This critical discourse analysis states how Apartheid's nationalistic, puristic ideologies were implicitly and explicitly conveyed to linguistic accounts of the history of Afrikaans. Specifically genetic and sanitary purism are debated and nationalism's role in linguistic purism. The historical linguists of Afrikaans are split into three classes that obey some chronological order: the pre-philological, philological, and alternative schools of thought. Afrikaans historical linguistics applied notable erasure in purism's name at the outset, conveying some facets of nationalism and purism to scientific research, yet got less puristic and more comprehensive with time, as is particularly the case with the alternative school of thought.