According to Dr Alta Steenkamp of the University of Cape Town, the Voortrekker Monument exhibits a geometric order similar to that of the Völkerschlachtdenkmal in Germany, which harbours a masonic temple. No proof exists that architect Gerard Moerdijk was a freemason, but Steenkamp has shown that Moerdijk had used the German Leipzig monument as a spatial template for his final Voortrekker Monument design.
In the years just before WWII, Germany was the upcoming European power, and several leading Afrikaner nationalists, including Moerdijk, travelled to Germany for academic studies, or political and cultural inspiration.
Initially Moerdijk's monument was based on a causeway consisting of two Egyptian temple obelisks.[1] During 1936, the year of his final Voortrekker Monument design, architect Gerard Moerdijk visited Egypt, including the Karnak Temple Compex in Luxor (Thebes).[2] There Nefertiti's husband had erected three sun sanctuaries, one of which was called the Hwt-benben ('mansion of the Benben').
After the revised exterior design of the Voortrekker Monument, from obelisks to Benben mansion in the mould of the Volkerschlachtdenkmal, the interior maintained visible links with the sun civilization of ancient Africa in Egypt, with the main symbol in the Voortrekker Monument an annual sun disc illumination at mid-noon, upon a central Benben stone. Due to the Art Deco design of the Voortrekker Monument, this sunlight on the Day of the Vow itself forms a 33rd ray.
The most famous African icon of civilization known in Moerdijk's time was Nefertiti, whose beautiful bust had been on public display in Berlin since Moerdijk's first visit to Germany during 1924.
In 1934 Chancellor Hitler decided not to return the bust of Nefertiti to Egypt, and announced his intention to use Nefertiti as the central show piece of the Third Reich, in its revitelised capital to be renamed Germania.[3]
Likewise Moerdijk used Nefertiti's god as depicted by a mid noon sun disc, as the central symbol of Afrikaner civilization in his thousand year monument overlooking the South-African capital, Pretoria.
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The Voortrekker Monument consists of three levels: bottom cellar, middle hall and top dome. In the bottom cellar is an empty tomb stone called the Cenotaph, or Sarcophagus according to Moerdijk.[4] The middle Hall of Heroes harbours the historical wall frieze. The upper dome with Egyptian backlighting[5] simulates the open sky.
Once a year, at mid-day on 16 December, a ray of the sun shines through an aperture in the dome. A round floor opening in the Hall of Heroes, is situated directly above the Cenotaph. The ray of sun shines through the floor opening onto the Cenotaph, projecting a sun disc to illuminate the engraved words "ONS VIR JOU SUID-AFRIKA" (Afrikaans; "We, for Thee, South Africa"). These words are oriented towards the sky, and cannot be read by the visitor standing next to the Cenotaph.
Looking from the sky dome downwards, a chevron pattern on the floor of the Hall of Heroes, radiates outwards like 32 sun rays from the centre opening. In Moerdijk's architecture, the natural sun forms a 33rd ray through the same opening. Moerdijk said the chevron pattern on the floor depicts water,[4] as does the double chevron hieroglyph fom the civilization of old Egypt. Moerdijk stated that all roads on the terrain of building art, lead back to old Egypt.[6]
Based on Moerdijk's reference to the watery floor of the Hall of Heroes, as well as his statement about old Egypt, the opening in the water-floor can be identified with the watery abyss, as in the creation theology of ancient African civilization. Rising out of this watery abyss, was the primeval mound, the Benben stone.
Moerdijk's 33rd sun ray shining onto the stone in the midst of the abyss, publicly highlights the creation of a new civilization in Africa and could reference the 33 degrees of Scottish Rite Freemasonry. A religious person, Moerdijk was chief architect of 80 Protestant churches in South Africa. In his church designs, Moerdijk stuck to Reformed tradition and had his Renaissance trademark, the Greek-cross floorplan, focus on the pulpit and preacher. In Protestant theology, the word of god is the central church theme.[7] Moerdijk created a similar focus in the Voortrekker Monument, but in vertical instead of horisontal plane, and in African Atenist instead of European Classical style.
Moerdijk's focus point in the Voortrekker Monument are the sky oriented words: "WE FOR YOU SOUTH-AFRICA". This declaration comes from an anthem, Die Stem, in the context of: "We will live, we will die, we for you South-Africa". The anthem ends: "It will be well, God reigns."
The sun shining on the words "WE FOR YOU SOUTH-AFRICA", symbolises God's blessing on the lives and endeavors of the Voortrekkers.[8] Thus the visible sunlight simulates a connection between the words on the Cenotaph and the heavenly abode above.
Moerdijk did not place a pulpit in the Voortrekker Monument. Without minister or mediator, the written words on the Cenotaph stone cannot be spoken. In Moerdijk's biblical theology though, God can communicate in two ways: through scripture as well as through nature.[9] Moerdijk merges both methods in one revealing moment of space-time. He - the creator God in the Christian tradition of the Trekkers - becomes the WE, within the shining disc illuminating the words on the stone. Via the sun, heaven and earth are simulated to be visibly connected through a ray of light.
The historic vow of the Trekkers was commemorated on 16 December as the Day of the Vow. The appearance of a shining sun disc on the Cenotaph stone, transforms the Trekker vow in analogy to the Philosophers Stone of the alchemists. The notion of, as above so below, is inverted to: as below, so above. Instead of posterity repeating a human vow from before the Battle of Blood River, the sun shifts the focus to God, as he communicates through Moerdijk's sun architecture, making himself a heavenly vow with the words: WE - as in GOD - FOR YOU SOUTH-AFRICA.
The idea that God was for South Africa, originated from the 6 December 1838 vow of Trekker leader Andries Pretorius at Danskraal, who at around the same time made military and political alliances with Christian Zulus like prince Mpande.
The architects of Egyptian civilization are considered famous for their monuments. Moerdijk himself was an outspoken Afrocentrist architect, (though with a focus on Ancient Egypt, rather than black Africa).[10] At the inauguration of the Voortrekker Monument, Moerdijk mentioned Africa's greatness as imparted by ancient Egyptian constructions.[11]
Before his Voortrekker Monument design was accepted, Moerdijk and Anton van Wouw had been working in alliance for many years on their "dream castle" project:[12] a modern African-Egytian Voortrekker Temple in South-Africa. Van Wouw and Frans Soff had earlier employed the Egyptian obelisk, a petrified ray of the African Aten, as central motif for the National Women's Monument in Bloemfontein, South Africa. The National Women's Monument was likewise inaugurated on the Day of the Vow, 16 December 1913.
Whilst finalising the design of the Voortrekker Monument in 1936,[2] Moerdijk went on a research sojourn to Egypt. There he visited the Karnak Temple Complex at Luxor[13] (ancient Thebes, city of Amen), where an African Renaissance flourished under Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, the husband of Nefertiti. The open air temples of Amenhotep IV to the Aten incorporated the Heliopolitan tradition of employing sun rays in architecture, including realistic Amarna wall reliefs illuminated by the sunlight. Moerdijk also paid a visit to the Cairo Museum, where he would have read the Great Hymn to the Aten, some verses of which remind of Psalm 104. His wife Sylva related that Moerdijk was intimately acqainted with ancient Egyptian architecture,[13] and architecturally strongly influenced by his visit to Egypt.[2]
Moerdijk stated that the purpose of a building has to be clearly visible.[5] The creator aspect of Ra, symbolised by the sun at mid-noon, was in ancient times known as Aten. Aten was written as a dot enclosed by a circle in Egyptian hieroglyphics.
The monument incorporates the Aten-hieroglyph by allowing the sun to shine through an aperture in the sky dome. Looking upwards at mid noon on 16 December, the aperture is visible as a backlit sun dot inside the circular sky dome.
Looking down from the top dome, the floor aperture in the Hall of Heroes is once again seen to encircle the sun dot, as the sun's rays strike the cenotaph stone.
Moerdijk's message as implied by the interior design is: through exodus out of the British Cape Colony, God has created a new African civilization inland.
In order to give thanks to this new creation of civilization, Moerdijk, recalling Abraham of old, outwardly designed the Voortrekker Monument as an altar.[14]
The Voortrekker Monument is surrounded by a circular wall engraved with wagons—a depiction of the historical Trekker practice of "circling the wagons" during defense under attack.
Outside the wagon wall is an elaborate botanical garden. Small streams running through the garden are labeled with signs representing major rivers of South Africa. Also, miniature huts, 1/8 scale, are scattered about the garden, representing tribal villages.
The spatial impression thus created is that of the Voortrekker Monument as a cultural construction tapering towards the sun, represents a civilization of the sun with its life giving light, protected by a chain of wagons, keeping it apart from the natural wilderness of Africa, represented by the beautiful dark green gardens.
Temple of Amenhotep IV in Karnak