Dr. Dirk Hermann, CEO of Solidarity (Photo: Solidarity)
Numerous critics try to explain the Solidarity Movement’s huge success today with conspiracy theories; they assume there must be some greater power behind this.
“They don’t even think that a community can achieve success by working hard, working smart and simply doing the right thing.”
According to dr. Dirk Hermann, CEO of Solidarity, is the political idea for which they were castigated from left and right in the 1990s, the very idea that helped ensure the Movement’s success in recent decades.
“And that idea is federalism,” Hermann said in an interview with Maroela Media about the path he has walked over the past 29 years – from organizer at the then Miners’ Union (MWU) in 1997 to CEO of Solidarity in 2026.
“We were in the more conservative school of thought that believed in federalism as an answer to the political transition that South Africa had to make in the 1990s.”
This idea was criticized from all sides at the time; on the one hand by those who thought South Africa should remain as it was and on the other hand by those who thought a central unitary state was the future.
Although the 1990s ended up being a relatively smooth transition period, it left many Afrikaner organizations in crisis, explains Hermann.
“The two Afrikaner political parties are falling, and the organized Afrikaner world is in a political crisis. Not only the MWU, but numerous Afrikaner organizations. A bunch of them were painted in the old Afrikaner politics, many as support organizations of the NP or KP.”
According to Hermann, the MWU was in a particularly difficult position, because at that stage they were not only bankrupt of money, but also of ideas.
“The MWU was fairly on the right side of the political spectrum, and a large part of their raison d’être was to try to stop the transition to a new dispensation. Here the change happened, which left the organization largely without a raison d’être.”
It was against this background that Flip Buys was elected general secretary of the MWU in 1997 and a new era began. Buys already mentioned at the congress during which he was elected that the trade union must eventually be transformed and expanded into a movement of language and cultural institutions to protect and promote Afrikaner interests and their place in the new dispensation.
“That was why I joined the MWU at the time. I didn’t see the (broken) institution, but Flip’s dream.”
Thus, Hermann, Buys and like-minded people who joined the organization never strayed from their ideal of federalism. Because in the end a federalist political order was never established, the MWU, later Solidarity and finally the Solidarity Movement simply went about building a different kind of order over which they did control.
“The one we have control over is community federalism where a community decides to build federalism itself from the bottom up by putting decision-making down to the lowest possible level.”
Hermann describes this as Buys’ “vision beyond the desert”; Solidarity’s answer to the political issue of the time. An idea that was initially unpopular, but over the past 29 years has achieved huge success in practice.
“Today, many people have conspiracy theories that to be so successful, there must be some kind of power. People don’t even think that it can only be the work of successful cultural entrepreneurs.
“People should rather recognize us for our insight that there had to be federalism than criticize us for it. Moreover, the people who still criticize us today’s order (of central unitary government) does not work at all!”
It was as simple as that we simply looked at the realities in front of us, how a community can deal with this and offer a possible answer to the reality of its time, explains Hermann.
However, this is easier said than done.
“We didn’t have the state’s support or money. There wasn’t an enabling statutory environment. So we started with our community institutions. Behind these institutions is still a deeper political idea of what a different order could look like despite the failed unitary state model that we see now.”
An institution for every sphere of society in which broader Afrikaner interests require protection and promotion.
However, in order to manage and operate such a large collection of institutions well, federalism is also built into the organizational character – to be found in the aim and means of the Solidarity Movement.
“Thus the Movement is also federal in nature; with institutions that have as much independence as possible, but are still connected to each other.”
The unifying ideal?
“We want a future at the southern tip of Africa in which we can continue to live free, safe and prosperous. We build it from a Christian foundation and focus on the Afrikaans language and Afrikaner cultural community specifically. In between, institutions have freedom, their own culture, their own way of doing things and their own mission.”
According to Hermann, this is how the wider Movement, with the help of ordinary people, grew into what it is today.
Not with the power of conspiracy, but with the power of community.