Green’s Dictionary of Slang

Dopper n.

also Dorper
[? Du. domper, an extinguisher, implying the Church’s desire to extinguish any form of what it saw as ‘progressive’ or ‘liberal’ thinking, theological or otherwise. Or f. dorp, a village, implying the rural backgrounds of most of its members. A final theory is f. dop, a shell, referring to the sect’s haircuts, which resembled an inverted calabash]

(S.Afr.) a member of the strictly Calvinist Dutch Reformed Church (Gereformeerde Kerk in Suid-Afrika).

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[[UK]Mercurius Democritus 22-29 Dec. 300: The Dive-Doppers [i.e. the Dutch] are become so humble, that they begin to rrecant] .
J.W. Matthews Incwadi Yami 401: These ‘doppers’ [...] do not differ essentially from the members of the Dutch Reformed Church in doctrine.
[UK]H.A. Bryden Kloof and Karroo 347: There lay, outspanned, many a stout waggon [...] which carried some seventy or eighty families of Dopper Boers. The Doppers are a sect holding religious views more severe and savage even than those of Calvinists.
M. O’Rell John Bull and Co. 253: The Dutch Puritans The ‘Doppers’ A Case of Conscience [...] The Doppers are as practical as they are pious.
[Aus]Bulletin (Sydney) 17 Feb. 20/2: There are some remarkable points of resemblance between the British and the Boers – especially in religious characteristics. For instance, the Doppers have a firm belief that they are descended from the lost 10 tribes of Israel.
R. Colquhoun Africander Land 434: Even at the height of his power, as is well known, Kriiger could never make the Dopper Church that of the State.
[SA]C. Pettman Africanderisms.
O. Walker Proud Zulu 113: A thick-set, whiskered burgher [...] with an exterior as hard and immobile as a tortoise and a ‘dopper’ religious faith.
[SA]R. Malan My Traitor’s Heart (1991) 27: Soon, many Afrikaners were calling themselves doppers, after the little caps with which they snuffed out candles. [Ibid.] 28: The Dopper spirit [...] finally blossomed in apartheid and we are eating its poisonous fruit to this day.