Will
English-speakers join a Volkstaat?
Judging from his distinctly
Germanic name, I can only speculate that Mr Schutte may be one of
those former Afrikaners who have abandoned their roots and have
become Anglicized. Perhaps this is not a bad move in South Africa
these days, because the ruling Xhosa Nostra are determinedly
English-speaking, to the extent that I suspect they are secretly
ashamed of their mother tongue.
Be that as it may. Let's for a
moment leave aside the atrocities committed against the Boers by the
British in the Anglo-Boer war of a century and more ago, and let's
never underestimate the feelings of hatred that the concentration
camps and genocide perpetrated by the British still arouse. Let's
rather concentrate on the modern-day white English-speakers who live
in the strange conglomeration of different nations, but without any
sense of nationhood, called South Africa.
In contrast to what Mr Schutte says
in his piece, the Afrikaners have long suffered prejudice at the
hands of English-speaking whites, rather than the other way around.
I still remember the taunts of "stupid Dutchman" from my
youth, and even today English- speaking radio presenters are fond of
mocking Afrikaners for their accents. Too many English whites, some
of Eugene TerreBlanche's supporters are a caricature of Afrikaners -
stupid, fat, alcoholic, backward, khaki-wearing racists. Witness Mr
Schutte's tired and fallacious allegations of ignorance and racism
in his letter.
It was English-speaking South
Africans who were in general much more in favour of transformation
in the old South Africa, compared to Afrikaners, with student
politics at Wits and UCT being decidedly more radical and left-wing
than at Tuks, for example. Nobody thought it strange if a white
English-speaker supported the Struggle, rich Northern Suburbs-bored-housewife
supporters of the Black Sash being a case in point. When an
Afrikaner supported the Struggle, it was highly unusual and such a
person gained instant notoriety - Bram Fischer and Beyers Naude, for
example.
And yet, the New-South African joke
is squarely at the expense of English-speaking whites. The worst
fears of Afrikaners are starting to materialize in the form of
rampant racial discrimination, disguised as
"transformation", "employment equity" and
"black empowerment".
The supreme irony is that the
naïve English-speakers who believed that Africa was going to
embrace the principles of liberal democracy, social justice and
minority rights they had in mind, are also feeling the exact same
heat when applying for a job as Afrikaners do. They are also being
murdered by gangs of thugs produced by the very revolution which a
lot of them actively supported - Michaela Rawstorne was not an
Afrikaner. When the Pan-Africanist Students Movement of Azania
(PASMA) demonstrated recently in Pretoria, they chanted, "Kill
all whites - English and Afrikaans". To the ANC's Africanists
and other black racists, a white is a white is a white, English or
Afrikaans-speaking, and whites need to be "transformed"
into oblivion.
I would venture that
English-speaking whites are not only in the same boat as their
Afrikaner compatriots in terms of experiencing racism, ANC-style,
but that they are, in fact, worse off. Look at the clumsy term
"English-speaking South African", as compared to
"Afrikaner", for example. The very fact that there is no
collective name for English-speaking South Africans, says a lot
about their lack of identity.
They are not English or British,
and many of them have been in South Africa for generations. But they
are clearly not South African either, at least not to the racially
obsessed ANC, not having nearly enough pigmentation to be acceptable
in the twisted new paradigm of forced domination by means of
demographic swamping. There are few people Thabo Mbeki despises more
than Tony Leon, for example.
There is not a very clearly discernible
white English-South African culture either. Many of the ways in
which they would distinguish themselves from, say, an Australian,
are actually reflections or a pale imitation of Afrikaner culture.
What are the choices facing
English-speaking South Africans, then? There are probably only
three. The first, which many have chosen, along with admittedly a
lot of Afrikaners, is emigration to a suitably lily-white
Anglo-Saxon country. The second is to try and live with the
monstrous regime they were instrumental in creating in South Africa.
Due to the blatant racism practised by the ANC, this means internal
emigration, hiding from crime behind packs of dogs and electric
fences, a lowering of expectations in the workplace and generally
keeping a low profile.
The third option, which I don't
think would sound very appealing to most white English-speakers,
would be to join forces with or even become Afrikaners, in order to
free themselves from the oppression of the ANC. The only practical,
long-term way of doing this, is self-governance by whites in their
own country, homeland or Volkstaat, if you prefer. Many of them
would, however, object that globalization means that English is the
lingua franca of the planet, and becoming Afrikaners would
disadvantage them in terms of being denizens of the Global Village.
If anybody is going to make a
"Volkstaat" a success, however, it will be Afrikaners. You
need a "volk" to make a Volkstaat, and English-speaking
whites can clearly not be described as a nation. Perhaps some
English-speakers would say to themselves that it is better to have
your children taught in schools with real standards, to live in a
safe neighbourhood, and to get something for your tax money, but
then have to speak Afrikaans, than it is to face the bleak
Africanist nightmare of a second Zimbabwe.
These people may then become
Afrikaners in a Volkstaat. But I'm not holding my breath that there
will be many of them.
Anton Barnard
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