Broederbond

/ ˈbrʊdəˌbɔːnt; ˈbruːdəˌbɒnt /

noun

1. (in South Africa) a secret society of Afrikaner Nationalists committed to securing and maintaining Afrikaner control over important areas of government

Word History and Origins

Origin of Broederbond¹

Afrikaans: band of brothers

Example Sentences

A lawyer from a prominent Afrikaner political dynasty, the urbane de Klerk was cut from the cloth of white apartheid rule and was a member of the Broederbond, a secret Afrikaner society dedicated to white supremacy.

From Reuters

He had been reared in the Afrikaners’ rural heartland, steeped in its Afrikaans language and Calvinist religion, raised on its tales of grievance against their English conquerors in the Boer War, and even inducted as a young man into the junior branch of the Broederbond, a secret society whose members included apartheid’s political, economic, and military élite.

From The New Yorker

While rugby union is a cherished tenet of Afrikaans life - learned from the British in prisoner-of-war camps during the Boer War, spread by the ideology of muscular Christianity, essential to the resurgent Afrikaner nationalism of the middle 20th century that also produced the Broederbond, a secret masonic society that ran apartheid-era South Africa - it has also been played by blacks for just as long.

From BBC

While Judge Rumpff was an able man and better informed than the average white South African, he was rumored to be a member of the Broederbond, a secret Afrikaner organization whose aim was to solidify Afrikaner power.

From Literature

In the 1970s and early 1980s he was chairman of the South African Bureau of Racial Affairs, a conservative organization that served as a government advisory board, and he was a leader of Broederbond, an influential society of Afrikaners whose aim was to further the cause of Afrikaner nationalism in South Africa.

From New York Times