Afrikaans Metal in Post-Apartheid South Africa

This chapter explores the role of heavy metal within the texts of the ‘cultural heritage industry’ of post-Apartheid South Africa, with a specific focus on the Afrikaans heavy metal scene as a response to the ‘loss’ of Afrikaner identity. By focusing on how whiteness emerges within South African scenes in a post-Apartheid context and is subsequently situated within and in response to the ideological scape of ‘African metal’, this chapter examines how the (re)constitution of imagined notions of ‘selfhood’ and ‘other’ has enabled a rhetoric of loss amongst segments of South Africa’s Afrikaner population, many of whom feel displaced in the ‘new’ South Africa. The practices of the Afrikaans heavy metal scene, with its emphasis on tradition and pride, enable the fortification of resistant white discourses, territories and practices. The task of reframing Afrikaner cultural and linguistic traditions is then not solely concerned with rebuilding Afrikaner identity, but reclaiming whiteness and white spaces.