With political temperatures among Afrikaners rising on the eve of more radical land expropriation policies from the ruling ANC, an alleged fistfight has broken out in the office of Stellenbosch academic Professor Anton van Niekerk. Mr. Abel Malan, the deputy chairman of Afrikaans organisation Die Verkenners, was arrested by campus police at the University of Stellenbosch after he had apparently overturned Van Niekerk's desk and a hit him in the face.
According to a report in Die Burger, the Cape-based newspaper, Van Niekerk suffered facial bruises and his glasses were broken. Malan had made an appointment to see Van Niekerk about his article alleging that white Afrikaners carried enormous amounts of guilt towards black South Africans, published in both Die Burger and its northern sister newspaper Beeld.
Malan is also a candidate for the Volksraadverkiesingskommissie, holding an alternative Afrikaner election to elect an Afrikaner parliament. Die VVK, as it is known, has issued a statement by Mr. Paul Kruger, stating that “the huge number of traitors in the ranks of the Boer-Afrikaner people, is our biggest enemy in our struggle for freedom, which is centuries old. An example of this is the utterly offensive newspaper article by Anton van Niekerk of Stellenbosch, published in July 2011. One of the candidates in our Volksraad election of September 2011, Mr. Abel Malan, was arrested on 14 July 2011 concerning an incident between himself and Anton van Niekerk. The Central Committee of the Volksraad Verkiesing Kommissie (Electoral Commission for the election of a Boer-Afrikaner People’s Council) stands firmly behind Mr. Malan and we convey our best wishes to him for the upcoming legal proceedings.”
The university's rector yesterday convened a media conference. Professor Russel Botman, the rector and an affirmative-action appointee, stated that Van Niekerk was "also threatened by Malan". Van Niekerk had to see a doctor and a trauma councillor yesterday.
The university had posted a security guard in the office opposite that of Van Niekerk and he was quick to intervene to stop the brawl. Asked whether Van Niekerk had known Malan prior to their meeting, Botman said "no. But that does not mean that Anton van Niekerk had not been receiving threatening phone calls."
Botman further stated that "it was a despicable deed and regrettable within the context of our attempts and striving to create a South Africa in which the rights of all its people are protected".
Mr. Malan has been in police custody since his arrest and is expected to appear in the Stellenbosch magistrate's court today. He is also reputed to have a number of "collaborators" in the Stellenbosch area, as reported by the Beeld newspaper. Beeld also described him in its headline as a "right-winger" but declined to characterise Professor van Niekerk as a liberal or left-winger.
Van Niekerk's opinion piece on white guilt was written after the publication of a philosophical article by Rhodes University academic Ms. Samantha Vice in which she advised white people to be "silent and modest" in responding to black rule in South Africa. Whites should also vacate the public space, not participate in politics and allow blacks to remodel the country to their liking unhindered.
Since the takeover by the black-nationalist African National Congress in 1994, South Africa has become extremely violent with rampant crime and a very radical affirmative-action programme that requires even white-owned family businesses to employ quotas of black people. Various politically connected blacks have also become fabulously wealthy as a result of "black economic empowerment" laws whereby corporations are required to hand more or less free shares to an elite of black beneficiaries.
