The Afrikaner Broederbond (Afrikaner Brotherhood; AB) was a twentieth-century South African secret society that advanced an Afrikaner nationalist agenda aimed at fostering cultural pride among Afrikaners and securing their social, political, and economic supremacy within the broader South African population.
The Broederbond was founded in Johannesburg in 1918 as Jong Suid-Afrika (Young South Africa) by Henning J. Klopper, H.W. van der Merwe, and D.H.C. du Plessis, three teenage Afrikaners who were incensed by acts of anti-Nationalist vandalism that were carried out in response to a speech calling for the restoration of the South African Republic. Klopper, van der Merwe, and du Plessis were supported and guided in their efforts by Reverend J.F. Naude, a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church. At its first official meeting on June 5, 1918, Jong Suid-Afrika's principal aims were established, including the "main object" of fostering brotherhood (verbroedering) among all Afrikaners despite their diverse geographic and socioeconomic backgrounds. At another meeting held two weeks later, the organization's name was changed to Afrikaner Broederbond.
The AB's Fundamental Rules, which included the establishment of the organization's Uitvoerende Raad (Executive Council; UR), were accepted more than two years later, on September 21, 1920. The same day, it was decided that the AB would go underground and continue on as a secret organization.
- Official minutes of the founders' meeting quoted in J.H.P. Serfontein, Brotherhood of Power: An Expose of the Secret Afrikaner Broederbond (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1978) p. 32.