Recently, Ernst Roets sought to assure the world that Afriforum “rejects white nationalism”. Whatever he means by that is open to interpretation but he saw fit to characterise me as “white nationalists” in his statement.
I am the father of dizygotic twins, but am not myself a Siamese twin so that one could refer to me in the plural. Unless Roets wanted to show that he was now venturing so far out on the spectrum of PCspeak that he was referring to “he” and “she” as simply “they” as some LGBTI activists do. According to Wikipedia, “In the early 21st century, use of singular they with known individuals has been promoted for those who do not identify as male or female”.
Now, I have news for Ernst Roets. I definitely identify as male, even “toxically male”. I do not wear make-up or dresses, so there is no need for him to refer to me in the plural or “singular they”, as the case may be.
However, his link to a News24 article, contains a previous unwarranted attack on me when his colleague Kallie Kriel sided with the American Daily Show, who fraudulently edited an interview with me to convey exactly the opposite of what I had actually said, to call me a “racist”.
There may be honour amongst thieves, but not among Afrikaners being called “racists”. I think both Kallie Kriel and Afriforum have been vilified as racists more times than I have, but they instinctively side with the enemy rather than with their fellow Afrikaner. Or whites.
This reminds me a bit of a fascinating conversation I had with PW Botha not long before his death. Speaking to him was almost like dialing up history on those old communal telephone lines, with voices activated out of the past. PW Botha had known or met many famous twentieth-century figures, including of course Margaret Thatcher, as well as the first president of Israel, Chaim Weizmann, who had given him a sword. But as a young man in the NP, PW had also served as an aide to Dr. DF Malan.
Apparently PW had quizzed Malan on why the split of 1933 had taken place between the Hertzog and Malan factions. Malan had remained silent for a while, while PW created the same anticipation in me, listening to his firm, well-articulated voice, even at his advanced age. When he spoke the word, it was almost as if I could hear DF Malan pronouncing it himself: “Afrikanerverraad.” That one, terrible word said it all, a century of betrayals that stretched from the Anglo-Boer War right to the moment when Tertius Delport was begging FW de Klerk not to surrender completely to the ANC, one early morning in the Union Buildings prior to the release of the so-called “Record of Understanding”.
Roets’s denunciation of “white nationalism” by referring to me has no other logic than that of a bizarre, atavistic lapse into Afrikanerverraad. Instead of citing any of my multifarious writings, of which there are about a million words scattered on the internet, he prefers linking to Adriaan Basson’s stereotypically liberal News24 with its regular diatribes against both whites and Afrikaners. Clearly, in his zeal to distance himself from “white nationalism”, Roets would collude with the looney left, perhaps even Julius Malema or Andile Mngxitama, with whom Afriforum seem to skirmish in the courts for light entertainment but does not criticise their black nationalism.
As Roets puts it, “black nationalism could be equally problematic, but that is not the point of this article”. No, black nationalism, which is threatening to plunge South Africa into the kind of downward spiral reminiscent of Zimbabwe or Uganda under Idi Amin, may be tolerated. The real danger against which Roets seems to fulminate is “white nationalism”. He defines it thus:
“White nationalism has been described in many different ways, but essentially it boils down to promoting the interests of white people, because they are white.”
Then he goes on to explain that Afriforum has a “communitarian approach” and that “people freely associate with particular communities” that are “naturally organised along cultural, linguistic or religious lines”. Also, “Afriforum does not have a focus on the rights of the ‘white community’ and would object to such a description…”
So whites being singled out for affirmative action or racial quotas in sport or even genocidal rhetoric such as that spouted by Malema or Mngxitama will no longer be defended by Afriforum, being opposed to “white nationalism”. We know that South African whites are not popular, neither with the ANC nor with the mainstream media with whom Afriforum is so cosily aligned, especially News24, so what Ernst Roets is really intimating to us is:
“Whitey, you’re on your own.”
But, Ernst Roets diffidently assures us, it is
“not inaccurate” to “describe Afriforum as a conservative organisation… while we dissociate with the stigma that is today associated with conservatism as an ideology that seeks to return to the past, or that objects to change merely because it isn’t able to deal with change, or that seeks to preserve heritage at the expense of progress”.
Roets’s defence of “conservatism” sounds about as wishy-washy as Afriforum’s objection to the blanket ban on the 1928 flag which it would never display itself and “discourages” people from displaying, but would defend as an expression of “freedom of speech”. So I suppose in tune with Roets’s Canadian-style, multicultural “communitarianism” whereby “people freely associate with particular communities”, including a few die-hard Afrikaners and KhoiSan, but also the communities of Rastafarians, gays and swingers, Afriforum would always be there for them, provided they have signed a debit order.
Gay white nationalists exist and possibly there are conservative Christian swingers too, who knows? Afriforum would reject the former but embrace the latter, or at least it would champion non-nationalist white gays. Nationalism seems to be the thorn in the side here.
Given that it does not itself fly the oranje-blanje-blou, Afriforum would do well to follow the example that I saw at the Canadian embassy in Warsaw in 2018, and hoist the gay flag! After all, no-one would be offended and suspect it of “seeking to preserve heritage at the expense of progress”.
Take it from me, Ernst, if Afriforum had to hoist the gay flag above its headquarters it would be seen as downright progressive and I am sure Eusebius McKaiser would give you at least an hour’s worth of enthusiastic airtime on Radio 702.
Gay pride is kosher, but not white pride, as we know. Call it the Zeitgeist or the dominant ideology, but we are all painfully aware of the weight with which it presses down upon us.
Apart from its casual betrayal of many committed and patriotic Afrikaners such as myself, I see other problems with Afriforum’s lack of conviction in the face of the leftist sewage pipe (“stigmatising and stereotyping”) that is trained on anyone daring to stand up for the rights of the white minority in South Africa. As many people have already said: One does not choose one’s race, despite what the “whiteness theorists” say. Being white, is not something you can be cured of.
Guillaume Faye who died early this year, associated with the so-called “new right” and identitarianism, often stressed that one does not choose one’s identity, but is at least partially defined by one’s enemies. Even if every white in South Africa had to abjure “whiteness” (I must apologise for using this obnoxious term again but it seems apposite), the DA, ANC and all the black-nationalist parties left of it would still see us as “whites”. We are criticised and attacked, sometimes as Afrikaners, but more often simply as “the whites”.
Again, this is none of our own choosing. The moment we object to being insulted, attacked and legislated against as whites, we will be stigmatised as “racists”, “fascists”, “white nationalists”, “heteronormative toxic males” and every other flavour in the leftist cookbook.
Evidently, Afriforum is not up to weathering such a semantic onslaught and would prefer to scurry down the multicultural rabbit hole, together with Justin Trudeau, who may or may not be wearing Islamic robes or his gay-pride costume, depending on the day of the week.
Afriforum seems to have some courage in taking on the powers-that-be. But not enough, I am afraid. In many of its fights, and not only regarding the flag, it seems lukewarm, without passion. Is that what we need, in these times of decay and every-day terror?
The old National Party did not really fight the ANC so much as those Afrikaner parties and groups to the right of it such as the CP, HNP and AWB, Afrikanervolksfront, Freedom Front, etc. Having divided the conservative or righ-wing movement in South Africa, is it any wonder that the NP finally capitulated to the Marxist ANC and South African Communist Party? Afriforum will enter into agreements with Malema’s EFF, such as it did around the “Kill a Boer” song, yet it would not be seen in public, let alone make an agreement with Afrikaner organisations it deems “nationalist”.
It seems to have taken a leaf from the American “cuckservative” handbook: to make youself more respectable to liberals, the left and, of course, the mainstream media, you have to attack other conservatives and stigmatise them as “right-wing” and “nationalist”. The ANC or the EFF does not have to fight Afrikaner organisations; Afriforum will do it for them, in its quest to become the cuckservative champion in South Africa. Soon Ernst Roets will even call Helen Zille of the former Progressive Party and Rand Daily Mail, “right-wing” and “racist”.
Recently, Helen Zille told Max du Preez during their tête à tête recorded on video: “Max, everybody on Twitter calls everybody else ‘racist’.” But I suppose Afriforum wants to make sure it is part of the crowd calling others “racist”, instead of at the receiving end of the insult, where they currently find themselves.
However, the thing that bothers me the most about Afriforum is its lack of intellectual rigour. It reminds me of the National Party in its death throes, when it was everything to everyone. It was finally swallowed up by its arch-enemy, the ANC, under Kortbroek van Schalkwyk. In its many compromises and tip-toeing around fake lexical traps (such as “white nationalism”), the organisation is betraying a fear of being “caught out” by the PC mob, rather than any clear strategic thinking or set of convictions.
In the face of extremism — even the ruling party is extremist in many of its policies — Afriforum is offering us a few half-hearted clichés about “community rights” and “freedom of speech”. I am almost tempted to say that, confronted with white genocide (which many overseas observers are discerning in South Africa, given the violence and arsenal of laws and policies deployed against us whites), Afriforum is offering us a band-aid or some aspirin.
It is too scared or too shallow of intellect to think through to the heart of the problem which is, admittedly, complex and not easy to circumscribe or to find solutions for. In many respects, South Africa is the first quasi-Western society collapsing under the weight of its own unmanageable diversity, be it ethnic, ideological, cultural or linguistic.
My oft-repeated slogan is that the National Party did not fail due to a lack of resources or funds. It had a functioning state, media, embassies in the most sought-after parts of Western capitals, a powerful army, dedicated police and universities full of loyal academics. Ultimately its failure was an intellectual one, because it was not prepared to confront its enemies in the battle of ideas. Long before it embraced an ANC takeover, it had capitulated intellectually.
Afriforum might be a well-financed NGO, taxing hundreds of thousands of Afrikaners every month with debit orders, but it has nothing compared to the resources of the former National Party government. The current state can fight it in the courts every day, using taxpayer funds.
Our only hope is that there could arise a group or organisation that would fearlessly expose the moral and ideological bankruptcy of the ANC-terrorist regime and its fatal grip on the country, no matter how much the deranged leftists in the media and in the ANC itself would hurl their usual abuse: “racist”, “fascist”, “white nationalist”, “white supremacist”, “toxic male”, etc. It must not only confront and break down the dominant ideology, but also offer an alternative vision for the country, a way out of the present impasse.
Alas, Afriforum is not that organisation. It and its “head of policy and action”, Ernst Roets, are too frileux, as the French say. Which one might translate as: “cautious”.
