Afrikaners part of solution

‘F***f!” I started to turn towards the angry shout. Too late, though. I glimpsed a suntanned arm in a khaki shirt, swinging. Then my whole side exploded. I rocked back two steps as the air was forced out of my lungs.

I won’t forget the hatred in the bloodshot eyes of the short, stocky Afrikaner man who had just hit me in the rib cage with a concrete cinder block.

“Julle f **** n Kommuniste moet nou weg!” (You f **** ng Communists must go now!)

That day in the Free State town of Koppies cost me three broken ribs, whatever hope I had for a peaceful solution in South Africa and, most sadly, badly damaged my growing sympathy for Afrikaners.

The following year, 1994, in a street in the town of Mmabatho (known now as Mahikeng), I arrived shortly after three right-wingers had been executed by soldiers. They got what they deserved, was my view then. Today, I have a more nuanced opinion: through their deaths they showed white, right-wing South Africa that any civil war would only end in a sea of tears. And the bloodbath never happened. So they were martyrs to the New South Africa, in a way.

When I saw the old South African flags being displayed at last week’s Black Monday protests, accompanied by the singing of Die Stem, I was, frankly, dismayed. All of that old arrogance and isolationist – and, honestly, racist – thinking was back again, front and centre.

Taking another breath

But, then I took another breath and reminded myself of a lesson I learned in more than 25 years of covering people and politics in this part of the world: Nothing is ever cut and dried; the truth in South Africa is never in black and white only, it is always in the shades of grey.

So, sure, there are the rabid right-wingers who hanker after the “good old days” when the white man was baas and everyone else knew their place. But, equally, there are many, many Afrikaners who only want peace and security and to be able to get on with their lives without fear … and who have a “live and let live” approach to their fellow South Africans which tries not to put everything through the filter of race.

In the early ’90s, I started covering right-wing politics mainly because everybody else was only interested in the “FW de Klerk-Nelson Mandela Show”.

Despite the fact that I was obviously a soutie working for an English language newspaper, I was greeted with Old World courtesy by groups like the Transvaalse Landbou Unie (Transvaal Agricultural Union); the Boerestaat Party of Robert van Tonder, Transvaalse Separatiste; and even the Order Boerevolk, whose leaders Andrew Ford and Eddie von Maltitz spouted talk of rebellion as we ate lamb tjops with delicious boere sugared mashed pumpkin … all the while with a 9mm pistol sitting cold and incongruous on the perfect white tablecloth.

From my colleague, the late photographer Kevin Carter, I absorbed a lot of his fascination with Afrikaner history – and came to realise early on that the victors (of what they called the Boer War), the English, had got to write the histories. And, as they did in most places in the world they colonised, they wrote the story they wanted, and not necessarily the whole truth.

I read and I thought. Next door to the house of my parents-in-law in Irene in Pretoria was a cemetery and I once strolled among the gravestones, stunned at the story they told of women and young children from the concentration camps who died in droves through, at best, neglect, at worst an English determination to rid themselves of people they regarded as sub-humans.

As I revived my schoolboy Afrikaans (learned in a school in what is now Zimbabwe), I took in Afrikaans TV programmes and newspapers, I had my eyes opened to the high level of political, cultural and social debate within that society.

I marvelled at the fact that, while readers of The Star were complaining about uncut grass verges, Beeld’s readers were eruditely debating everything from philosophy to religion and science.

In the frontlines

It was not long before something else dawned on me – and this only became apparent after the earthquake of changes which happened in 1994 and Nelson Mandela stood on the steps of the Union Buildings. I could make the observation because I had arrived as an outsider.

I had always thought white English speakers were in the frontlines of the fight against apartheid – and many were.

Yet, once they had to deal with the reality of a black government, their masks and pretences fell away as racism – often subtle – emerged.

In a newspaper where I worked, I found black journalists treated almost like manual labourers … something I had not experienced even at the height of the war in Rhodesia more than 10 years earlier, when I started my career in journalism and had to report to a black news editor.

Nothing is ever cut and dried; the truth in South Africa is never in black and white only, it is always in the shades of grey.

While readers of The Star were complaining about uncut grass verges, Beeld’s readers were eruditely debating everything from philosophy to religion and science.

Annoying theory

My theory, which has annoyed (unsurprisingly) many English speakers (who by the way, seldom speak Afrikaans or another indigenous language but expect everyone else to be word perfect in English), is that English-speaking whites opposed apartheid not so much because it was an affront to humanity or out of any particular sympathy for black people. They opposed the system because it was run by Afrikaners …

One of the most important things to remember about most Afrikaners comes from their very name itself. They are Africans and have been here just as long as many other peoples.

They also, as Robert van Tonder once told me as we sipped tea in a genteel manner in his book-lined study, “have nowhere else to go”.

They are part of this continent. Many believe they are also part of the problems facing us. But I believe they are part of the solution.