You might have noticed a series of posts on my blog lately – the theme? The ‘natives’ – Afrikaners – are restless. This whole restlessness of course has a history. And one of the central players is Chris Louw, one of Breyten Breytenbach’s fellow Dakar travellers.
Yesterday I discovered a blog post about Chris Louw titled Death of a journalist, death in our nation.
I think it summarizes Chris Louw and the genesis of what is going on now pretty well.
The death of this brilliant, brutally honest journalist on 30 November has left a smell of death hovering over a section of our population that we dare not ignore.
Chris caused waves when he published his gloves-off “Boetman-is-die-bliksem-in” letter in Beeld on 5 May 2000. Written as an open letter to philosopher dr Willem de Klerk, brother of ex-president FW de Klerk, he hit an emotional nerve as he lashed out against the old generation Afrikaner leaders who led his generation into a senseless, unwinnable war against the ANC. The young generation was then expected to train black executives to take over their own jobs, a deal negotiated by the old Afrikaner generation.
Later the post continues:
Chris was a member of the Dakar group who initiated talks with the ANC while still in exile in 1987. But his writing has become increasingly critical of the ANC government lately, as he grew more and more disillusioned with them. In his last letter to the newspaper Beeld, published a day after he died, he wrote (my translation): “Do the corruption and crime represent growing pains or death pains? If one looks at the rest of Africa, it rather seems as if the country is irrevocably on its way to the grave.”
We have serious problems in South Africa, many of which are time bomds waiting to explode. But our reaction to the chaos around us will determine whether we go to the grave or grow through the pain.
In his opening address at the Amahoro-Africa gathering held in June in the Magaliesberg, not far from where Chris died, Claude Nikondeha from Burundi talked about pain that can go one of two ways. Quoting Richard Rohr, he said “Pain, if not transformed will be transmitted.”
We need to find ways of dealing with our pain as individuals, as families, as communities or else we will take ourselves to the grave as a nation.
The comments to this post is also well worth a read.
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I wonder if part of the answer to this malaise Afrikaners are feeling is to really try to reach out to other marginalized groups.
I’ve been thinking about my where my knee-jerk distaste comes from every time you bring up the “sad plight of Afrikaners”, especially Afrikaner men. I think just growing up amongst the machismo and racism and general closed-mindedness of so many Afrikaners, especially men, makes it quite difficult for me to feel sympathy for their plight now. Imagine how much more difficult that must be for a black South African.
So perhaps it is a matter of language and of how marginalized groups present themselves. Whites, all too often make themselves sound so victimized, almost more than anyone else. There is a very small group of people at the top benefiting from the current regime. Groups at the bottom need to find ways to engage in serious coalition-building across difference instead of doing polls about who would want to live in a volkstaat. Try to create some unity rather than making it sound like they deserve special treatment.
Part of that process is to acknowledge our prejudices and that is a very difficult thing. In fact many whites are still very racist in South Africa and all this concern for the lone sad Afrikaner male in die platteland has to at least take into account that this sad figure might very well be very racist, sexist, homophobic etc.
Anyway, coalition building — that’s my thought for the day.
Thanks for the reference to my post, Wessel.
Sorry, I’m on a bit of a roll here.
I say the following fully aware that is it easy for me to say since I am not living in South Africa at the moment. But white South Africans are also so quick to say the country is going to the dogs, it’s already to late, “death as a nation” etc.
How about we try to remember how depressed black South Africans must have felt when their political parties were banner, their leaders jailed, their voices silenced by violence, but they persevered. Or further back, the plight of Afrikaners in concentration camps. At least now people have freedom of speech and assembly.
I’d like to believe it’s too soon to give up. In fact when I was in Johannesburg last July, the people that seemed most optimistic were those who were meaningfully engaged in political action (across race and class lines).
Hi, Beebop, you ask relevant questions and I will write a post to try and answer them.