs to dominate another nation, but which is the embodiment of a higher principle – a history which may therefore never be buried under sweet conciliation talk; if I am given the choice, then I for my part will still choose the latter – nationality without political predominance.[80]
To Malan, power had to be obtained without compromise, or not at all. At the same time, he was convinced that the Afrikaners faced extinction in the face of British cultural dominance. Somehow, the Afrikaners had to maintain their own nationality. What they needed were men like the biblical Elijah – much like the one that Valeton described. This idealised image now became Malan’s own role model. He now knew that he wanted to devote his life to the preservation of the Afrikaner nation. He confided his aspirations to a close friend:
Our nation, in spite of the praises of the non-English-speaking world, is substantially deprived of men of principle. We have many reapers who are all too ready to collect the fruits and the honours. But we have few sowers, who know that they will not reap but who nevertheless sow as if they shall reap. Everyone grasps at that which is at hand, he stretches his hand out to what is nearest, he pursues that which he himself can see and can enjoy. Few are content to build, unseen and unknown, the sure and stable foundations of a building whose completion they will not see, to live for an idea, to die for an ideal whose realisation they can prepare for but which they themselves will not see. I have undertaken to myself to use my weak powers to work for the Afrikaner nation and not to budge one inch from my path. To make it clear to the nation that God is also the Sovereign of its history, and that He needs to be recognised as such in the national life – this is as much an extension of God’s kingdom as it is to preach the Gospel to the heathens. But lately nothing has become clearer to me than that the man who wants to work for the Afrikaner nation’s ability to develop itself on its own terms, so that it can be an own nation with its own history, language, character and ideals, that would in its own manner embody the Kingdom of God in itself, that that man would be held up by heavy resistance, not least from his own nation. He will be seen as an extremist, a fanatic, one who is petty-minded.[81]
Malan wanted to be like Elijah: a man of principle, who was not interested in temporal rewards but only in the eternal, even if it meant that he would not see the fruits of his labour in his own lifetime, and even if it meant that he would be labelled an extremist. He could not guess how prophetic his words would turn out to be. Years later, when he had to wrestle with a choice between politics and the church, Valeton’s Ahab and Elijah would come to haunt him again.
Malan’s admiration for Elijah suited his temperament. Although he clearly had leadership abilities, Malan was always quiet, serious, and rather apart from the crowd. When all the Afrikaner students were gathered together in Utrecht and, as students typically do, discussed the merits of their professors, Malan remained silent while his friends became animated about the intellectual splendours of their learned masters. He waited until they had just about reached the height of their admiration before finally making his contribution: a good professor was merely a good student. If he was not a good student himself, he could not be a good professor. These words more or less sobered up the conversation, which then ran out of steam.[82]
However, like any other student, when it came to exam time, Malan fretted about his professors. To Nettie he wrote: ‘I am not afraid of old man Valeton – he is too much of a jolly chap to save the most difficult things for me. And of Lamers not too much either. But I shudder before Van Veen and especially Baljon with his bald brow.’[83]
As Valeton’s tenant, Malan knew all too well what a ‘jolly chap’ the old man was. To his sister Cinie, Malan described Valeton as ‘very amiable and childlike, and … just as interested in the question of the number of eggs his hens have laid as in the question of whether the book Isaiah was written by one or two prophets’.[84]
Malan’s most important theological education took place in Valeton’s living room. Here the two of them would drink their ‘customary three cups of
