The EuroAfricaCentral Magazine Online received two important visitors during the weekend. Mrs. Heike Eggers, The founder of Ana yi Africa – “Bridge to Africa” and Fiayiwo Dodji,  a Togolese, commonly called Jerome.  He is 32 years old, married with  3 children and lives in Lomé, Togo’s capital, in a quarter called Nukafu. An ambitious teacher working in primary school, data processing, financial businesses but still has a big dream: He wishes to have “better opportunities to spread good ideas on better education in Togo than simply being a teacher”.

I shall answer your secondary views to the point: “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 ..Republics, hard earned at great cost in lives, fought for against the imperialist British, showing the way to freedom for all Africans; Boer Republics that stood as towers of peace between faction-fighting Black tribes, and of blessing to the hungry and despondent, supplying food, clothing, health care, education, jobs and earnings, concepts up to then unknown among the tribes. If we do not know history, how would we build the future? On illusory creations of the present, having to again relive the lessons learnt in past lives?

Secondly, the creation of the white Bantustan - Orania  will ever remain a shallow dream. Questions: How many Blacks-Only villages exist in Africa? How many Black Only Clubs and Groups all over the world by choice, mostly all respected by other races? And why not those singled out in your rhetoric? If Orania wishes to farm their own land, what has that got to do with anybody? It happens all over the world that certain cultural/religious groups wish to maintain their culture, language and religion, live and stand together and nobody lifts as much as an eye brow. Think of the Mennonites in the USA, and the German communities in Paraguay. Yet you find it worthy to mention? Is that honestly with respect for diversity?

Now the question remains whether Africans, black, brown and white will keep on harping on the past. Who were intruders, settlers, colonizers and imperialists first? The Nguni and Sotho people who migrated into Southern Africa from the Great Lakes during the 1400’s, killing tens of thousands of indigenous San and Khoi, as is so well remembered by the latter, together with the original conical stone house dwellers – the highly skilled metal and gold masters of Mapungubwe and the Zimbabwe Ruins – of whom even the name was obliterated in the Nguni advance? Followed by the Venda and Lemba people during the 1700’s? Or was it the Voortrekker cattle rangers, my progenitors the Boer-Afrikaners, who in the wake of the Difiqane entered the Transvaal in 1836, putting an end to human slaughter, which between 1818 and 1838 killed an estimated 3 million indigenous people by the imperialistic rule of Shaka, Dingane, Mantatisi, Mzilikazi, Hurutzi and others?

I shall stand up in memory of that silent generation, Mr Maqekoane, those whom you call up in vain, as they were either silenced during the revolution, or thereafter by old age. And those still living, risk to be silenced for speaking up. I have personally met some of those conscientious and sturdy men from the Verwoerd era. I will, however, not divulge their names for fear of their families’ safety, due to the lust for retribution by their very fellowmen … and easy access to matches, gasoline and old tires, as so many intimately have experienced.
Yes Sir, intimidation is well and alive among us, the slaves of a new kind of Apartheid Regime where a populous broad base vote somehow gets channelled to elevate one national group to rule over all other nationalities. The more things change the less they seem to have changed! Power shifted hands, yet discrimination and retribution prevail, feeding favouritism and vengeance in a future day and age!