Fifteen people were injured when a train travelling from Pretoria to Johannesburg derailed, Ekhurhuleni emergency services said on Friday.
“Two of the people have been seriously injured. The other 13 have minor injuries,” said spokesperson William Ntladi.
He said a locomotive and passenger carriage detailed just after 7am on Friday morning.
All the injured, including the driver and his assistant, were taken to various hospitals.
The cause of the derailment was not yet known, said Ntladi.
COMPLAINT FILED ONLINE WITH THE BBC
At the beginning of the programme and also on the BBC’s website at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/m
The programme and website article then establish a causal link between such “lack of care” for non-whites under the previous dispensation with the deprivation and violence currently suffered by poor whites. Or at least this is how the viewer/reader will interpret it as they are seen to be “getting their just deserts”.
Although the rest of the programme is not unsympathetic to the current plight of Afrikaners, the factual inaccuracy concerning so-called “apartheid” is but one in a general, systematic, ethnocentric bias against Afrikaners on the BBC, intended to incite world-wide hatred against an essentially powerless minority in South Africa.
END OF COMPLAINT TEXT
PRAAG, as well as Dr. Dan Roodt in his personal capacity, reserves the right to lodge further complaints against the BBC, either with the relevant bodies in South Africa or with the Council of Europe for promoting intolerance and hate speech against Afrikaners.
Coalition for a Free Palestine Launch Declaration
The historic launch of the Coalition for a Free Palestine (CfP) which took place Friday 28th September was a resounding success. Political parties, trade unions, faith based organisations, student movements and human rights groups spoke passionately about the freedom of Palestine; the CfP adopted a founding document, program of action and deceleration. Please see the declaration below:
Launch Declaration
28 September 2012
Johannesburg, South Africa
“The temptation in our situation is to speak in muffled tones about an issue such as the right of the people of Palestine to a state of their own. We can easily be enticed to read reconciliation and fairness as meaning parity between justice and injustice. Having achieved our own freedom, we can fall into the trap of washing our hands of difficulties that others face. Yet we would be less than human if we did so. It behoves all South Africans, themselves erstwhile beneficiaries of generous international support to stand up and be counted among those contributing actively to the cause of freedom and justice. “
Nelson Mandela, 4 December 1997
We, South Africans comprising of various organisations and institutions have over the years acted in solidarity with the Palestinians who are living under Israeli Apartheid and have been dispossessed in various waves of ethnic cleansing;
Gathered at Cosatu House, the headquarters of our country’s largest federation of trade unions, in Johannesburg on 28th September 2012;
Deeply conscious of the limitations of our society’s transformations and the long walk that our country still has to undertake towards a more just life for all, free from poverty, economic exploitation, sexism, racism and xenophobia;
Fully aware of the interconnectedness of all human suffering and the debt of solidarity that we owe each other and firmly believing that an injury to one, is an injury to all;
Rejecting the patent untruths of imperialism that this is a dispute by religious groups and those that attempt to set themselves up as honest brokers;
Expressing grave concern at the contravention of the UN resolutions and breach of international humanitarian law;
Mindful of
1. Apartheid Israel’s ongoing collective punishment of Palestinians through the occupation and siege of Gaza;
2. The occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the continued construction of the illegal Apartheid Wall and e.g. the equally illegal and repugnant resettlement policies, eviction of families and communities, the demolition of homes and villages and land grab;
3. The contempt for the will of the Palestinian people displayed by Israel, the US, Canada, the EU and others after the free and open Palestinian elections of 2006;
4. The war crimes committed by apartheid Israel during the invasion of Gaza in 2009, and the 2010 massacre;
5. The continuing discrimination and repression faced by Palestinians within apartheid Israel;
6. The continued exile of millions of Palestinian refugees;
7. The knowledge that many governments have given and continue to provide apartheid Israel direct economic, financial, military and diplomatic support and allow it to behave with impunity;
8. The role of various institutions of global governance in obstructing diplomatic efforts by Palestinians towards their liberation;
9. The role of governments and multi-national corporations, in cooperation with apartheid Israel, in the plundering of Palestinian land and natural resources as well as entrenching apartheid, masquerading these as assistance to the Palestinian people.
Reaffirm our commitment to:
1. Palestinian self-determination
2. Ending the occupation
3. Oblige apartheid Israel to end complete disregard of UN and regional resolutions
4. Equal rights for all within historic Palestine
5. The full right of return for Palestinian refugees
6. The United Palestinian call of July 2005 for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel
7. Ending imperialism and support the prosecution of perpetrators of violations of Palestinian rights
Deeply aware of how our own suffering under apartheid and colonialism was reduced by those opposed to our freedom to a dispute between Black and White people;
Asserting that even-handedness between oppressed and oppressor is escapism, acquiescence, cowardice at the very least and, at worst, complicity;
Immensely indebted to the international community – particularly those from the Frontline Countries in Southern Africa, the Non-Aligned movement and the numerous solidarity formations in Europe, North America and elsewhere who threw their lot in with the oppressed South African people despite their governments’ overwhelming support for the apartheid regime;
Respectful of the observations that the veterans and leaders of our own liberation struggle who have spoken of the daily persecution and humiliation of Palestinians in the shadow of Apartheid Israel; some of these observations include:
Israel’s policy towards her neighbouring Arab states clearly unmasks the true nature and character of the regime in Tel Aviv. It is this blatant arrogance, this open aggressiveness towards her neighbours and the ruthless oppression and exploitation of the Arab people of Palestine which compares Israel more and more to apartheid South Africa. The essence is that under the influence of exclusive nationalist ideologies both Afrikaner nationalists and Israeli Zionists, think and act towards the indigenous majorities in their countries and towards their neighbouring states with the callous inhumanity of all who consider others to be of “inferior races” and less human. (Alfred Nzo, Post-Apartheid SA’s first Foreign Minister)
I never tire of speaking about the very deep distress in my visits to the Holy Land; they remind me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa.I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like we did when young white police officers prevented us from moving about. My heart aches. (Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize Winner)
The left and progressive forces need to intensive struggles against racism, anti-Semitism and other forms of xenophobia as critical components of the struggle against the depredations of capitalism and imperialism. Most critically we call upon all left forces globally to intensive solidarity activities with the Palestinian people and their just struggle, and to pressure particularly European governments and the US to facilitate a just solution to the Palestinian and other Middle East problems. (Blade Nzimande, Secretary General of the South African Communist Party and Minister of Higher Education)
Many aspects of Israel’s occupation surpass those of the apartheid regime. Israel’s large-scale destruction of Palestinian homes, levelling of agricultural lands, military incursions and targeted assassinations of Palestinians far exceed any similar practices in apartheid South Africa. No wall was ever built to separate blacks and whites. (Professor John Dugard. Special Rapporteur on Palestine to the United Nations Human Rights Council)
It is perhaps the most pressing moral and ethical challenge of our time, in this the opening years of the 21st Century, that all of us in this world who are fortunate enough to be free should express our total support and solidarity with the Palestinian people in this hour of perhaps their greatest suffering and need but at the same time a period where their infinite and unconquerable courage and determination shines through. They will achieve their right to self-determination and join the liberated and independent nations of this world. They will survive and win and be able to contribute their great talents and energy in helping us all build a more prosperous and just world for this and future generations. I place myself unreservedly in the camp of all those who believe that justice for Palestine means peace, security and justice for all in the Holy Land be they Christians, Jews, Muslims or non-believers, be they Israelis or Palestinians. This is a just cause which should be supported by the entire international community, by all governments and people of whatever origin, with the same passion that enabled the anti-apartheid movement to see the birth of a non-racist, non-sexist, inclusive democratic South Africa. (Ronnie Kasrills, Former Leader of our country’s Liberation Army, Mkhonto we Sizwe and former Minister of Water Affairs and Intelligence)
I support a similar call for sanctions against the state of Israel as we had against Apartheid South Africa – Absolutely! Pressure, pressure, pressure from every side and in as many ways as possible: trade sanctions, economic sanctions, financial sanctions, banking sanctions, sports sanctions, cultural sanctions; I’m talking from our own experience. In the beginning we had very broad sanctions and only late in the 1980s did we learn to have targeted sanctions. So you must look to see where the Israelis are most vulnerable; where is the strongest link to the outside community? And you must have strong international solidarity; that’s the only way it will work. You have to remember that for years and years and years when we built up the sanctions campaign it was not with governments in the West. They came on board very, very late. (Professor Allan Boesak, Former Patron of the United Democratic Front)
Our role as activists in the face of what President Nelson Mandela called the greatest moral issue of our time is to raise our voices and mobilise others to stand united in solidarity with the oppressed masses of Palestine and others in the world. For to echo Che Guevara ‘as long as there is a single human being in the world suffering under the yoke of oppression, our struggle cannot be over. (Marius Fransman, Deputy Minister, Department of International Relations and Cooperation)
The occupation wall that the Israeli army has built and continues to build cuts through Palestinian land, separating farmers from their farms. Palestinian farmers experience the daily torture of trying to get to their farms. They have to go through checkpoints that are opened and closed at unpredictable times to tend their olive trees. Many times they are not allowed to and they watch through the barbed wire as their olive trees die – as they and their families get reduced to poverty. (Pregs Govender, SA Human Rights Commissioner)
Clearly, apartheid was a well-planned and oiled machine of racial segregation, designed from the very beginning to oppress, exploit and dehumanise Black South Africans, especially Black workers and the Black working class. While there are a number of differences between the situation of Black South African workers and Palestinian workers, the oppression and exploitation faced by the Black South African working class and the Palestinian working class resemble each other in many respects, while the Israeli Jewish working class resembles the White labour aristocracy in South Africa. (Zwelinzima Vavi, General Secretary of Congress of South African Trade Unions)
Therefore;
Renew our commitment to act in solidarity with the oppressed Palestinians inside the occupied territories, in the diaspora and within the Zionist state of Israel;
Agree to;
1. The founding principles, organisational structure, and coordination for an effective Coalition for a Free Palestine (CFP)
2. Implement a sustained programme of action and solidarity activities in support of Palestine. We particularly pledge our support to the following practical programmes/campaign actions:
2.1. Build mass education, research, and monitoring capacity for strengthening our campaign actions in support of the cause of the Palestinian people.
2.2. Build an international anti-apartheid movement against Israel with a specific focus on our region and the African continent;
2.3. Establish networked links and specific campaign actions with Palestinian organisations in the Occcupied Territories, inside apartheid Israel and the Palestinian diaspora particularly those in refugee camps;
2.4. Mainstream Israel as an apartheid state and expose Israel’s apartheid policies and practices;
2.5. Take stock of, raise the profile of, and build support for the Palestinian cause in all national, regional, continental and international fora;
2.6. Actively respond to and support the call from virtually all of Palestinian civil society for a Boycott of Israel in the broadest possible manner, Disinvestment from companies which deal with Israel and advancing sanctions against the Israeli regime (BDS);
2.7. Challenge the increasing use of the Israeli lobby and others (albeit in ignorance) in using the Bible, the Christian faith and religiosity in the service of apartheid; and support the prophetic (Palestinian) religious leadership – Christian, Muslim and Jewish – who, in the words of the Kairos Palestine Document poignantly remind us that “The injustice against the Palestinian people which is the Israeli occupation, is an evil that must be resisted.”
2.8. Launch a media offensive that highlights the plight of the Palestinian people under occupation and apartheid and exposes the media for their unbalanced coverage of the Palestinian question and the deliberate distortion of information relating to the struggle of the Palestinian people.
3. Continue to build the relationship between the various formations comprising the CFP and to welcome new organisations wishing to join the CFP.
4. Create public awareness around the CFP and its solidarity Program of Action
5. Build links with and support the work and programmes of other solidarity movements in order to give meaning to our belief that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere
Call upon our government to immediately end the trade with companies complicit in the Israeli Occupation and Settlements, to terminate diplomatic relations with the State of Israel until it abides by international law and to continue its support for Palestinian self-determination.
In fulfilling our objectives we undertake to adhere to the following guiding principles:
1. We derive our legitimacy from the people in whose name we are waging or supporting this struggle, the Palestinians themselves;
2. Subscribe to the principle of consultation, transparency, accountability and honesty in carrying out support work, raising resources, and advancing progressive views on the issues around Palestine’
3. Recognise the independence of individual organisations making up the Coalition, respecting our differences yet being a common voice built around the needs and aspirations of the Palestinian people;
4. Respect for each other’s organisations and structures and the leadership of the Palestinian people’s organisations engaged in the liberation struggle.
5. Open and frank, yet comradely, critical engagement on issues of principle and views relating to activities to advance the Palestinian struggle;
6. Prioritise the needs of the people and organisations directly involved in the liberation struggle of Palestine;
7. Recognise and affirm the right of the Palestinian people to resist their oppression and fight for their freedom and respect their means of doing so.
8. While rejecting with contempt the attempts to equate criticisms of Israel as anti-Semitism, or all Jewish people with Zionists, we oppose all forms of discrimination – including anti-Semitism and xenophobia – which sully our vision of a world wherein the dignity of all human beings are respected.
9. Develop close cooperation and solidarity with Palestinian organisations and other solidarity groups, including those comrades who conduct the struggle within the apartheid state of Israel.
10. Play our role in mobilising and participating in a coordinated international anti-apartheid movement such as the movement that assisted us in our liberation from apartheid with a special focus on Southern Africa and the rest of the continent.
Issued by Dr Stiaan van der Merwe, CfP National Working Committee Member and Tahir Sema, CfP National Working Committee Member and Convenor, October 1 2012
PRAAG, the Pro-Afrikaans Action Group, has given Woolworths until midnight on 7 September 2012 to stop discrimination against Afrikaners, Afrikaans and the white race (see email underneath), otherwise the action group will lay a charge of apartheid against Woolworths.
Apartheid is a punishable offence in terms of several international conventions and therefore the management of Woolworths could be prosecuted both locally and internationally.
According to Dr. Dan Roodt of PRAAG “we are sick and tired of apartheid which is being applied to us according to the international definition and which is punishable. We are not going to allow Woolworths to get away with their criminal behaviour and violation of our human rights.”
Contact: Dan Roodt dan@praag.org 073 951 1467
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Dan Roodt <dan@praag.org>
Date: 2012/9/7
Subject: Diskriminasie en apartheid teen Afrikaans, Afrikaners en die blanke ras
To: markvanbuuren@woolworths.co.za
Cc: PressOffice <mediarelations@woolworths.co.
Mnr. Mark van Buuren
Werknemersbestuurder
Woolworths
Langmarkstraat 93
Kaapstad
Geagte meneer Van Buuren,
U word hiermee in kennis gestel dat indien u nie teen middernag op 7 September 2012 alle diskriminasie teen Afrikaans, Afrikaners en lede van die blanke ras staak nie, ons nie sal huiwer om die nodige kriminele klagtes teen u maatskappy en sy werknemers sowel plaaslik as internasionaal in te dien nie.
Onder andere maak u u aan apartheid skuldig, wat ‘n internasionale misdaad is.
Ons is ook van plan om die Raad van Europa in kennis te stel dat u rassisties teenoor mense van Europese afkoms optree en sal versoek dat reisbeperkings op alle personeel van Woolworths ingestel word aangesien u u aan menseregteskendings teen Suid-Afrikaanse blankes skuldig maak.
Die uwe,
Dr. Dan Roodt
PRAAG has congratulated the Parti Québecois on its excellent electoral score during provincial elections in Canada. Reacting on Twitter, the leader of PRAAG, Dr. Dan Roodt, said: “I support Québecois separatism, could bolster case for an Afrikaner volkstaat. Félicitations au Parti Québecois!”
The Afrikaner action group has often emphasised the similarities between national minorities surrounded by larger nations or groups such as the Québecois, the Flemish, the Catalans and the Afrikaners.
Roodt said: “We look upon the victory of Madame Pauline Marois as not only good for Québecois but for the cause of self-determination world-wide. Afrikaners, like Québecois, live surrounded by hundreds of millions of British Commonwealth subjects who impose English upon us and limit our economic and cultural freedom through racist and chauvinist legislation. That is not to say that we wish to compare South Africa’s totalitarian stance on multilingualism with the more enlightened Canadian version, but a small nation and a small culture can only be free in an own state.”
Dr. Roodt also called upon the Afrikaner separatist party, the Freedom Front Plus, “to learn from the successes of the Parti Québecois and its decisive defeat of liberalism, so as to hasten the Afrikaner’s liberation from the chains of the English Commonwealth state of 1910. We can also defeat liberalism and Anglicism like the Parti Québecois has done.”
Both Québecois and Afrikaners have a long history of language struggle and of being the objects of Anglo-Saxon scorn. Roodt also called for “greater cooperation between Québecois, Afrikaners, Flemish and Catalans who share similar experiences with majoritarian cultural oppression”. He was particularly touched by one Twitter message from Québec, stating in capital letters, “ON VEUT UN PAYS!”, we want a country!
“Good heavens, we want a country too! On veut un pays,” he concluded.
The Pro-Afrikaans Action Group (PRAAG) is an NGO in South Africa. Founded in February 2000, PRAAG is a movement of Afrikaner intellectuals, professionals, farmers, students and others campaigning for the rights of Afrikaners and white Africans generally and for equality with blacks as regards property ownership, language, access to education, the right to trade, and so on.
The Pro-Afrikaans Action Group has called for a blanket boycott of chain store Woolworths, including the company’s Country Road brand. Woolworths recently made clear that it will not consider white job applicants.
Dr. Dan Roodt, leader of PRAAG, stated: “For a number of years now we have been trying to speak to Woolworths about its anti-Afrikaans policy, to no avail. This latest manifestation of antiwhite racism is the final straw. We are calling upon all our members and the general public, especially Afrikaners but all white South Africans and non-racist people of other population groups to boycott Woolworths.”
Singer Steve Hofmeyr and other Afrikaans public figures have already expressed solidarity with the boycott on Twitter.
During an emergency meeting of PRAAG’s Human Rights Committee, Woolworths was classified as a hate group. “Accordingly, we will communicate this classification to human rights groups worldwide, especially in countries with large European populations. We will also contact the Council of Europe and the European Human Rights Commission, requesting them to ban employees of Woolworths from obtaining Schengen visas. In this respect, Mr. Simon Susamn and his fellow managers must be treated the same way as Robert Mugabe and his henchmen. If Woolworths receives any funding from investors or banks, we will also target those, requesting them to disinvest from Woolworths,” said Roodt.
He was of the opinion that Woolworths cannot hide behind government legislation. “Where government legislates for companies to discriminate against whites purely on racial grounds, it is contrary to international law and should therefore be igored by individuals and private corporations. South Africa is a signatory to most international human rights treaties which make such laws null and void.”
The Pro-Afrikaans Action Group (PRAAG) is an NGO in South Africa. Founded in February 2000, PRAAG is a movement of Afrikaner intellectuals, professionals, farmers, students and others campaigning for the rights of Afrikaners and white Africans generally and for equality with blacks as regards property ownership, language, access to education and the right to trade.
From: Dan Roodt <dan@praag.org>
Date: 2012/6/22
Subject: Urgent: Human rights violations in South Africa
To: secretary-general@
His Excellency Mr. Kamalesh Sharma
Secretary-General
Commonwealth of Nations
Marlborough House, Pall Mall,
London SW1Y 5HX, UK
Dear Sir,
I wish to bring to your urgent attention the systemic violations of human rights taking place in South Africa, a member country of the Commonwealth.
Yesterday 24 shops belonging to Pakistani nationals, another member country, were ransacked and burnt to the ground in the town of Viljoenskroon, as reported by the South African Press Association (SAPA).
The New York Times has also reported on the many extra-judicial killings taking place against Commonwealth subjects in South Africa, such as Malawians, Mozambicans and Zimbabweans. Although Zimbabwe is no longer a member of the Commonwealth, its citizens should not be subjected to murder and ethnic persecution in South Africa, one of the founding members of the Commonwealth.
I am writing to you on behalf of the Pro-Afrikaans Action Group, an Afrikaner NGO in South Africa. Afrikaners are an indigenous people in South Africa and we are asking your protection, as well as that of Queen Elizabeth II, against the systemic violation of human rights that we are suffering from. These transgressions include the following:
I trust that you will respond favourably to our request for help in addressing the human rights crisis in South Africa and our right to be protected from the above-mentioned violations.
I humbly ask you to acknowledge receipt of this letter sent by e-mail.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Dan Roodt
Director, Pro-Afrikaans Action Group (PRAAG)
PRAAG supports the call by the Dutch Freedom Party for Dutch and Afrikaner people to stand together in defending their shared cultural heritage as embodied in Pretoria’s street names.
Queen Wilhelmina is remembered for her courageous support for the Boers during the Second War of Independence when colonial Britain destroyed our country and let our women in children die in concentration camps. Similarly, Queen Beatrix did much to enhance the standing of Afrikaans culture in the Netherlands and we recall her reign as a time when warm relations existed between our two nations.
Through its name changes the ANC is embracing the worst aspects of the British colonial tradition. For the first time in history an indigenous Western nation, the Afrikaner, is being oppressed and culturally humiliated by a colonial organisation like the ANC.
We appeal to all Afrikaners and Dutch people to resist the new Lords in Munitoria and the Union Buildings.
For more than two hundred years the Afrikaans language has been attacked and marginalised in South Africa, either by the British colonial authorities or by the ANC regime. During the days of National Party rule, English was allowed to retain its role as sole public language and Afrikaans was subjected to censorship.
PRAAG (the Pro-Afrikaans Action Group) therefore rejects the notion that Afrikaans could ever be classified with English as a “previously advantaged language”. Commenting in Johannesburg, Dr. Dan Roodt, the leader of PRAAG said: “No language has been more subject to state repression and marginalisation than Afrikaans. The new language bill simply represents a continuation of British imperialism and colonialism, with the genocidal ANC regime intent upon killing Afrikaans and a large number of its speakers.”
Roodt has called upon the international community to “take note of the dire situation in South Africa, with the ANC regime inviting ethnic conflict through its policy of cultural and linguistic imperialism, as well as attacks upon Afrikaans schools, place names, museums and libraries.”
PRAAG will join in court applications with other Afrikaans organisations to stop the illegal and totalitarian measures being taken against Afrikaans. However, it has also called for civil disobedience to the “sushi-devouring, corrupt, Milnerist satraps whose tyrannical rule over South Africa already represents a crime against humanity. Afrikaners especially should not pay toll fees, taxes or make any contribution to sustain these Idi Amin-like clowns who are dreaming of being British lords calling us donkeys for speaking Afrikaans.”
However, the pro-Afrikaans body has welcomed the “clarity” brought by the ANC’s new language law. “If final evidence had been needed that the unitary state of South Africa was doomed, this is it,” said Roodt. “The only logical way out is self-determination for Afrikaners, as soon as possible. There is currently a reawakening of our noble Afrikaner spirit that has sustained us in the struggle against imperialism for so long. We prevailed against the British Empire and will likewise survive the Nguni Empire in its venality, ugliness and arrogance.”
Two Afrikaner NGO’s, PRAAG and the Boereleed Research Institute have filed a request under the Promotion of Access to Information Act of 2000 with the South African Police Service for murder statistics broken down by population group.
According to Dr. Dan Roodt, director of PRAAG (Pro-Afrikaans Action Group), “there is widespread concern among members of ethnic minorities in South Africa about the high number of attacks and murders committed against them. Until now, no-one has requested this information and it has led to widespread speculation about the number of black-on-white murders committed since 1994”.
Under the act, the SAPS now has one month to supply the murder statistics. “We hope that the statistics will be accurate and up to date, as we have also received complaints that the police do not always open murder dockets and sometimes classify such crimes as housebreaking and other minor offences.”
According to informal internet polls, the majority of Afrikaners believe that murders are politically and racially motivated, even though a recent study by the Institute of Race Relations found that “only 2%” of black-on-white murders are of such a nature.
“Two percent might be a small percentage,” said Roodt, “but it still points to a serious amount of ethnic killings in South Africa, given our very high murder rate. Depending on the absolute number of interracial murders in South Africa, recent characterisations of farm murders as ‘genocide’ might be justified.”
Both Boereleed and PRAAG are worried about official attacks on Afrikaans schools. Roodt said: “In all the literature on ethnic conflict and genocide, language discrimination serves as an early-warning signal of such conflict. Afrikaans schools in the town of Fochville have recently been singled out for hostile action by the provincial education department. I am currently trying to get an appointment with Gauteng MEC for education Barbary Creecy to discuss the matter. If it is not defused, ethnic polarisation in Fochville might further escalate.”
Last year PRAAG laid a charge of incitement to genocide at the International Criminal Court in The Hague against Mr. Julius Malema for singing the song, “Kill the Boer”. “Despite this song being illegal in terms of a court order, there is evidence that elements of the ruling party, including President Jacob Zuma, are still singing it,” said the PRAAG leader. “We will have to further alert the international community about the persecution of Afrikaners in South Africa.”
PRAAG (the Pro-Afrikaans Action Group) based in Johannesburg supports the occupation of South African embassies in all Western countries on the tentative date of 15 March 2012. It has also called for a global Pro-Afrikaans Movement (PAM) that would see sympathetic parties, organisations and individuals supporting Afrikaner rights in South Africa, including the right to life.
“International law lays the responsibility to protect upon all governments, especially the South African government which is governing from the very city, Pretoria, where Afrikaners once exercised sovereignty and where the vestiges of our former independence are still evident in the form of statues, street names and architectural symbols,” said Dr. Dan Roodt, leader of PRAAG.
“We also claim the right to speak our own language and to have our own institutions such as schools and universities,” he continued. “All institutions stolen from us should be returned as soon as possible, together with compensation for damages to our artefacts, documents, objets d’art and heritage.”
Dr. Roodt stated that the current violence and discrimination suffered by his people were tantamount to genocide and should arouse international concern and intervention.
“As the first nation of European and Western descent threatened by imminent national death at the hands of a third-world alliance in our own country, the Pro-Afrikaans Movement should inspire those who support us to also fight for their own survival and the preservation of their own heritage and way of life,” he said. “However, we are confident of our victory and the restoration of our sovereignty and independence, as well as the return of our land by those who have conquered it by non-military means.”
Roodt concluded by saying: “We pledge ourselves, once we have secured our Fourth Republic, to help those patriots of all countries who have come to our aid in this, the darkest hour of our history, so as to safeguard their own freedom against uncontrolled immigration, affirmative action and other measures meant to cause the downfall of European culture as a whole.”
For more information: Contact PRAAG at info[at]praag.org
MEDIA RELEASE BY PRAAG (PRO-AFRIKAANS ACTION GROUP) ON 3 MAY 2010
On the occasion of World Press Freedom Day being celebrated today, PRAAG has expressed its “deep concern about South African press freedom”. Speaking in Johannesburg, the leader of the Pro-Afrikaans Action Group, Dr. Dan Roodt, stated: “Free debate and expressing dissident opinions are increasingly being curtailed in South Africa. The ruling party controls the South African Broadcasting Corporation whereas the increasing monopoly of Naspers over especially the Afrikaans-language media has led to a decline in quality and a rise in intolerance.”
Artists, writers and columnists are either stifled or defamed, often by muck-raking articles about their private lives or spurious accusations of being “racists”. “Ranging from columnist David Bullard to singer Steve Hofmeyr, large sections of the media have tried to vilify those who are not part of the cabal manufacturing consent in our country,” said Roodt. “The totalitarian spirit is alive and well in South Africa and being promoted by both unreconstructed communists in the ruling ANC/SACP and the former sycophants of apartheid, such as Naspers. Paradoxically, it is far more difficult for critical voices to get published or heard today than it was under the former National Party government. If it were not for the internet, there would hardly have been media diversity in South Africa.”
Roodt called upon “authors, singers, journalists and columnists to take a strong stand in favour of freedom of speech. We should use the South African Constitution and all legal means to fight the encroachment of a one-party state and monopolistic, exclusionary tactics from the private sector. Lawyers should also make a contribution to defending press freedom in the Constitional Court and to lay charges against the media monopoly at the Competition Board.”
The leader of PRAAG also paid tribute to poet and philosopher N.P. van Wyk Louw who was in many respects the father of “open discussion” in South Africa. “Already in the 1940s, Van Wyk Louw understood how fragile freedom of speech in this country was, given its ethnic and racial diversity. His notion of ‘open discussion’ laid the ground rules for tolerance and intellectual enquiry in South Africa. It is an absolute scandal that the annual Van Wyk Louw memorial lecture should also have been hijacked by government ideologues at the University of Johannesburg, making a mockery of his heritage.”
After many letters and three overseas visits to bring violent attacks on Afrikaner farmers to the attention of the international community, PRAAG welcomes the imminent visit of a UN delegation to investigate the possibility of genocide in South Africa.
The Pro-Afrikaans Action Group’s leader, Dr. Dan Roodt, said: “The announcement (video link to E-TV news bulletin underneath) by Mr. Castro Wesamba that the United Nations is sending an expert delegation to investigate farm murders and other forms of ethnic violence in our country shows that the international community has not forgotten us. But it had also been necessary for PRAAG and an anonymous farmer from Rustenburg to wage an international campaign around the issue before we got the necessary response.”
Within the context of the Malema trial currently taking place in the Johannesburg High Court, South Africa finds itself already, according to Roodt, “in the midst of what the United Nations has been calling in their most recent terminology an identity conflict. For considerable time now, we have been maitaining that the level of violence, dehumanisation, hate speech and open incitement to ethnic conflict and even genocide is not normal, not at all. However, the South African public and Afrikaners in particular have been conditioned to accept these extreme conditions as normal with some attempting to protect themselves against these by means of ad hoc and individual measures.”
PRAAG is planning to step up its communication with the UN, as well as the American and other foreign governments in the run-up to the UN visit. “We feel that there should be a national and international debate and concern about the identity conflict in South Africa. We blame the South African media and academics for not addressing the issue with greater insight and seriousness. Thousands of murders and tens of thousands of attacks could have been prevented.”
Roodt was also of the opinion that “the duty of every government to protect its citizens, which is also a principle of international law, is not being applied in our country. We should demand the right to protection. Otherwise, there should be tax incentives and funding for more private security, if the state and the police cannot perform its duties.”
