A feisty and lengthy comment on my Mandela post implies that my qualifications
to write about Mandela and his South Africa are – well - woeful. So let me set
out my stall, so to speak.
First
up, experience.
I
first went to SA in the 60’s. I have lived, worked and travelled in the country
over a period of 50 years. I have been there during apartheid (which in the
early days was of little consequence to the outside world; after all, racism
was worse in the southern states of the US); during the peace process; and
during Mbeki’s misrule. I have been to every province. I am qualified in South
African law.
I
have also worked in a raft of other African countries, so I can compare and
contrast – up to a point.
The
comment urges me to get with it on the history especially where Afrikaners are
the topic.
So
let’s get started.
There
is scant understanding that South Africa is nearly as old as the US. The Dutch
East India Company took possession of the Cape of Good Hope in the late 18th
century. It populated it with mainly Dutch but also French Huguenots after the
abrogation of the Treaty of Nantes and
the subsequent persecution of Protestants. At that time the ’native’ population
was scanty. The whites stole land from no-one. You can’t steal something that
has no owner.
Cut
to the 19th century and the creation of Cape Colony by the British.
The
Dutch/French settlers had begun to develop as a distinct race, not as Europeans
but as the white tribe of Africa. Afrikaans morphed out of a mixture of mainly
Old Dutch but also French, English, local dialects, Malay and more, although it
was still described as Dutch right up to the early 20th century.
‘The
‘Dutch’ as the English called them, were at the bottom of the heap in the
Colony, below Asians, coloureds and blacks. The
English masters regarded them
contemptuously as lazy, dirty, ignorant, and fit for nothing except
procreation. A court appearance meant the humiliation of having a black
interpreter. To some extent that attitude still prevails. ‘Thick Dutchman’,
rock-ape, yarpie, are common derogatory words used against Afrikaners.
Afrikaners
were admitted to the snooty Rand Club only after Jews were let in.
I
often wondered whether I was the only Englishman in the country who actually
liked them for their congenial nature and admired them for their sheer
fortitude and ability to fight against all odds.
Come
the Great Trek. This was not because of the abolition of slavery, which was not
possible in the vast empty spaces of Africa because the slaves would simply
melt into the bush.
It
was because Afrikaners had huge families. Under SA law, the land inheritance
had to be divided between the sons, as is still the case in parts of Europe. So
farms got progressively smaller.
Afrikaners
were cattle men who needed large expanses of land . Their attitude was that the
hard work of ploughing for crops was ‘kaffir’s work’.
And
so they pushed off north to the Transvaal and the Free State where they ran
into the next batch of immigrants arriving from the north, and so it all began.
Leaping
forward to late in the century, the huge influx of British after the discovery
of gold on the Rand led to all sorts of conflicts with the Transvaal Government
and the people.
But
the origins of the South African War – the ‘boer’ war – lay not in Rhodes’ greed
to monopolise the mining industry, or not entirely. The Imperial Government was
playing a political strategy.
It
was very alarmed that the growing strength and geographical location of the
Transvaal would cut Britain off from Africa to the north of the Limpopo. It was
already blocked to east and west by the Portuguese.
The
first spark was the disastrous Jameson Raid that very nearly did for Rhodes.
But it was a mistake. The infamous telegram from Jameson to Rhodes contained a
comma. But commas are not transmitted by telegraph. Its omission gave the
message a contrary meaning. So watch your grammar!
The
comment has a totally different perception of the conduct of the real war –
horrendous atrocities and all that
hyperbole. On the contrary, this was probably the last ‘civilised’ war in which
both sides conducted themselves honourably. An excellent account is given in
Denys Reitz’ ‘Kommando’ which is deservedly still in print as perhaps the best
description of the war from the Boer side. There was no hatred or animosity.
The British soldiers had the highest regard for both the courage and the
shooting-prowess of the enemy.
When
Winston Churchill was captured (every day I used to drive past the school where
he was imprisoned), he was visited
weekly by the Foreign Minister of the Transvaal, who carried a bottle of
Scotch concealed in the lining of his frock coat, and gave Winnie a briefing on
the progress of the war from the Boer side for Winston’s despatches to the
Morning Post.
Not
much animosity there, then.
(Denys
Reitz became High Commissioner in London after the war. Whilst there, the
regiment that had captured him presented him with the rifle that had been taken
off him as a POW! He became as pro-British as that other great South African,
General Smuts).
So
now we come to that perpetually running sore, the so-called concentration
camps.
These
were not set up as an act of cruelty. Their objective was to deprive the Boers
of their food source by closing down their farms. The result was the opposite,
for instead of restricting their fighting season to the needs of the harvest, it
released them to fight full-time.
The
camps full of women and children were an affront and cruel abuse. Thousands
died of cholera and other epidemics due to totally incompetent management by
the British whom totally failed to provide proper sanitation and safe water,
but it was not a deliberate act of cruelty. It caused outrage in the UK, and
many prominent figures, such as Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, who was a volunteer
surgeon to the military during the war, and Rudyard Kipling, condemned it out-of-hand.
It brought international condemnation and support for the Boers.
It
was an act of unbelievable stupidity that turned the tide for the enemy and
made the war an international issue.
The
truth of the matter is that Britain may have won the last battles after taking
a fearful pasting in the early days (see the photos of the slaughter at Spion
Kop), but the Afrikaners won the war.
After
the Act of Union, the colonies of the Cape and Natal were merged into the
Dominion of South Africa. The Afrikaners ruled from 1903 to 1994. There was
never English-speaking governance again.
Fast
forward to the 20th Century and for the first half SA went on
quietly under a relatively benign regime, apart from WW1 and 2 in which
SA/Rhodesian forces acquitted themselves well in SW Africa, Tanganyika and Nyasaland
in the first and, and Ethiopia (where they were the first ground troops to see
action) and the Desert campaign in the second.
Then
came 40 years of apartheid, and here we are. On the downside, security,
education, health and most things Government-run are in a sorry state. On the
upside, SA has a massive economy relative to the continent; for example, SABM
is the second largest brewing firm in the world, and SA firms have spread all
over sub-equatorial Africa
I
had the feeling in 1994 that SA would go the way of Zimbabwe except that it
would take longer because there was more to steal. I now feel more hopeful. The
younger generation in Africa is rejecting the ‘big man’ approach to politics,
and wants jobs, education, and clean government. The freedom fighter generation
is passing and with it the old crooks who believe, with Nkrumah, that ‘you only
get one chance to milk the cow’. And the Afrikaner will survive and prosper; he
is a chameleon, very adept through history and culture at adapting to extreme
change.
The
‘Mandela’ effect may be more than transitory.
As
for white South Africans, there seem to be two choices.
To
follow many compatriots to the UK, the US and Australia (where I live Afrikaans
is the second most widely-used language).
Or
to accept what you can’t change, change what you can, remember that you still
have one of the highest standards of living, and stop living in the past.
‘The
past is another country; they do things differently there’.
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