EuroAfrica-Magazine Online

By Phillip Pule Maqekoane**
I hereby wish to register my response to the “Open letter to Thabo Mbeki from Boer Nation” circulating in the media since the 12.02.2005. My attempt here, is triggered by the metaphor in which a huge and muscular African Christian, whose mother was being raped by a naughty white man, overcome by grief, he only stares and ultimately becomes a spectator. He stands there petrified, glances and covers his face in shame. Instead of intervening and protecting his mother, he proclaims ‘Oh Lord forgive him for he doesn’t know what he is doing. We shall overcome. Violence is not the solution! We shall overcome because we are bestowed with the capacity to love. Hallelujah!’

To the surprise of all, in particular my comrades in the PAC, I concur with some parts of the criticism levelled by Andries Lombaard against the President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, in particular the insinuation pertaining to his pretence that the mother of all evils in South Africa is Apartheid.

“Neither the Dutch settlers nor the late Dr. H.F. Verwoerd were architects of apartheid ….” (A. Lombaard, Open letter to Thabo Mbeki from Boer Nation, 16.Sept. 2004) However, should the president, and with him the entire ruling party, the ANC, come to grips with the fact that it was initially and predominantly the classical colonialism from Great Britain that mothered and natured Apartheid, armed it to the nuclear monster it became,  paving way and making it possible for its indispensable strategic position within  the grand design of imperialism, hence the ardent over-protection, virulent defence and hawkish guidance from New York, London, Paris, Bonn, Berlin etc. Only then, shall we be able to start straightening the most crucial issues ahead of us.

In order to avoid the blood shed, that is going to make the volcanic French revolution look like a kindergarten picnic, or to use the moderate phrase, avoid the Mugube Zimbabwean scenario, we better stand up, speak out and see the facts as they are. This is just one of such attempts to call a spade a spade, to tell the Boer that gone and forgotten are the days of the Boer Republics and the creation of the white Bantustan – Orania - will ever remain a shallow dream. The talk of the rainbow nation, reconciliation and truth commission (P.W. Botha calls it the circus), Ubuntu, Masakhane, Simunye, African renaissance, Kaffirboitie, and you name them, had only one purpose; throw dust on the African face.

The Kenyan phrase –“Not yet Uhuru”- cannot be more fitting when describing our problem under the present democratic dispensation in South Africa. Far from experiencing the last kick of a dying horse, apartheid is very much alive and is vigorously still living.

Now that the dummy has somehow been sold to the previously disadvantaged, we now hear the unbearable and screeching noise, from people who should be epitomising remorse for the atrocities committed on their behalf against the African people. Without splitting hair, we are duty bound to evoke a new language in terms of political correctness in articulating our aspirations, come up with a clearly defined convention and leave no stone unturned, so that we cannot have and cannot tolerate the uncalled for ambiguities such as Boer-Afrikaner, Boer Nation, Afrikaans, Afrikaaner. Literally speaking the term Boer means a farmer.

Though perverted by the injustices, brutalities, hatred, greed and maltreatments by the Dutch settler and their descendents against the African majority, truly and duly, the term Boer has the negative connotation it deserves. However, it should encompass and therefore entitles the African farmer too to be called a Boer. You come across farmers all over the world, but they would not claim that they constitute a nation.

Going back to its roots, the term Boer describes the dominant profession of the time – farming - and has therefore nothing to do with the colour of the skin one has. If Andires Lombaard, the author of the open letter to Thabo Mbeki wants us to believe that he is talking on behalf of the Boer Nation, then the question arises, what are the geographical boundaries of such a nation or in which country is the Boer Nation is dwelling?

Well, we are all aware that the notion of the rainbow nation has never been taking seriously in most of the Whites corners (collective term for the descendents of the European settlers in South Africa). To the previously disadvantaged the rainbow nation could mean a sincere attempt of building one nation, looking forward, forgetting about the genocide and the atrocities of the past, and  consolidating one nation in which one’s colour of skin or shape of noise is as irrelevant as the type of shoes or the attire he puts on.

The progeny of the Dutch settler, Andries Lombaard, proposes, instigates and pronounces the brewing, the cooking and the making of yet a new nation, the Boer- Afrikaaner, within the geographic boundaries of the present rainbow nation, thus frustrating all the efforts of further extending a hand of friendship to our impenitent colonisers, exploiters and dispossessors.

Now the confusion is perfect. We want to understand the concept of a Boer- Afrikaaner as if it intends to suggest that the term Boer is an adjective and Afrikaaner is the noun.  Looking at the concept closely, you would come to something closer to a “farming African”- an African whose profession is farming. Should the Africans loose the claim to their title as Africans, irrespective of the language you speak, then the rape will be perfect.

In Afrikaans the Africans would then be called swaarte Mense, and only with the lot of fantasy they would inevitably grab the title Afrikaaner with one A as the real title will be reserved for the descendents of the Dutch settles with double AA, A Afrikaaner.

One scholar might proclaim, no ways, you cannot translate the word Boer outside of its historical context. Yes, it is precisely its negative context and connotation we should address and finally eradicate for ever, lest we entertain numerous and perpetual derailments of the initiatives by the rainbow nation. Of all the colonialists of the African continent (the French, Portuguese, Spanish, English and Dutch), the South African Dutch brand colonialism was the only one which had the audacity of coining its own language, as if that was not enough, they went on naming it after the entire continent.

One is tempted to believe that Afrikaans, as a language, was adopted at the AOU conference as the icon or symbol exampling the urge to unite the entire continent, and yet it was meant to be a tool of exploitation, oppression and repression hence the 1976 Students uprisings. Andries Lombaard concludes:

• Verwoerd was a pioneer, an achiever.
• He forced nothing upon anyone.
• He was a friend of the Black man, not an enemy.

Let all those Blacks, who, according to Lambaard, were friends of Verwoerd, stand up and explain to the entire world about the secrecy and sophistry of their friendship with the pinnacle of Apartheid.