Introduction
On Valentine’s Day this year, it was reported that Oscar Pistorius, the famous South African Olympian and Paralympic world champion, was arrested for and charged with the murder of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, in the early hours of the morning at his home in Pretoria. This news story received a huge amount of global news coverage in the weeks following the incident, not only due to Pistorius’s international status, but also because Steenkamp was a well-known South African model.1 The initial reports claimed that Pistorius had mistaken her for a burglar,2 but they were corrected within hours when Pistorius was arrested for the murder. The high-profile nature of the case caused much demand for further facts regarding the nature and motivation of the murder. The intrigue of the case also increased even more after it was reported that the lead detective in the case was facing his own charges of murder3 – thereby exposing the corruption so prevalent in the South African executive system. Although I was not present in South Africa myself, friends and family back home informed me that the Pistorius case was “the talk of the town” all around the country. For nearly two weeks following the shooting, it was virtually the only event covered in the South African media. What was particularly surprising for me was to see the amount of coverage this story received internationally, as friends from all over the world were asking me about my thoughts on the incident.
Because of everything that has been said following the incident, it has proven to be very significant for the current South African political landscape. The reflective discussion on the incident primarily revolved around “the suppression of women.” In South Africa, the country with the highest rape rate in the world (up to 3,600 rapes daily)4, the abuse of women is most certainly a problem. Domestic violence is also a huge problem in the country, as a household survey reported that 40% of South African men hit their partners.5 Granted, the survey is obviously subject to error – but the fact remains that this is an undeniable problem. Unfortunately, while sanctified biblical stewardship and gender relations are the only viable answer to this problem caused by mankind’s depravity, South African society seems to be striving in the opposite direction; virtually everywhere you look – blogs, news articles, commentaries, discussions – you’ll find the aggressive promotion of feminism and its understanding of “women’s rights.” Besides the obvious fact that this violence derives overwhelmingly from black criminality, not from whites like Pistorius, I contend that South African society persists on this path of violence and disharmony precisely because the egalitarian feminist agenda has been very influential in South Africa since the early 1990s, although never to its current extent.
Historical Background to the Current Developments
Prior to 1990, when apartheid was dismantled, the Afrikaner people enjoyed a relative amount of protection and isolation from the sexual revolution that conquered much of the West during the 1960s. It is indeed ironic that the economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations during apartheid, implemented to punish the Afrikaner people, were providentially used by God to bless them in persevering in the faith of their ancestors – to a greater degree than any other nation in the world at the time. The thirty-year margin helped protect the Afrikaners to some degree from the economic agenda of international bankers, as well as from the social agenda so actively promoted by the Western media. Modern secularism and cultural Marxism, which started to overtake Europe as early as the First World War and the United States in the 1950s and 60s, did not have much effect on the Afrikaner community until the late 80s. A practical outworking of the effect of this three-decade-long protection which Afrikaners enjoyed is seen in the fact that abortion in South Africa was legalized only in 1997,6 twenty-four years after it was legalized in the States. (However, it should be noted that the South African law is widely regarded as one of the most liberal abortion laws in the world.7)
Various other examples can be given showing that Christendom lasted longer in South Africa than anywhere else in the West, as the remnants of it can be seen even today. Afrikaners still have a higher church attendance than almost all other Western nations, although it is rapidly declining, particularly among the youth.8 However, despite the rapid decline of Afrikaner Christianity and nationalism, Afrikaners, at least at a grassroots level, still experienced a relative amount of protection from Marxist bullying for the first decade of the new Marxist South Africa. To cite an example: when forced racial integration at the University of the Free State failed shortly after 1994, campus residences returned to being allowed to segregate along racial lines. This freedom was finally abolished only in 2007, when a quota system was implemented that forced all historically white residences to take in over 30% black students, a figure that was raised to 50% a couple of years later.9 The separation also allowed for residences to maintain a traditional Christian character up until about 2007, which they since then have had to renounce for the sake of tolerance.
It is clear for all to see that Christianity’s role in the public life of South Africa has been increasingly marginalized for years. Win-Gallup even reported that in the period from 2005 to 2012, South Africa was the country secularizing the fifth-fastest in the world.10 This is a direct result of the ever-intensifying attack on the Afrikaner people’s religion and traditions since around 2005. As the Afrikaner has been the chief divine instrument in proclaiming the Gospel in South Africa, the consequent secularization of Afrikaners has had a catastrophic impact on the whole country. Among the rhetoric employed to stoke hatred for our ancestors and the fifth commandment, not only by the Marxist government but even more effectively by our own treasonous leaders, is the constant reminder that Western Christendom throughout the ages was a manifestation of the white man’s suppression of all things for his own glorification. I remember this idea being constantly propagated during my theological studies in South Africa: the writers of the Old Testament, and especially the apostle Paul in the New Testament, were said to be shaped by an oppressive, chauvinistic worldview. This was the reason Paul, for example, prohibited women from holding church offices (I Cor. 14:34-35; I Tim. 2:11-15; 3:12). This same reason underlay our Boer forefathers’ rejection of women’s franchise, by which also they continued to suppress women with various measures until they were finally “liberated” by the Marxist ANC’s takeover of the country.
The Aftermath of the Pistorius Saga
The aforementioned attacks on and suppression of Christianity and the Afrikaner-Boer people, which have gradually intensified since the early 90s, seem to have been taken to the next level over the past weeks in the aftermath of the Pistorius saga. Among the comments made following the Pistorius incident were the words of South Africa’s Minister for Women, Children, and People with Disabilities: “We still have to deal with the consequences of the war of Apartheid and the brutality of Apartheid that has actually affected the psyche of our society. . . . Young Afrikaner men are brought up in the Calvinist religion believing that they own a woman, they own a child, they own everything and therefore they can take that life because they own it.”11 Some have even connected gun ownership to “Afrikaner masculinity”12 – intended in a negative sense, of course. All this plays right into the hands of feminists, who are already pouncing on this as an opportunity to make South Africa the most white male-hating country in the world. The irony is that, as the Afrikaner Reformed minister Slabbert Le Cornu pointed out,13 the Dutch Reformed Churches in South Africa have been proclaiming the exact same thing through their seminaries for years. He explains that, contrary to the minister and mainline theologians’ claim, true Calvinism actually teaches that creation belongs to God alone – a concept obviously very foreign to the minds of the above-mentioned heretics.
To further add insult to injury, Oscar Pistorius’s father is now being displayed as a symbol of the so-called “white male oppression” after having told the UK press that the reason white Afrikaners own firearms is because of the ANC’s unwillingness and inability to protect whites in South Africa.14 With the ongoing genocide of Afrikaners taking various forms, Pistorius’s comments itself is, on face value, spot on. But the timing of his statements couldn’t have been more horrible for our cause, and he has been emphatically shunned by virtually everyone in the country, including Afrikaners. Even his own immediate family distanced themselves from his comments, and the poor man will go down as an “example” for feminists and Marxists of the oppressive white male this world needs to rid itself of.
The white Afrikaner men of my generation generally differ from their forefathers in that they have bent the knee to the Marxist worldview, breaking almost all ties with their “evil” past. Most of them do not really have any aspirations apart from making money and getting drunk and fornicating over the weekends. The Christianity that remains among the male youth is mostly of the modern, feminized, evangelical variety, tainted by white guilt. Modernist movements aimed at the destruction of the white male, such as antiracism and feminism, have long taken the thoughts of white males throughout the West into captivity. Of traditional Christian white Afrikaner masculinity, honestly and steadfastly upholding the principles of biblical manhood in accordance with God’s design, which were until recently renowned the world over, there is hardly anything left. One can only imagine that this renewed attack on “chauvinism” and the open promotion of an even more radical feminism than before will further inhibit white South African males and their God-given identity.
The Correct Response to the Radical Feminists
Obviously, white men are not perfect angels and many, like Pistorius – provided he is guilty of murder, although many Christians overlook his guilt for openly fornicating with his girlfriend anyway – have committed atrocities throughout history. The problem with the modernist critiques of traditional Christian patriarchy by movements such as feminism and antiracism, however, is that their first principles are completely alien to a biblical cosmology. Whereas Christian Traditionalism, in subjecting creation to the perfect purposes of its Creator, sees the cultivation of life by mankind in terms of virtue and vice, modernism is motivated by a nearly unquenchable desire to “liberate” mankind from the laws of a higher power in order to establish its own anthropocentric lordship over reality – hence the desire to disintegrate the covenantal family unit, along with all other God-given distinctions. Rather than seeing creation and all natural distinctions being restored in Christ (Gal. 3:28), modernism views restoration in terms of humanity’s progress toward an egalitarian social order – its own heretical soteriology. It is for this reason that modernists cannot comprehend that Christendom was never about “white male privilege,” but was rather the blessing of God upon the descendants of Japheth for embracing their divine calling and obeying His Law.
Theoretically, the way forward is simple. As the attacks from Christ’s enemies intensify, our constant need for repentance becomes all the more clear. White men must realize what they are – a blessed creation of the omnipotent God, one who has for centuries and through God’s grace been restored to reflect the imago Dei in a particularly special manner. The white male, having been graciously bestowed with several genetic gifts from God, which enables him to fulfill a special role in having dominion over creation, has a responsibility to use his gifts to fulfill this divine calling with pride and honor. By shunning the modernist, neo-Babelist worldview, white males have to realize their solemn duty to lovingly govern and guide families. This duty is grounded in the Law of God, disobedience to which will result in the payment of the ultimate penalty in hell. May white South African men (and all men around the world, for that matter) rid themselves of all modernist desires to be God, realizing their responsibility as stewards of the Lord of creation, Jesus Christ. May their women support and not oppress them in this regard, so that true reformation can begin in our families and eventually extend to the sanctification of our nations.
Footnotes
- http://mg.co.za/article/2013-02-14-who-is-reeva-steenkamp ↩
- http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Oscar-Pistorius-shoots-girlfriend-reports-20130214 ↩
- http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/south-africa/130221/lead-investigator-oscar-pistorius-Hilton-Botha-murder-charges-video ↩
- http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/up-to-3-600-rapes-in-sa-every-day-1.1466429 ↩
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/17/south-africa-macho-society-oscar-pistorious ↩
- http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/2419198.html ↩
- http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/2608400.html ↩
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaner#Religion ↩
- http://www.volksblad.com/Suid-Afrika/Nuus/UV-tevrede-met-integrasie-van-koshuise-20100122 ↩
- http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Fewer-religious-people-in-SA-survey-20120810 ↩
- http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2013/s3698076.htm ↩
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/17/south-africa-macho-society-oscar-pistorious ↩
- http://proregno.com/2013/02/27/oscar-geweld-teen-vrouens-en-kinders-vrou-in-die-amp-en-laaste-maar-nie-die-minste-nie-die-calvinistiese-geloof/ – An Afrikaans article ↩
- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/oscar-pistorius/9905927/Oscar-Pistoriuss-father-blames-South-Africas-gun-culture-on-ANC.html ↩
| Tweet |
|
|
|
