Chickens come home to roost as Afrikaners leave the nest

Some Afrikaners find new home in US

How could we have been so ignorant? Afrikaners were being persecuted right under our nose, in our own country. They were beaten and driven off their land, their homes looted and many murdered and raped. How could this happen in this day of mass media and we know nothing about it?

Yet Trump, thousands of miles away, heard about the terrible plight of the Afrikaners in South Africa and felt very sorry for them.

Known for using hyperbole in language, he accused the South African government of ‘killing the white farmer’ and even committing genocide against the defenceless Afrikaner. Big-hearted as he was, he opened his arms to them and granted them refugee status. And like Moses, he brought them across the vast Atlantic to the promised land, America, their new home, the land of opportunities and dreams. The Afrikaners are lucky to have the world’s most powerful man who has their welfare at heart.

Three decades ago when the liberation forces ousted the White minority government from power, there was fear that South Africa would be plunged into a bloody revolution. Many wanted to leave the country. The British with their dual citizenship could always go back to England. Likewise, the French, Germans and the Italian nationals could go back to their mother countries.

But the Afrikaner? Where could they go? They were despised by the world for their apartheid policy. No country wanted them, not even their mother country, the Netherlands. They were an exclusive ethnic minority with their own language and culture, very different from the liberal Dutch.

But US President Donald Trump has found common ground with the Afrikaner. They both believe that they are here on earth by divine intervention. Afrikaners see Trump as their messiah. While, on one hand, he signed an executive order sending thousands of illegal migrants back to their countries and shutting the door to refugees from Africa, Asia and South America, he has used the race card and granted preferential treatment to the group of 49 white South Africans.

Trump has been widely condemned for his racist policy, from within his own country and from outside.

The Episcopal Church has withdrawn support for the federal aid programme for the re-settlement of migrants. There has also been widespread criticism from government sources in South Africa, many saying there was no truth that the Afrikaner is being persecuted.

President Cyril Ramaphosa called those who ran away to the US, “cowards”. They were certainly not like the intrepid Voortrekkers who braved the bush, wild animals and hostile tribes to trek across the country. They flew across the Atlantic in the luxury of a chartered plane sent by the US government.

Trump behaves like an erratic despot.

Could you imagine how much worse he would have been if had unfettered reign in the US? | T Markandan Kloof

It’s no longer enough to remain silent

Alas! The world seems to become stranger each day – a biased, cesspool where one goes to the rescue of only people who are part of his own family, related to him in some other way, belong to his own religion, race, colour, or speak the same language.

This perhaps explains why few Douth Africans have participated in protest marches, or written to the media, or made any general fuss over the atrocious occurrences in Gaza.

When questioned about their clear apathy, members of the majority religion in this country – Christians – would exclaim: “ This has nothing to do with Jesus. It’s a fight between Muslim Arabs and Zionist Jews for some silly land.”Well, it may arrive as a sobering wake-up call to come to know that the “silly land” and the “ Palestinians” that Israel is trying to bomb out of all existence by genocidal means, oust by forced displacement and by importing tens of thousands of Jewish settlers in the place of the locals ,and by destroying roads, villages, towns, cities, schools and hospitals, all include land – sites that are considered the holiest among Christians.

As examples, Jerusalem was the location of the first Christian church.

Jesus, according to the Bible, was born in Bethlehem. Palestinians, especially on the West Bank, include Christians – albeit a small percentage due to most of them holding dual citizenship having emigrated to Israel, Europe, the UK, or the US.

These Christians are Arabs in that they speak Arabic, not Hebrew.

They have similar cuisines, cultural habits, and dress, and cannot be distinguished from “Muslim Arabs”.They are all Palestinians, and this has been their land for centuries. It has also been the land of original Jews (not Zionists). Most Jews have moved over to the occupied part of Palestine, termed “Israel”Israeli shelling, gunfire, bulldozers demolishing homes, forced displacement and massacre do not distinguish at all between Christian and Muslim Palestinians. They can’t simply because they are ONE people.

The Christians are harassed equally by the Israeli military forces, identically to the other Palestinians. (Most were not permitted to attend church services during Easter. They were not allowed in some of their holy churches in the holiest period of the Christian calendar – Easter Friday and Easter Monday.)

Palestinian Christians and Muslims have been living side by side without much fuss for centuries.

So the burning question now remains: Why is the major Christian world virtually silent ? Why has this outcry against Zionist Israel been confined only to mostly Muslims? Is it to do with the modern notion of the ridiculous “ proportionality ratio”?

Why is the average South African Christian – Black, Brown or White mostly very quiet?Is it attributed to the usual “don’t-care attitude” that we South Africans have now become notorious for?And the last question: Would our old enemy – Apartheid – have ever been removed if it presently prevailed with our present policy of general apathy? | Ebrahim Essa Durban

The chickens have come home to roost

The word has spread like wildfire and the ANC is in a serious panic right now! Trump’s offer to Afrikaners to come and work in the US, has dealt the ANC a huge blow and left them feeling scared, embarrassed and looking for ways to retaliate.

Ramaphosa’s constant denial of the situation occurring in South Africa, coupled with their relentless pursuit of taking Israel to the ICJ – spearheaded by Naledi Pandor, has left large numbers of South Africans, as well as Trump, fuming.

It serves the ANC right that Trump has hit back very hard, by showing the World that them “Darling of the World”, the ANC, is not so innocent after all. Court case after court case is proving that the DA, South Africa’s second largest political party, holds South Africa’s best interest at heart, and the ANC, after the VAT increase debacle, is now left with egg on its faces.

When will the ANC learn that it no longer has a majority in the benches, and that it’s foreign policies are reflective of a small, left-leaning sector of our population?

Most of us do not want our country siding with Russia, Iran or China. Most of us do not support the recent ICJ case brought against Israel. Most of us want a free and fair, open economy and not be subjected to Chinese, Russian or Iranian influences. The ANC is playing a very dangerous game, and it is learning day by day, that powerful nations such as the US, will not stand for the ANC’s arrogance.

Likewise, Christians in South Africa should be a lot more vocal when it comes to condemning issues such as the ICJ case against Israel, the killing of White ( and Black) farmers, and the role of BEE in creating racial divides within our already fragile society. But you see, the ANC wants us divided along racial and religious lines. It wants us weak. It wants us thinking that they are here to bring ‘redress’ and ‘Transformation', all whilst doing exactly what the White, Apartheid government of the 1980’s did to Blacks, and was condemned by the world, at large. | L Oosthuizen Durban

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