EMBARGO:
UNTIL MONDAY 26 APRIL 2004 AT 11.30
AFRIKANERS
VOICE THEIR DESPAIR AGAINST MAJORITY TYRANNY
The Volksversetaksie
(National Protest Action), a spontaneous grouping of Afrikaner intellectual
and cultural organisations, is organising a counter-event on 27 April 2004
against the government celebrations of so-called democracy under the slogan
10 JAAR - TIEN GRIEWE (10 years - ten grievances). This counter-event will
take the form of a protest meeting in the Ou Raadzaal, Church Square,
Pretoria. Initially a demonstration or march was planned, but we were
refused permission as the authorities would not allow it on their so-called
Freedom Day.
In the year 2004, the
Afrikaner people of South Africa is not free. After 10 years of ANC rule, we
have ten grievances:
Unilateral name changes for
towns, cities and streets, being a suppression of the history, origin and
development of such towns and cities. Corruption and misspending of state
funds. Afrikaners contribute 36% of all government revenue, and the white
community as a whole up to 80% of all personal tax, yet we have no say in
the wasteful and often corrupt use of public funds. Endemic crime and
violence. The country where we had introduced Roman-Dutch law more than
three centuries ago, has now become a lawless paradise for gansters, rapists
and murderers, only 8% of whom are ever caught and punished. A
Zimbabwe-style land reform that is hanging over South Africa like the sword
of Damocles. Recently promulgated legislation makes it possible for the
Minister of Land Affairs to expropriate land without recourse to the courts,
by simple decree. A new book by dr. Philip du Toit, the Great South African
Land Scandal, shows that among the hundreds of "land reform
projects", not one has been successful, with many more in the offing.
Racial legislation and policies in the name of "affirmative
action" which has led to the impoverishment of Afrikaners and other
whites. Our youth has become unemployable in the country of their birth and
hundreds of thousands must now do menial labour in Britain, despite their
excellent education and skills. The blight of poverty and unemployment now
affects 15% of Afrikaners, a direct result of government race policies. The
collapse of our public health-care system, painstakingly built up over many
years by Afrikaner governments, with a devastating effect on the elderly and
the poor who cannot afford private care. Official policy, long denying the
existence of AIDS, has caused hospitals to be flooded with victims suffering
from secondary infections due to that disease, placing further stress on the
system. Absurd government interference in sport, with the enforcement of
racial quotas in teams. Recently the medals of tennis championship winners
were taken back simply because they belonged to the white race, and given to
black players. Chaos in education, with successive experiments in so-called
outcomes-based education and a general lowering of standards. In addition,
any form of Christian ritual, such as the token prayers and reading from the
Bible that used to characterise Afrikaans schools, has been outlawed by the
crypto-Muslim Minister of Education, Kader Asmal, who wishes to secularise
all our children, the better to convert them afterwards, either to Islam or
to a specially designed government multi-faith system incorporating elements
of African, Christian and Islamic religion. Afrikaners experience this as an
attack on their faith, as well as the Western-style religious freedom that
used to be upheld in South Africa. A sustained attack on the Afrikaans
language, identity and culture. Since 1994 the ANC government has made a
mockery of the supposedly democratic constitution, and embarked on an
aggressive policy of anglicisation of the state, as well as schools and
universities developed by Afrikaners over more than a hundred years. New
Afrikaans broadcasting licences have also been refused to all applicants and
an existing community radio station, Radio Pretoria, saw its licence revoked
by fiat after ten years of broadcasting. Not only does this trample upon the
cultural rights of Afrikaners, but it also negates our freedom of speech.
Anti-racist racism. There exists open toleration of hate speech and racial
incitement against whites, specifically directed against the Afrikaner and
farmers, such as the slogan "Kill a Boer, kill a farmer." Often
such racism would be propagated under cover of anti-racism, by designating
all Afrikaners or farmers as "racists" and therefore deserving of
being killed, driven off or of having their assets pillaged such as the
recent call to "steal from whites as they have been stealing from us
for 350 years." More than 1600 farmers have been killed since 1991, and
many thousands of urban Afrikaners murdered, raped and assaulted.
This list of grievances
will be presented to the state president, Thabo Mbeki, either on 27 April if
His Highness would deign to meet with us, or on some other date.
The levels of frustration
and anger in the Afrikaner community are not only leading to emigration and
a brain drain from South Africa, but also to social ills such as alcohol and
drug abuse, family violence, the breakdown of our social fabric and,
ultimately, to desperate acts of sedition such as those allegedly planned or
perpetrated by the Boeremag.
We wish to communicate to
the world, as well as this anti-Afrikaans government, the despair felt by
Afrikaners after having been sold out and abandoned by FW de Klerk, Roelf
Meyer and other apartheid-era leaders.
Attempts so far to enter
into dialogue with the ANC regime have not been successful and our countless
letters and appeals have been rebuffed.
South Africa is not a
democracy, at least not in the Western sense. Rather, it represents what
Tocqueville or Mill called a "tyranny of the majority" and is
steadily sliding into a pattern of ethnic and racial domination typical of
ethnically divided societies that does not augur well for the future.
Participating organisations
in the Volksversetaksie are, inter alia, Genootskap vir die Handhawing van
Afrikaans (GHA), Afrikanerkultuurbond (AKB), die Verkenners, Pro-Afrikaanse
Aksiegroep (PRAAG), Group 63, Vrouekrag, Pestalozzi Educational Trust and
the Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU).
In addition, this
declaration of ten grievances will be circulated in Afrikaans to all
Afrikaner authors, musicians, actors, politicians, philosophers and
intellectuals, for their signature, to be published in the press and on the
internet, as further proof of the deep dissatisfaction felt by all those who
still participate in Afrikaans culture despite official attempts to
stigmatise and suppress it. By the same token they will demonstrate their
will to remain in South Africa as Afrikaners, not to be assimilated,
colonised or driven out of the country in a repetition of the Zimbabwean
experience.
