broedertwis, noun

/ˈbrʊdətwəs//ˈbrudə(r)twəs/
Forms:
Also with initial capital.
Origin:
AfrikaansShow more Afrikaans, ‘a quarrel between brothers’, broeder brother + twis quarrel.
1. A split in the ranks of Afrikanerdom, caused by political, religious, or other differences. Also attributive. See also Afrikanerdom sense 1.
1965 C. Van Heyningen Orange Days 2The call which brought the author’s father to South Africa was itself a product of this broedertwis, amongst the Transvaal Afrikaners, for in addition to the political and personal jealousies that kept them divided, there was religious strife.
1978 Wilkins & Strydom Super-Afrikaners 40Only 12 years after the Boer War, with heartbreak and grief still deep in Afrikaner hearts, the stage was being set for an even more traumatic experience — Broedertwis, brother taking up arms against brother.
1981 Sunday Times 8 Mar. 16There’s a nasty smell of cordite in the air as this broedertwis election gets under way.
1986 C. Wilson in New Statesman 30 May 17The tension has produced new divisions among the whites, blurred the traditional political lines between English and Afrikaans speakers and splintered Afrikaner unity. This fragmentation is encapsulated in a single Afrikaans word with particularly bitter connotations: broedertwis — a fight among brothers.
1990 E. Prov. Herald 28 May 1President F W de Klerk yesterday accused the Conservative Party leadership of carrying out a ‘total campaign of incitement’. This held the danger of placing the party ‘irrevocably on a slippery slide to a morass of violent “broedertwis”’.
1992 S. Van der Merwe in South 27 Feb. 13While the referendum may temporarily increase the level of..broedertwis, it will bring it to a head and it will abate after that.
2. transferred sense. Friction between individuals or interest-groups.
1979 Frontline Dec. 21It (sc. Inkatha) has also become the centre of a ferocious black broedertwis which shades its white equivalents to the level of incidental tiffs.
1982 S. Motjuwadi in Drum May 39Although I will concede that there is a discordant note of broedertwis across the colour border, I still maintain that it is nothing new.
1987 Drum July 12When the brotherly love soured into broedertwis, the Ciskei turned into a scenario that could have been a cloak and dagger espionage dream for a Hollywood film scriptwriter.
A split in the ranks of Afrikanerdom, caused by political, religious, or other differences. Also attributive.
Friction between individuals or interest-groups.
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Afrikaans
Broederkring, nounn.broek, nounn.
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