Radio Pretoria rallies supremacists
London
26 November 2002
12:54
A sun-dappled morning breaks over Braam Pretorius street,
a picture of
leafy serenity, and the white-only staff of Radio
Pretoria turn on the
microphones for another day of vocal resistance to the
new South Africa.
"There is a storm out there. Our culture is under attack.
We're expected to
speak only bloody English. Things are going to have to
change," said the
station manager, Jaap Diedericks.
With its Boer flags and portraits of victories over the
Zulus the studio
resembles an Afrikaner museum, but Diedericks believes
Radio Pretoria is
about the politics of the future, not nostalgia.
A regime of black "racialists" is uprooting the language,
the wealth and the
freedom of those who found empty veld and built a first
world country, he
said. Everything they and their ancestors worked for
risks being blown away
in the rainbow nation.
In such times it is right that each day's broadcast
starts with Christian
prayer. God will provide, one day, but meantime the
Afrikaner must defend
himself as best he can. Eight years after history's lid
closed over apartheid
the dreams and fears of the Boers are back on South
Africa's political
agenda. A spate of bombings has been blamed on militant
whites who
allegedly want to stir a race war and overthrow the
government.
The police have found several arms caches and a dozen
suspected
ringleaders are due to go on trial next year, but many
think the terror is just
starting. Last weekend a bomb exploded in a hangar full
of police aircraft.
Security analysts put the odds of a successful coup as
zero, the state
being too strong, the plotters too weak, but mayhem and
racial tension are
possibilities.
Deepening the unease is the sense that the bombers,
however few and
isolated, are drawing on a well of Afrikaner resentment
shared by farmers,
liberal intellectuals and business executives.
While the police try to anticipate the next attack,
President Thabo Mbeki
and his predecessor, Nelson Mandela, have recently sat
down with rightwing
white politicians to ask, with a sense of urgency, what
do Boers want?
Tuning into 104.2 FM provides some answers. The
Afrikaner-language Radio
Pretoria has an official listenership of 110 000 but
claims the real figure is
six times higher. It aims to nourish the striving for
freedom and
self-determination by promoting a Christian-Protestant
European heritage.
When the apartheid-era version of the national anthem,
Die Stem, fades the
newsreaders, chat-show hosts and phone-in listeners talk
of persecution by
the democratically elected "regime". Namibia is often
referred to as South
West Africa and Zimbabwe as Rhodesia.
Their own country throws up questions: is Aids the
solution to black
population growth? Should farmers keep illegal guns to
deter robbers?
Where is the safest place to ramble with the kids? How do
you get a visa to
emigrate to Australia?
Seldom do you hear that since 1994 whites have retained
the vast bulk of
the country's wealth and that "black empowerment" schemes
to balance the
ownership of resources have faltered.
"We don't want to go back to apartheid, we want more say
in a real, new
South Africa that accommodates all our differences. We're
the people with
experience in running a modern state but the government
just milks us as
taxpayers," said Diedericks.
Hankering for lost status was part of the resentment, he
admitted, but most
came from the erosion of the Afrikaans language in
schools and public life,
the deterioration of hospitals and services, the
affirmative action which
denied jobs to whites, and the crime.
The solution was a 10th province for whites only in the
old Transvaal and
Free State republics. The constitution allowed for
self-determination so
peaceful pressure, such as economic sanctions, would
hopefully be enough,
said Diedericks.
Many listeners sympathised with the alleged coup plotters
but considered
their strategy ridiculous and counter-productive, he
added. "The black
leaders waiting to take over from Mbeki and Mandela are
more radical.
Violence against whites will increase because the blacks
aren't controlling
their racial feelings whereas we are controlling ours.
"Even so, we weathered the English storm and we will
weather this one. We
are the most successful white tribe in Africa," said the
station manager.
For the first time since the 1930s, it is now common to
see whites begging
at road junctions. After a rocky start Orania, an
Afrikaner enclave on the rim
of the Karoo desert, is reporting a surge in applications
of people wanting to
move there.
Boer intellectuals also warn of alienation. Liberal
academics recently formed
a new organisation, the Group of 63, to promote Afrikaner
culture and
involvement in public life. Despite rejecting violence
some of the academics
were named by the alleged coup plotters as potential
cabinet ministers,
according to police.
A draft copy of a report to be published this week by the
Pretoria-based
Institute of Security Studies suggests the new militants
are very different
from the redneck bluster of Eugene Terre'Blanche's AWB, a
force in the
early 1990s.
"The new guys are middle class and intellectuals. They
are doctors,
engineers, senior military officers," said Henri Boshoff,
one of the report's
co-authors. "They are not personally losing out in the
new South Africa but
have grievances over what they see as an attack on their
language, culture
and identity. In that sense I would compare them to the
terrorists of Eta in
Spain."
They may number less than 1 200 and will not overthrow
the state but have
the military training and organisation to commit
atrocities. "I reckon they will
be around for at least a few years." - Guardian Unlimited
(c) Guardian
Newspapers Limited 2001
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Ivinicus factus sum veritabem diceus." ( I have become an enemy for
speaking the truth ) St Paul!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mitayo Potosi
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