Partial view of the Afrikaans language monument at Paarl, Western Cape
A new office Recently we moved into a new office in Roodepoort, just west of Johannesburg, which we are sharing with another NGO. We have a nice big boardroom for meetings and a free internet connection supplied by the restaurant owner downstairs. In fact, just about all the fixed costs are being funded by an anonymous donor right here in South Africa. In the one office sits someone working on a book about the South African genocide – all the farmers and other whites killed since 1994 when the ANC came to power in this country. In another there is some painstaking research and documentation on all the atrocities committed during the same period, with the files getting bigger and bigger. In the third room we are working on extending our network in South Africa and worldwide, as well as developing alternative media such as websites and e-books. E-books We have just negotiated a deal with a distributor of e-readers and are going to sell these at cost price to all our members, about 800 rand or $100 each. These nifty gadgets may contain up to 32 000 e-books on the device and its flash drive, so we reckon it is becoming an alternative to the normally onerous costs and trouble of bringing out traditional books. For a start, we are going to donate five such devices to schools in the area west of Johannesburg as prizes in an essay competition. That will enable us to market our websites to all the parents in the area and possibly recruit more members, apart from the cultural value of the whole operation. Pressure on remaining white, Afrikaans schools As I explained in my last letter, there is constant pressure by the provincial education departments on our schools. South Africa is littered with schools that have suddenly been overrun by blacks, only to fall into disprepair or even stop functioning altogether. The national education department recently admitted that 4 000 schools had been closed since 1994. Given that South Africa’s population grew by about twenty million over the last twenty years, both naturally and as a result of illegal immigration, the question is: Where did all those children go? The answer is that many of them abandoned the schools in their own areas and flocked to schools in majority-white areas, putting tremendous strain on resources. In the town of Koppies in the Free State province I saw a concrete example of this process. A young woman, being a former headgirl of the once proud school, explained to me what had happened there. First a political decision was taken by the local party apparatchiks to break up the mostly white high school in Koppies. Black children were force-marched to the school from miles away. Standards of behaviour and of academic prowess plummeted and the white parents started driving their children to another high school in the nearest big town, Kroonstad, about 50 miles or 80 kilometres away. Some became boarders in Kroonstad. In the meantime the black children started to revolt against the long daily walks to school and went back to the school in their own area. So in short succession Koppies High School went from mostly white to black to empty. Not satisfied, the provincial education department which is of course itself run by the ruling ANC, decided to build a boarding house at huge cost on the school grounds. Needless to say, the usual corruption, inflated prices, kickbacks and nepotism played a role in awarding the contract. However, even after this, the black children were still on strike, as it were, refusing to come to the “conquered” school. Next the education department decided that those children would have to be bused in, with a fat transport contract to be awarded for this. However, two factions formed in the local party ranks, both wanting the transport contract, so that in the end the money was used for something else. As we drove past the school, the former headgirl explained to me with tears in her eyes that the school, once the pride of the local white Afrikaner community and which had once excelled both academically and in sports, was now standing empty, despite having a new boarding house. Even the electricity had been cut for non-payment. The principal and two other staff members were still there, working in an office connected by a common electric extension cable such as those used in gardens, running to a nearby house. In my last letter, I referred to Fochville High School, which is currently being targeted for similar treatment. If the town had to lose its high school, it would probably decline economically too. So we have vowed not to let that happen, although we have to careful not to expose the white headmistress and her staff to victimisation by the education department. Schools such as Ermelo who have tried to resist by going to court, have found their school boards simply dismissed or the headmaster summarily fired. Fortunately, all is not lost, as there are still many well-functioning schools. A recent academic survey of so-called “formerly Model C schools” as such schools were called under the old government, found that our standards of mathematics placed us in the top ten in the world, ahead of countries such as Australia, Britain and the USA. My own children have excellent teachers in maths, science, languages, art, music and every other subject. In South Africa there exists an advanced maths course for high school called “alpha maths” which includes demanding university-level calculus and a small but dedicated group of students at the school take this too. No wonder our people, refugees from Africanist violence and affirmative action, are in demand the world over, wherever they go. Our loss is the other countries’ gain. Afrikaners in diaspora I have often thought that the current generation of emigrants to OECD countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Britain, the USA, the Netherlands and others could play a positive role. Not only could they alert others to our plight, but also bear testimony as to the abject failure of South Africa’s extremist multicultural revolution. I firmly believe that the similar testimony by Russian émigrés in the early days of the Soviet period played a major role in alerting other Europeans to the dangers of communism, which eventually led to its demise after 1989. Let us hope that our expatriate population could serve as a catalyst for change in their host countries too. Over the past few weeks I have been really encouraged by communications with Afrikaners all over the world, in the US, the Low Countries, Australia, New Zealand, the United Arab Emirates and even as far afield as Malaysia. Many described the South African embassies being run by ANC personnel in their host countries as being hopelessly incompetent. In forming PRAAG groups in those countries, we would be doing the work of the embassies in keeping contact with our people abroad. Let’s hope that one day we might get our embassies back again. But as with schools, it is not so much the buildings that matter, but what goes on inside them. Regards, Dan Roodt Director, PRAAG |
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