Diplomatic Immunity
The Rise of the Afrikaner Villain in the Trump Era
by Roger Young
From Mel Gibson to Jason Statham, the Afrikaner villain has long been a trope in Hollywood cinema, but after Elon Musk saying distinctly Bond Villain type things in that accent, it's no longer just Auret, Vosloo and Copley getting punched in the face, international stars are starting to get in on the act.
In a contemporary version of Wilbur Smith's A Time To Die, the hero Sean Courtney would read onscreen as a villain, a mercenary come big game hunter who chases an elephant into a foreign country on the whims of a millionaire, who is then gored to death by the elephant, the incident then sparks a minor border war, “native” trackers die horribly to save the boss man and the daughter of the millionaire, and then when it all goes belly up and “the blacks” might win, our hero phones the SADF and gets them to helicopter them out.
If A Time To Die was made today the rebel leader would be played by Will Smith, directed by Michael Mann. Courtney and his henchmen would be played by Vosloo, Copley and Auret.
The politics might have changed but the mercenary persists. The trope stretches back through mercenary-adjacent Bogart in The African Queen to Kurtz. Hollywood tends to recycle its heroes.
Back in 1989 an Afrikaner Villain was a political statement, the anti-apartheid movement was peaking. It's doubtful that Patsy Kensit had any idea that she was in a political thriller. The idea that Afrikaners were bad was just floating in the air. In 2026 the mercenary walks into the film carrying years of accumulated meaning, only to be punched in the face by Jason Statham.
In 1989 an age of villainry was heralded in by a single almost inaudible “Yassis” in Lethal Weapon 2. Geopolitics changes, the Afrikaners in Lethal Weapon are played by international actors, and by 1993's Hard Target, an actual Afrikaner, Vosloo, says as Pik Van Cleef, “That's good, 'cause I know you wouldn't want to hurt my feelings”.
In a strange confluence of privilege and Rainbow Nation hoopla the white South African actor arrived at early 90s Hollywood auditions forgiven, while the notion of “the Afrikaner” remained largely dubious. The Voëlvry progressives had no place in Hollywood's conception of “Afrikaner”.
Villainry works in oppositions. An American hero needs an opposing force. Over the course of the '90s, as the service film industry grew in South Africa, B-grade American stars were provided a wealth of mercenaries and safari guides that would mulk their moments. Sean Taylor was the OG of scenery chewing, and what scenery it was. In 1998's Tarzan and the Lost City, the backdrops against which Sean Taylor, Gys De Villiers, and Russel Savadier died were lush grasslands, dense jungle. Some by falling into gorges, some by arrow, some quietly in the background because they had pissed off the cast coordinator.
And so the Afrikaner henchman became legible as a type to the Hollywood casting agent. That other types of South African accents did not is largely Nelson Mandela™’s fault. A black South African actor could never play an oppositional force to the redeeming hero, when the black South African's key legibility point in Hollywood was a higher morality, forgiveness.
The trope gathers momentum with The Sum of All Fears, Vosloo and Marius Weyers (as Van De Kaap) in Blood Diamond, and an epic mercenary pile up over eight seasons of Strike Back.
Three major tropes intersect with Afrikanerness and masculinity: diamonds, nature and guns. Largely it is about the corrupting influence of the object. The South African Diamond Villain gets its origin on screen in Diamonds Are Forever and continues unabated since then, culminating in Rosamund Pike. From The African Queen to The Ghost and the Darkness to Sheridan's 1923, to Beast and Rogue, every good safari story needs a white hunter (S/O Nick Boraine) with cynical ethics. Eastwood himself punctured the ego of the great white hunter in White Hunter, Black Heart in 1990, but the racist hotel manager in that film cements the type. Mercenaries abound in the jungles of Africa, or around CIA black sites (S/O Robert Hobbs) and because these are often shot in South Africa, the mercenaries with the witty dying quips are often accented Afrikaans.
Hollywood works in broad sweeps. Which brings us to the cottage industry of Sharlto Copley, a variable smorgasbord of Van Ders, to the point where Copley now plays a Van Der Koy in Boy Kills World with an American accent, and in Monkey Man a South African with an Afrikaans accent via a BBC trained dialect coach. Copley has often said that he bases his portrayals on the recces and Afrikaans hard cases he knew growing up. And those hard cases, with those accents, have persisted in the background of news stories of coups and mercenary forces for much of this century.
Copley and Auret brought the Afrikaner nut bag mercenary truly to the fore of the casting agent's mind in Blomkamp's Elysium, and from there the trope proliferates. Auret in Rebel Moon, Copley in everything. Afrikaans used as the language of demons in Lucifer via Lesley-Ann Brandt, who just reached for what was available to her.
Val Kilmer would never have gotten away with that “jissus” in this age of professional performative Afrikaans.
It is not to say that there is a vast Hollywood conspiracy constantly casting Afrikanerness as the bad guy. It is just that, through a confluence of factors, by 2018 the type was within ready reach. Hollywood had a Bru Ex Machina.
Enter AfriForum & Tucker Carlson highlighting the “Afrikaner Genocide narrative” in 2018, Musk and Trump campaign around it, weaponising victimhood. Errol Musk appears on social media almost as a caricature of the amoral old-world Afrikaner patriarch.
Andy Serkis, in 2018, says of his Afrikaner accented Black Panther character, “He'd fit in the White House quite perfectly”. The politics of the moment doesn't reach the casting department, all that is important is that Klaue works as a villain, and his accent saves the scriptwriter ten minutes of exposition.
Black Panther is the nexus of several tropes. John Kani speaking an African language is the moral center of the film, Serkis is the opposite. The redemptive African, the villainous Afrikaner.
Ultimately with Hollywood the view of South Africa is now strictly black and white, a strange result of Rainbow Nation politics. A more nuanced idea of what it is to be South African will not come from blockbuster films.
From script idea to production to screen for a Hollywood production is roughly three to four years. Suddenly Marton Csokas' mercenary is flattening his vowels in Freelance, The Beekeeper is being peppered with “Bru”, and Theo James's diamond thief murders the accent in Fuze. The Afrikaner refugee, now working as a janitor in Wisconsin, left South Africa because he thought “the blacks” were coming for him. Turns out, it's Jason Statham.
Rosamund Pike's accent, as diamond heiress Veronika Vanderberg in Now You See Me 3, is the perfect indicator of the trope's prominence and misalignment. No South African diamond heiress would be caught dead speaking in an Afrikaans accent, their parents afforded them the best international schools. The most authentic part of Pike's portrayal of the heiress is when she speaks French with a British accent.
As Arnold Vosloo's Van Der Byl says in Jack Ryan, “Are you lost, bru?”