John Elsegood
One of the more offensive offerings, on the situation in South Africa, was from NZ journalist, Florence Kerr and her overheated piece ‘South African expats revive ‘racist’ Afrikaans national day in NZ.’
According to Kerr, South Africans “have revived an Afrikaaans national day abolished years ago as a racist relic in their homeland.” Talk about blaming the victim. Perhaps Kerr should argue that Anzac Day be removed because it might offend the sensibilities of Muslims living in Australia and New Zealand. Yet she considers that the ANC’s Orwellian re-naming of the Day of the Vow to Reconciliation Day is perfectly alright.
That line shows just how obsessed liberals and Marxists are when discussing South Africa, equating everything with the Apartheid era of 1948-94. The last 23 years of ANC rule and policies have clearly shown that there is no desire for reconciliation, only revenge.
The historical fact is that on the 16 December 1838 a seminal battle took place in the hinterland of South Africa that saw 460 Voortrekkers stave off a Zulu Army of at least 10,000 warriors (Kerr says 20,000), of whom 3000 perished while the trekkers had three wounded. That established a presence in the wilderness of Boers (Afrikaners) who traced their ancestry back to April 1652 when Jan van Riebeeck established a refreshment station at the Cape for the Dutch East Indies company – 136 years before white settlement in Australia. The infusion of persecuted French Protestants, Huguenots, added to the hardy people living at the Cape and after the British took over permanently from 1806, some of these hardy souls pushed out into the hinterland.
Modern day South Africa, before the current corrupt Zuma regime, owes much to the resourcefulness of the Afrikaner.
The Church of the Vow, and the Day of the Vow, represented the promise made to God before the Blood River battle, and those promises were eventually fulfilled and became part of the national calendar of events. There was no compulsion for any to follow suit, in the same way as Aboriginals, or anyone else, in Australia are not compelled to honour Australia Day (26 January).
So the Day of the Vow is where the Afrikaner people pay their respect to God – the one the Mad Left deride at every opportunity – but of course, Kerr breathlessly reminds us that the “Day of the Vow features on the website of the American Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke in glowing terms”, a classic case of guilt by association.
The fact that Rudi du Plooy, an expat, at Hamilton NZ, argues for the keeping of the name, particularly with the “slaughter of innocent farmers,” continually going on does not make him a racist despite over-heated claims of racism by Professor Albert Grundlingh, in South Africa, and Hamilton expat Methodist minister, Ann Preston, who seems to think that recognising the Day of the Vow means that people are “unable to move past that kind of hatred and….that kind of animosity.”
Well, even Kerr admits that a lone council representative from Hamilton, James Casson, said that du Plooy’s talk “didn’t come across as anti-anything.” Furthermore, that councillor shouldn’t feel compelled to reconsider just because Kerr finds a couple of people who want to use emotive language, in rebuttal. And just why she felt compelled to ask Race Relations Conciliator, Dame Susan Devoy, for a comment beggars belief. She was clearly sent packing as should anyone who seeks to close down freedom of expression.
What should be of concern to media hacks, like Kerr, is not the opinion of a man talking to a group of 20 people about a day important to him, but the blatant racist attitude of the corrupt Zuma regime, in South Africa, and the attacks on the white minority that has been going on since 1994.
Rudi du Plooy is right to be concerned about the horrendous death toll experienced by white South African farmers and he does not need to be denigrated because of his concern, or seeing parallels with the deadly threat that the trekkers faced at the Ncome (Blood) River in December 1838.
Instead Kerr should be looking at the incitement of Government leaders to perpetrate racist attacks on Afrikaners. Having the state president dancing and singing about killing the Boer is surely worthy of note for those concerned about racism, as are his comments that freehold landowners have stolen land and that appropriation, without compensation, may have to take place. That is state theft, but then Zuma would know all about that. This semi-literate thug, according to the High Court, should be facing 783 charges of corruption, racketeering and money laundering.
Perhaps Kerr could tear herself away from concerns over du Plooy’s comments and examine the antics of the ANC towards the whites, and their public call to ‘bury them alive,’ an obnoxious comment from an ANC parliamentarian, when Dr Pieter Groenewald MP was detailing the plight of white farmers, in the Parliament (March 2017). This is par for the course by the ANC. In 2010 the ANC threatened an Afrikaner civil rights organisation that wanted to present the ANC headquarters (Luthuli House, formerly Shell House) with a list of names of farm murder victims. They were warned that they would meet the same fate as IFP protesters in 1994, namely being gunned down. No wonder IFP leader, Dr Mangosuthu Buthelezi, warned protesters, earlier in 2017, to go nowhere near the ANC headquarters.
The blatant discrimination in employment against whites is also a feature of selection in sporting teams, the composition of which is defined by quotas not ability. Whatever happened to selection on merit? Why should the generation of white South Africans today be made to carry the burdens of real and imagined injustices of the past?
As for history and cultural relics the ANC have allowed monuments of important whites such as Paul Kruger and Cecil Rhodes to be vandalised; the removal of Jan van Riebeeck from the Cape; the renaming of a building named after CR Swart, a former (ceremonial) state president of South Africa, in favour of ex-Cuban communist dictator, Fidel Castro; the renaming of a road using the name of a murderer (Zondo) who blew up Christmas shoppers (women and children) in a shopping mall in that very street, two days before Christmas 1985.
Indeed, the ANC is good at promoting bomber-murderers. Robert McBride, some seven months later, was another coward who killed innocent female civilians at restaurants and bars. He became a police chief under the ANC due to his dutiful service in MK – the armed wing of the ANC.
The cultural attack is ongoing and pervasive. Standerton, a seat that the South African statesman Jan Smuts held for 24 years is a place of historical significance. In the First Anglo-Boer War (1880-81) a British unit held out against the Boers for the duration. It was also the home of a monument commemorating the Great Trek. Yet in 2007-08 the destruction of an important Voortrekker Monument took place. The Lekwa mayor, Queen Radebe-Khumalo, ordered the monument to be demolished. ”That piece of thing means nothing to us. It is just a piece of cement with tracks. I do not even know where it comes from,” Radebe-Khumalo declared. (What was that bit about reconciliation, again?)
Fortunately, the Pretoria High Court ordered compensation for this piece of cultural vandalism and contempt and prohibited further attempts to remove another statue, erected in memory of Anglo-Boer War concentration camp victims.
Yet the vandalism and destruction of monuments goes on with important historical figures such as Paul Kruger and Cecil Rhodes included as targets.
The attempt to destroy Afrikaans has been a feature of the ANC, a language spoken by more non-whites than whites. Ironically, Nelson Mandela, and his immediate successor, Thabo Mbeki, both argued that there should be at least one or two Afrikaans speaking universities yet there has been a manic push by the current cultural savages to eliminate this authentic African language from SA campuses.
None of this matters to a media who consider that to beat-up against one lone, law abiding, South African ex-pat, wanting to honour the national day of his volk, is somehow of paramount concern. There are multitudes of other examples, past and present, that could be deemed worthy of attention yet the continued deafening silence towards the failed ANC regime demonstrates the ultimate expression of Western liberal paternalism and double standards.
But then again white South African lives have never mattered to the PC chattering classes.
We must, of course, not discriminate!