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Dan Roodt in Business day [boodskap #69662]

Do, 28 November 2002 11:28

Wouter Plaasvark
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Wouter
Business Day dra vandag 'n artikel van Roodt.
(Hulle betaal hom om dit te skryf)
Dis nou na aanleiding van 'n versoek om sulke artikels hier te plaas;
dis 'n Engelse koerant wat nie in die Naspersstal is nie, Ferdi.
En ek plaas dit volledig, alhoewel uittreksels baie makliker
sou gelees het.

Ek stem nie met sy lang redenasie oor bv Milnerisme saam nie,
en ek dink sy aanhalings oor Hertzog, ens. is nie baie relevant nie.

Maar ek is dit met hom eens waar hy sê :
"Afrikaans newspapers in the Naspers group have been almost
hysterical in condemnation of the Groep van 63. Many people
agreeing with the contents of the letter fell silent, out of fear that
they too might be tainted as potential terrorist sympathisers."

Maar dis natuurlik nie intimidasie nie, daarvoor moet 'n mens
opgesluit word. Né, Gloudina.

Old split over Afrikaner identity fuels new terror
Nov 28 2002
Dan Roodt
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SA's social rifts peculiarly its own, rather than mirroring those of rest
of continent

ON THE face of it, SA is a peaceful country enjoying a healthy, if modest,
rate of economic growth. Under the surface, however, a major rift may be
brewing over language and identity issues that have plunged other countries
into civil wars.

Recently there has been much speculation about a potential right wing
threat, linked to the Soweto bomb blasts of October 30.

When the Groep van 63, a group of academics and authors campaigning for
Afrikaner cultural rights, handed a letter to President Thabo Mbeki,
suggesting the bombings might be a symptom of "Afrikaner alienation" within
the new SA, it caused a huge reaction.

One newspaper with a mainly black readership called it "a threat from the
right", while two notably left-wing weeklies published viciously
anti-Afrikaans cartoons likening Boers to dinosaurs and suggesting the
Groep was a front for the underground Boeremag, some of whose members
languish in jail, awaiting trial on charges of treason.

The fact that the group of academics explicitly condemned the violence and
loss of life in Soweto was held to be of no consequence.

Afrikaans newspapers in the Naspers group have been almost hysterical in
condemnation of the Groep van 63. Many people agreeing with the contents of
the letter fell silent, out of fear that they too might be tainted as
potential terrorist sympathisers.

Is there a danger that SA might disintegrate into ethnic strife like so
many other countries? Its location in sub-Saharan Africa where most
countries have experienced at least one civil war, genocide or coup,
certainly does not help.

Despite glib assumptions about SA being an African country, however, it
needs to be understood in terms of its own history, rather than that of its
troubled continent.

As Koos Malan, a prominent Groep van 63 member, once told me: "Hertzog
avenged himself on Lord Milner upon coming to power in 1924, but currently
Milner is having his revenge from the grave." In fact, since 1994, SA has
again embraced the Milnerist ideal of one undivided state, with one nation
speaking one language, English.

Over the past two years, Afrikanerdom has been in a state of effervescence.
The Afrikaans media have been host to a vehement exchange of views over the
future of Afrikaners in SA, including whether they have a future at all.
Liberal historian Hermann Giliomee has described the performance of FW de
Klerk and Roelf Meyer in the early 1990s as an "onoorwonne oorgawe" a
surrender without defeat.

Koos Malan's point about the Milner-Hertzog axis in SA history holds even
under African National Congress (ANC) rule. Milner wanted to integrate Boer
and Briton into a British SA, with a strongly English identity under the
Union Jack in 1902. In 1924 Hertzog scuppered all of this, ended ambiguity
on the official status of Afrikaans, and introduced a new flag and national
anthem in 1928, familiar as Die Stem.

Hertzog's slogan was "SA first", which was considered radically
nationalist, causing an uproar at the time. Natal wanted to secede, and
until the late 1950s SA had two national flags, the Union Jack as well as
the orange, white and blue.

For most of the 20th century, SA was ruled by Afrikaners who imposed
Hertzog's vision, that of "sovereignty", one of his favourite words,
denoting a strongly independent country, anticolonial and committed to
indigenous symbols and culture, centred around the Afrikaans language.
Hertzog wanted English-speakers to become Afrikaners too, but only
succeeded halfway in that he cut the umbilical cord with Britain and gave
them a local identity modelled on the Afrikaner one, but had no real effect
on their attachment to their powerful language, the medium of business and
global communication.

Then the ANC won the lotto of history, jettisoned Marxism-Leninism, but
under the influence of the English intellectual left who had remained
implacably opposed to Hertzogism all along, decided to reimpose Milnerism,
fortified by Samora Machel's slogan, "for the nation to be born, the tribe
must die". What nation-building really means in SA, is the complete
destruction of Afrikaans culture and the Afrikaner identity.

Further echoing old imperial ideas, Mbeki has embraced Rhodes's Cape to
Cairo philosophy, in which the national identity created under Hertzog will
be dissolved into the greater empire of the African Union.

To the dismay of Afrikanerdom, an intellectual from Natal, himself a member
of an ethnic minority, but thoroughly anglicised and inculcated with the
universalist spirit of Milnerism, Education Minister Kader Asmal has been
given power of life and death over Afrikaans culture. No one is more hated
today by Afrikaners than Asmal, who has patiently set about undermining the
ultimate repository of Afrikaner identity their education system.

In the past weeks, Stellenbosch University has been at the centre of an
acrimonious clash over language policy, but so has every other Afrikaans
university. Once at the centre of South African identity, Afrikaners now
find themselves on the scrapheap, and prone to the same old identity crisis
that used to haunt them throughout the 19th century under British rule, and
which was only resolved by the suffering of the Anglo-Boer war.

It is hard to tell what right-wing terrorist groups think, if they think at
all. But the current sense of crisis among Afrikaners, compounded by crime,
farm murders, affirmative action and Asmal's anglicisation policies,
provides an ideal environment for recruitment to extremist groups, whether
left or right.

When Asmal threatened to impose English on the remaining Afrikaans
universities, especially in medicine and engineering, 27 Afrikaner
organisations protested en bloc, ranging from the politically correct
Afrikanerbond (formerBroederbond) which supports Milnerist
"nation-building" to the ProAfrikaanse Aksiegroep, which would like to see
cultural autonomy for Afrikaans-speakers.

In the past few years, apart from a few kaftans and African proper names,
SA has evolved into a state about as indigenous as Coke, without the
brandy.

As the country finds itself forcemarched towards a neo-Milnerist,
"inclusive" identity, held together by the weak glue of English, which is
understood by less than half of her population, tensions will arise that
may ultimately prove more divisive than apartheid. After all, unlike the
Isrealis and the Palestinians, we've never really hated each other.

In the overreaction to the Groep van 63's letter to Mbeki, I thought I saw
real hatred for the first time. It hardly augurs well for the future.

Roodt, a former Head of Derivatives at Citibank, is the author of a book on
the Truth Commission, Om die Waarheidskommissie te Vergeet, and leader of
the Pro-Afrikaanse Aksiegroep (Praag).