Over the past few years the issue of Afrikaner independence or secession from South Africa has again become topical as a result of language discrimination, farm murders and other exreme forms of violence visited upon Africa's only white tribe by the black majority. Many Afrikaners took heart from the ICJ decision on Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence and will undoubtedly also celebrate the very recent accession to statehood by South Sudan.
Within Afrikaner intellectual and political circles, the debate on Afrikaner self-determination has never been more intense. Articles and columns on the issue are published almost on a daily basis. The fact that these outpourings of a desire for independence take place almost exclusively in Afrikaans and are largely ignored by South Africa's mainstream media do not detract from their significance. The more South Africa's multicultural dream, the "rainbow nation" fantasy constructed around Nelson Mandela, turns into a nightmare, the more vociferous Afrikaner demands for independence and self-determination become.
The Afrikaner position in South Africa is mired in all kinds of ironies. Having largely been responsible for setting up the South African state, including its unification on 31 May 1910, Afrikaners are today excluded from the definition of "South Africans". To be South African today means to be English-speaking, or to prefer English as one's educational and cultural means of expression, as well as being black. The racial nationalism of South Africa's ruling elite has meant that people of European descent are, in the words of former president Thabo Mbeki, regarded as "settlers who failed to depart". Afrikaners have been in South Africa as long as Americans in America, but have not "naturalised" according to the precepts of African nationalism and pan-Africanism. However, English-speaking whites are to a large extent still tolerated by the ruling ANC as they are seen to "fit into the culture" and the Afro-Saxon national identity, so governmental pressure on non-Afrikaner whites to leave or abandon their linguistic and cultural identity is not as intense as that which bears upon white Afrikaners.
Recent talk of nationalisation has also been directed against Afrikaners. Whereas the mines controlled by various multinational companies with links to Britain or Australia are equally in the sights of ANC Youth League radicals for nationalisation, expropriating Afrikaner-owned farms is number one on the nationalisation agenda. South Africa's English-dominated opposition party, the Democratic Alliance under Mrs. Helen Zille, while opposing the nationalisation of mines and industry, concurs with the ANC that Afrikaner farmers should be dislodged from their rural strongholds. Both the ANC and the DA intend collectivising agriculture along the former Soviet model, which leaves no room for family-owned Afrikaner farms and the small-scale entrepreneur that has made South African agriculture the most successful in Africa.
In a recent interview with CNN's Piers Morgan, Afrikaner actress Charlize Theron stated that her mother was "brave" to remain on the family farm after her departure for Hollywood. Theron implied that living on a farm in SA was very dangerous but did not say why and Piers Morgan did not question her on "why" it was dangerous to live on a farm in South Africa. Like every Afrikaner in South Africa and despite being extremely liberal in her political and social views, Ms. Theron knows that being a farmer or living on a farm in South Africa is the most dangerous profession in the world. As a result of the official anti-Afrikaner propaganda, as well as the Afro-Saxon media's subtle support for ethnic cleansing of Afrikaners from South Africa, rural Afrikaners regularly suffer military-style attacks by vicious gangs who torture and kill their victims in macabre, sadistic ways.
Farm murders are the most extreme expressions of the general animus shown by the South African state towards Afrikaners, their language, culture, history and identity. As demonstrated during the Soccer World Cup of 2010, the state has the resources to stop farm murders and other forms of ethnic violence, when it is deemed necessary to present a clean face to the world.
Mr. Johann Wingard, the former chairman of the Volkstaat Council, a statutory body provided for during negotiations between the Freedom Front and the ANC in 1994, yesterday wrote on praag.co.za that Afrikaner economic survival will henceforth also depend on their attaining self-determination. The plethora of radical affirmative-action laws and institutionalised anti-white and anti-Afrikaner practices will either pauperise the Afrikaner population or drive them into emigration to Western countries. According to Wingard, "Afrikaners experience (affirmative action) as a punitive measure which will permanently prejudice them. Their physical and economic survival therefore requires a fresh approach."
The solution for the conflict in Sudan between the North and the South, namely Southern independence, is also the straightforward answer to South Africa's ethnic and linguistic problem. South Africa is a large country by global standards and very many parts of it are almost deserted as a result of the chaotic urbanisation and open-border policies of the ruling ANC. With little effort and population movement, an Afrikaner state may be carved out of South Africa to serve as home to a Protestant people that fled Europe to escape religious persecution but who now face racial and ethnic persecution from Africans, specifically the Zulu and Xhosa potentates who largely control the ANC octopus.
However, to get to Afrikaner independence, Afrikaners themselves will have to be much more forceful in their demands. They should also turn their backs on the major Afrikaans newspapers belonging to the Naspers group that are hostile to the historical Afrikaner quest for freedom. Naspers is vacillating schizophrenically between propagating a Milnerist, colonialist ethos of making Afrikaners disappear by anglicising them and more radical models of assimilation.
The other grave issue is whether the international community has ever taken seriously any demand for self-determination or independence that is not backed up by violence or a so-called "armed wing". The staggering success of the ANC's own, often random, terrorist violence prior to 1994 is an example of how violence, more than votes or popular support, creates its own legitimacy. Hamas in the Palestine territories also bears this out.
In the case of the Republic of South Sudan, the country would not have become the 193rd (and counting) member of the United Nations if it had not been for two civil wars in which 2,5 million people are estimated to have died.
The only way for Afrikaners to solve this conundrum, is to confront the central government of South Africa and the international community with incontrovertible arguments. Afrikaners may lack marauding African "freedom fighters" killing, raping and pillaging everything in their path, but we possess lawyers, intellectuals and even some politicians able to wage a war of independence in the media and by using local and international tribunals.
