South Africa: a separate homeland for Afrikaners?

Supporters of Eugene Terreblanche salute his coffin as it is driven from the church in Ventersdorp

As I drink tea in the sitting-room of Daniel and Margrieta Dreyers, it is easy to forget that apartheid ever ended. The couple, wearing the combat fatigues of the right-wing Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) movement and surrounded by nick-nacks from a lifetime’s devotion to preserving the rituals and traditions of the Boers, South Africa’s original white settlers, are mourning the loss of their leader.

Mr and Mrs Dreyers have just returned from the funeral of Eugene Terreblanche and are filled with quiet anger over the loss of “Oom Gene” (Uncle Gene), under whose command of the AWB they had served for almost three decades. Looking through their “reminders of the golden years for the Afrikaners” offers them some comfort.

The porcelain ox wagon and drawings of the stout granite Voortrekker monument, arranged carefully around the room, bear testament to the Great Trek into the unforgiving South African hinterland 175 years ago, which earned the Afrikaners independence from the British and a reputation for being among the toughest and most resourceful pioneers in history.

“These treasures remind me why Afrikaners belong here, why we could never leave, and why we and South Africa are one and the same,” Mrs Dreyers, a 64-year-old grandmother of five, explains quietly.

Her husband adds: “We fight to keep our land because our people suffered so greatly to win it. We fought wars and lost fine men for it, we worked this soil until our hands bled. We made this country what it is. Nothing bad can be done to us that does not serve to make us stronger.”

Like an increasing number of Afrikaans-speaking white South Africans, Mrs and Mrs Dreyers believe the lawlessness in rural areas, which claims the lives of two or three white farmers or family members every week, can only end with another separation of whites and blacks. “A homeland for Afrikaners is what we want, and it is what God wants for us,” Mr Dreyers, 70, says, before expanding into the sort of rhetoric that made his leader reviled by both the black population and liberal whites.

“We have learned our lesson: black people cannot run a country. They inherited a priceless jewel and made it worthless. They have not got the wisdom – they will never have the wisdom – to run a country. We have tried to teach them, but they have not learned and they are not grateful for what we gave them. They wanted the whole cake, and now there are only crumbs left.”

Source:
South Africa: a separate homeland for Afrikaners?
telegraph.co.uk