Jacob Albertus Marais (2 November 1922 – 8 August 2000) was an Afrikaner nationalist thinker, author, politician, Member of Parliament, and leader of the Herstigte Nasionale Party (HNP) from 1977 until his death in 2000.

Marais's father, Jaap Sr., and paternal grandfather, Sarel Jacobus Stefanus, were in active service on the Western front with the Bothaville commando during the Second Boer War.

His father was sent to Broadbottom Camp at St. Helena, while his grandfather was held at Green Point and later paroled due to illness.

His paternal grandmother was the leader of a group of Boer women who travelled through the western Transvaal and western Free State for 18 months with their young children to avoid capture by British forces Jaap Marais was one of nine children: six sons, and two daughters, of whom one brother died in infancy.

The founding of the party occurred three years after the assassination of Hendrik Verwoerd when BJ Vorster authorised the presence of Māori players and spectators during the tour of the New Zealand rugby union team in South Africa in 1970.

The HNP found it difficult to make headway against the entrenched and relatively conservative ruling National Party in the 1970s.

He proposed a Volksfront: a coalition of right-wing organisations with the objective of stopping President FW De Klerk from handing over the reins of government to the African National Congress.

This time Marais accused De Klerk and his cronies of being "retarded (slow) communists", frequently conceding to the ANC/SACP alliance.

After South Africa’s first non-racial democratic elections on 27 April 1994, Marais’s HNP maintained a policy of non-participation in the formal political and electoral system.

He accused Marais of defamation against Bruwer, Hartzenberg and Viljoen, who Buys regarded as "men who sacrifice everything for their People".

"[2] Today, the party still does not recognise the right of the African National Congress government to rule over Afrikaners in South Africa.

Opperman, as well as those of the Dutch and Flemish poets Marnix Gijsen, Henriette Roland Holst, Hendrik Marsman, and Martinus Nijhoff.

In his view, this freedom was linked to the fatherland of Afrikaners, which he defined as the areas of South Africa dominated by whites.