The Afrikaner Struggle for Survival as an Ethnic Minority in South Africa: Part II – Contemporary Challenges

 

After negotiations between the National Party of FW De Klerk and the revolutionary Marxist ANC (under the leadership of Nelson Mandela) started in 1990, the country held its first multiracial elections in 1994. The ANC won by 63% of the votes and De Klerk’s National Party came second, with just over 20%. De Klerk did, however, in an interview nearly ten years later, admit that the election was rigged: not only were over a million votes illegally cast, but many votes were never counted in order to improve the National Party’s results, and to stop the ANC from getting a two-thirds majority, which was requisite for a party to change the constitution of South Africa.¹ This was done, because of fear of an outbreak of a civil war, should the new government change the constitution. So in reality, the election was neither fair nor democratic. (Not that the democracy the West is exporting to the world these days is, even with free and fair elections, a truly God-glorifying system.) The election was rather conducted in true communist fashion, with the Marxists virtually predetermining the result. Despite this, the liberal media of the world continue to refer to the 1994 elections as the country’s first democratic elections, while South Africa had had democratic elections since it was founded in 1910, with all its citizens having the right to vote. Black Africans, while receiving the privilege to work for white people within the borders of white South Africa, had voting rights within their own homelands during the days of the National Party government, but simply did not have the right to vote for the Afrikaner-government of South Africa, just like Canadian or Mexican citizens do not have the right to elect the American government.

With this election, South Africa became a “multicultural nation,” adopting the “melting pot” ideals of the American liberal democracy. Ethnic conflict has been at the order of the day ever since, despite the media’s continual call for tolerance. Demographically, white people, who previously had the right to democratically elect their own government, now made up only 13% of the population, a figure which dropped, even further, to 9.2% in 2010.² This means that conservative Afrikaners probably now make up only about 2% of the entire South African population. And with approximately twelve different recognized ethnic groups sharing a single political entity, and not one of these groups forming close to a majority, in a sense one could say that all the different peoples of South Africa are being politically suppressed by the Marxist government.

The crime problem of South Africa is well known around the world, with an estimated 60,000 rapes and nearly 25,000 murders in the country annually.³ While many of these murders are blacks killing other black people, a very large number of Afrikaners are murdered annually too. Agriculture has always been one of the major components of Afrikaner-culture (hence “Boer,” which is the Dutch word for farmer), and since 1994, more than 3,000 white farmers have been murdered at their homes since the Communist takeover of 1994.⁴ The term “Boer genocide” has often been used to refer to this politically motivated and undoubtedly deliberate attempt from the Marxists to terrify and eventually wipe out the Boer people, because of the threat they pose both to their socialist and pan-Africanist ideals. The farm attacks in South Africa received even more attention last year, when Eugene Terblanche, leader of the right-wing AWB, was murdered on his farm, a murder that was undoubtedly politically motivated. Along with this, the government’s “land reform” policy, which seeks to redistribute agricultural land that rightfully belong to white farmers and has been cultivated by them for many generations, remains frightening for the approximately 30,000 white farmers left in the country. Recently, an ANC MP even proposed that all agricultural land should become the property of the state.⁵ Nontheless, officially, the government’s short-term policy is to get at least 30% of agricultural land into black ownership by 2014, which means that over the next three years, fifteen million acres of land has to be redistributed to blacks. Seven million acres have been bought by the government and given to blacks.⁶ This land reform policy, apart from being unfair to hard-working white farmers, also has catastrophic implications for the South African economy, since black farmers are incapable of successfully running a commercial farm.

Another major form of suppression the Boer people suffer today is through forced integration, both ethnic and religious. The South African school curriculum of the former Afrikaner government was solidly Christian in nature, and children were taught the values of a biblical worldview in all spheres of life. Every ethnic group (both black and white) had the privilege to receive a school education in their own language and culture. The apartheid government even started universities for the black peoples in their own homelands, with the money of white taxpayers. Ironically, it was at one of these universities, the University of Fort Hare in the Transkei, that Nelson Mandela received a law-degree.⁷ This has all changed since 1994. The schools and universities have become completely secular, indoctrinating the youth with atheistic evolution in science classes, cultural Marxism in social studies, and liberal theology in seminaries, among others. The theological faculty of the University of the Free State recently awarded anti-apartheid activist and archbishop in the Church of England, Desmond Tutu, with an honorary doctorate degree in Theology. Tutu’s past political activity is enough to convince me that he is not truly a Christian, but he also denies Christ’s resurrection and ascension into heaven.⁸ Now, that says a lot about their faculty. At this same university, the liberal rector, Jonathan Jansen, has actually gone as far as to say that residential sororities or fraternities on campus are obliged to be fully racially integrated, and since last year, 50% of all freshmen in all traditionally white Christian residences have to be non-white. This move from Jansen not only directly violates God’s creation order, established after the Tower of Babel, and not only in the long run destroys the Christian character of the institution, but it is also unconstitutional, directly contradicting the liberal principle of freedom of association.⁹ On the same day of awarding Tutu with his degree, the institution also changed its traditional Christian motto from “In Deo Sapientae Lux” (“In God is the light of wisdom”) to “In Veritae Sapientae Lux” (“In truth is the light of wisdom”). When Afriforum, an Afrikaner civil-rights group, held a poll among both blacks and whites on the change of the motto, and found that 93% of those interviewed opposed the move, Jansen went as far as accusing AfriForum of holding an “illegal referendum” and threatened to take them to court.¹⁰ If this isn’t communism, I don’t know what is!

The situation at the University of the Free State is just one of many examples of political and social oppression suffered by Afrikaners in the new South Africa. AfriForum, the civil rights group mentioned above, along with its sister organization, Solidarity (an Afikaner workers’ union) as well as the Transvaal Agricultural Union in South Africa, are great examples of organizations doing a very good job of protecting Afrikaner minority rights in South Africa. They are continually busy with lawsuits against the Marxist ANC government. On this point, however, I must mention that the whole idea of human rights and minority rights in a liberal democracy, which these groups defend, is in essence unbiblical and humanistic, so one could support their causes only on pragmatic grounds. This being said, however, considering the biblical command to respect the civil authority (Romans 13:1), and the biblical examples of Josef, Nehemiah, and Daniel, who as godly men served under godless authorities, one could certainly argue that these organizations are doing a good job. The Freedom Front Plus is the only influential political party that aims to protect the interests of the Afrikaner people. Again, their political philosophy can best be described as classical liberalism, although it has a large paleoconservative element as well, partly due to its merger with the former Conservative Party of South Africa in 2003.

Although no Afrikaans-Christian University exists, the Movement for Christian-National Education runs forty-one primary and elementary schools around the country, educating Boer children in the values of our Protestant Reformed heritage. These schools are fully accredited, but are often very small and suffer heavy financial pressure. Furthermore, there are still some conservative Reformed congregations, especially within the Afrikaans Protestant Church, but also in the Reformed Churches of South Africa, that proudly proclaim kinism as an integral part of sound biblical doctrine.

While there are undeniably many positives from all the above efforts to preserve Afrikaner culture, no human effort, how great and noble it may be, can ever ensure the survival of a people, since God reveals to us His absolute sovereignty over the fate of all peoples. Scripture teaches: “The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; He makes the plans of the peoples of no effect.” – Psalm 33:10 (NKJV). Thus our only hope throughout our history, present and future, remains to humble ourselves before our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, and know that He is true to His promises. We can trust Him to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness, if we confess our sins; and if it is His will, He will heal our land (II Chron. 7:14).

 

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