What place for English-speaking whites in Afrikaners’ self-determination?
By Anton Barnard of SAmizdat blog.
I am sure that the large majority of whites, Afrikaans or English-speaking, would agree that South Africa under ANC rule has become a nightmarish, third-world hell-hole, replete with uneducated tin-pot megalomaniacs screaming down the roads in blue-light convoys, often mowing down innocent pedestrians, corruption, anarchy, decaying infrastructure, rubbish in the streets, heretofore unknown levels of violent crime, as well as the quasi-religion of state racism, known as transformation (a.k.a. ethnic cleansing) aimed against whites in the form of affirmative action and BEE. This black-on-white racism has reached such endemic proportions that Eskom, the state electricity supplier, is importing black Americans to fill posts at Eskom to sit and twiddle their thumbs, rather than deigning to appoint a white South African citizen.
The mistake many whites made with the coming of South Africa’s so-called democracy in 1994, was to delude ourselves into believing that we were somehow different to all other African hell-holes. We were sadly mistaken, however. The ANC regime is not different at all. It rather has everything in common with Zimbabwe’s Zanu-PF. The deterioration of a formerly orderly and prosperous country loudly attests to this.
Given the above African reality, self-determination or emigration is the only way of whites to avoid either a Zimabwe situation, or even a Rwanda-type genocide. More than a million whites have left, but what about those who cannot emigrate? Self-determination can also include an independent country, but doesn’t have to do so. The Basques and Catalans in Spain are an example of peoples with a large degree of self-determination, but without an independent country. Section 235 of South Africa’s constitution does make provision for self-determination by ethnic groups. Up to now, the quest for self-determination amongst whites has been almost exclusively driven by Afrikaners. Praag, the Pro-Afrikaans Action Group, is one of the Afrikaner-organizations working towards self-determination.
Although Praag is by definition an Afrikaans organization, it is also a fact that there are significant numbers of English speakers that support us, or perhaps are united in their opposition to the racist and criminal ANC regime. This piece was prompted by one of the regular contributors to the comments section of the Praag site, who asked questions like:
Who are the Afrikaners?
What is the role of English-speaking whites in any effort towards self-determination? (I’m going to abbreviate English-speaking whites as ESWs in the rest of this piece.)
The first question is the easier one to answer, although it is admittedly not quite that easy in all cases. I will use Wikipedia’s definition:
Afrikaners or Boers are an Afrikaans speaking ethnic group in Southern Africa. They are mainly of northwestern European descent (mostly Dutch, German and French ancestry), but their native tongue is Afrikaans, a language closely related to Dutch.
Note that there is a clear mention of ethnicity in the above definition (once again: it isn’t my own definition.) Ethnicity is PC-speak for “white.” In other words: Afrikaners are white, Afrikaans-speaking descendants of European settlers. Politically correct people and liberals may not like a national definition in terms of race, but it is a fact, just like it goes without saying that a true Irishman is a white inhabitant of an island country in the Atlantic Ocean. For those who wonder how to define a white person, I refer them to the ANC regime. Please ask the Afro-fascists of the ANC how they decide against whom to discriminate when it comes to affirmative action. You could even ask a four-year-old, before the adults teach him or her to start lying about the obvious.
Whilst we’re on the topic, I may as well grasp the nettle of the coloured question too. In certain circles, for example the liberal Afrikaans-speaking media, it is considered politically correct to group Afrikaans-speaking coloureds with Afrikaners and to pretend we somehow form one ethnic group. One particular media group, Naspers, with has gone as far as to even invent an absurd name for this combination: the so-called “Afrikaanses” (sic). This is the equivalent of pretending white Americans and Mexicans are one nation, and calling them: “Amerexicans” or something similar. However, the interesting thing is that this is very much an extremely tiny minority’s opinion, and only the most whisky-soaked Naspers journalist would even consider taking this seriously. Most coloured intellectuals would not see themselves as Afrikaners at all.
For example: the coloured academic (to any American readers: “coloured” in South Africa refers to mixed-race people, mostly of Malay, Khoisan and white ancestry), professor Jonathan Jansen, goes as far as to deny that there is even an Afrikaner nation at all, by which he bizarrely seems to suggest approximately 3 million Afrikaners all suffer from the same delusion, as opposed to Jansen’s own paranoid delusions. When the formerly Afrikaans-speaking and formerly coloured University of the Western Cape was “democratized” in 1994, they wasted no time in getting rid of Afrikaans. With few exceptions, Afrikaans music, culture, academia and commerce are driven by Afrikaners, not coloureds. Coloured intellectuals are almost united in their preference for English. Whilst I don’t pretend to speak for the coloured community, American-style gangsta culture and hip-hop music seems to hold a bigger appeal to many of them, than does the Afrikaner culture.
Things aren’t all that simple as saying Afrikaners speak Afrikaans, adhere to an Afrikaner culture and are white, however. Many Afrikaners have intermarried with English-speaking whites. A good example of this is the popular Afrikaner singer Steve Hofmeyr, who, in spite of being passionate about the language, nevertheless married an English wife and is raising his children in English. In addition, some Afrikaners have deliberately chosen to abandon Afrikaans and have voluntarily become English-speaking. A good example of this is the Afrikaner actress, Charlize Theron, who these days sports a pretty passable Californian twang.
Is Charlize still an Afrikaner?
The above logically leads to the second question: what, if any, role is there for ESWs if and when Afrikaners achieve self-determination?
I am not going to dwell on the Anglo-Boer War and the remaining bitterness still being felt in some circles towards the English-speakers. As far as I am concerned, both the Afrikaners and ESWs are currently in the same boat, and should be united against a common enemy, rather than dwelling on the past: the racist ANC regime and its criminal accomplices (if not the ANC’s criminal officials and office bearers.)
One reality in terms of most ESWs is that there is not such a clear sense of a national identity among ESWs. I’ve yet to hear an ESW describe himself as anything but a South African. However, most sane realists realize by now that there is in fact no such a thing as a South African nation, especially not if you’re white. To call yourself a South African is therefore pretty vague and to my mind an unsatisfactory description. The ANC regime constantly makes it abundantly clear that whites are, in Thabo Mbeki’s immortal words, “settlers who have yet to depart” or “colonialists of a special kind.” If there is a South African nation, as opposed to a geographical area, it is definitely uniformly black, with very little room for whites.
Perhaps because most ESWs lack a separate national identity, it will of necessity have to be Afrikaners who will lead our own struggle, similar to the ANC’s, to achieve self-determination. Except for a few ESWs who think an independent Western Cape is a good idea, I detect very little separatist thinking amongst ESWs. As for the question as to whether Afrikaners will welcome only Afrikaners into the fold, should we achieve self-determination: there’s no simple answer. I once again refer to the example of Steve Hofmeyr’s children. Are they Afrikaners? Do we do a language test and grant citizenship in an Afrikaner republic to Steve on the basis of that, but not his kids?
Another question is whether ESWs would like to associate themselves with Afrikaners, even if offered the opportunity.
It is a fact that ESWs have historically been of a much more liberal persuasion than most Afrikaners. Helen Suzman, with her almost exclusively ESW and Jewish constituency in Johannesburg’s leafy suburbs, was for years the sole liberal member of parliament. Would liberal, northern-suburbs ESWs want to have anything to do with the Afrikaners at all, or are they happy to rearrange the deck chairs on the South African Titanic and flee back to London when the chips are down?
On the other hand, it is a fact that ESWs are for reasons of ethnicity and intermarriage the closest relations Afrikaners have in Southern Africa. A lot of ESWs no longer have any British roots or relatives. Afrikaners have much more in common with ESWs than with Zulus (or Mongolians), for that matter. A large proportion of the ESWs are equally as disillusioned with the so-called Rainbow Nation as Afrikaners are. They also suffer the same racist discrimination at the hands of the ANC regime as Afrikaners do. Do Afrikaners abandon the ESWs if Rwanda’s genocide becomes South Africa’s reality too?
If I am really pressed to provide a straight answer as to whether I think Afrikaners should allow ESWs to participate in Afrikaners’ self-determination, and knowing full well many ESWs would have political, cultural and linguistic objections, I would have to say a qualified yes.
One thing that I think most Afrikaners striving for self-determination agree upon, is that our language and culture are completely non-negotiable. If there is an independent Afrikaner Authority, similar to the Palestinian Authority, or an independent Afrikaner state, Afrikaans will be its sole official language. Nobody wants to control what languages people speak behind closed doors, but all government functions and all state broadcasting will for example be in Afrikaans, finish & klaar. There is in this sense no difference between Afrikaners, the Germans and the French, who also wouldn’t dream of having other languages as their official language. This in and of itself may discourage many ESWs from joining the Afrikaners’ cause. Many of them may rather consider English-speaking countries such as Australia or the UK.
Does that leave ESWs as mere potential immigrants? I agree with Dr Dan Roodt, the leader of Praag, when he says that any independent Afrikaner Authority or Afrikaner state should apply the same immigration criteria as European countries. Afrikaners, as defined by the definition elsewhere in this document, should in my opinion automatically qualify for citizenship. Anybody else would be free to apply for citizenship, subject to an oath of loyalty and to other criteria like skills, lack of a criminal record, health, education, a waiting period and a language test. All of these are nothing sinister and are in fact exactly the kind of criteria countries like the UK and Germany would apply to prospective immigrants.
I would personally also say there is a case to be made for extending a once-off offer of asylum or refugee status to ESWs who suffer from racist persecution and crime at the hands of the ANC regime. Afrikaners could certainly not stand idly by if, God forbid, South Africa threatens to become another Rwanda and our ESW brothers are about to suffer a genocide. This should, however, be subject to the understanding that any Afrikaner self-determination or independent state would be of an Afrikaner nature in terms of language and culture, and that refugees would be expected to assimilate and adopt the Afrikaner culture.
The above will admittedly not appeal to all ESWs, but then they are free to savour the many delights Africa and the so-called Rainbow Nation have in store for those of an unfashionable shade of pigmentation.
Source: SAmizdat Blog
http://antonbarnard.praag.co.za/?p=1292
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