Fade the Butcher
03-14-2006, 07:52 AM
http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2006/03/prospects_for_t.php
Talk presented to the American Renaissance conference in the Hyatt Dulles Hotel, near Washington on 25 February 2005
I was given the opportunity to change the title of this topic but I have preferred not to, even though I do not think that South African whites in general or the Afrikaner people in particular are a tribe. Rather, as I have suggested in my essay published in American Renaissance in May/June 2004, which was reprinted in my book The Scourge of the ANC, Afrikaners are a “cultural nation of the European type”: “During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they went through a great Romantic movement, a flowering of literature, translations, music and historical reflection that bound them into (such a nation).”
However, upon accepting the challenge of this topic, I was presented with one further dilemma: what to wear. These days in South Africa, the motley collection of people occupying the beautiful Cape Dutch building in Cape Town that used to be our Parliament often arrive in tribal dress for the annual opening, brandishing clubs and spears. We call these knobkieries and assegais. In coming to talk to you about our “tribe”, I would therefore also have to appear in tribal dress. What does Afrikaner tribal dress look like? After thinking about it long and hard, I have decided that I should at least wear a three-piece suit. As you can see, I have also consulted my local witch-doctor who has furnished me with charms called cuff-links to protect me from the bad spirits at this conference.
http://www.praag.co.za/essay720.jpg
The Union Building in Pretoria, seat of government, now occupied by the Xhosa tribe
Nowadays on the internet one may look on a site such as Google Earth at satellite images of various monuments in the world: the Eiffel Tower, London Bridge, Manhattan Island, as well as our seat of government, the Union Building in Pretoria. Not so long ago I spent a whole day in Pretoria with a magazine photographer who was taking pictures of me, one of those faintly embarassing moments when I as a grey-haired middle-aged male have to pose like a nubile female model of twenty. The photographer concerned was of a certain type: equally middle-aged but dressed like a teenager and professing what she thought were artistic views on politics, a kind of predictable liberalism in the American sense. She welcomed black rule in South Africa, considered crime and violence a passing blip on the upward sloping chart of optimism regarding the formation of one multiracial, multicultural nation in South Africa where, to quote Samora Machel, the former communist president of neighbouring Moçambique, “for the nation to live, the tribe must die”.
In South Africa, there can be no doubt as to which tribe must die. As far as I know, the term “white tribe” was first used by Time magazine to refer to my people in 1977, after which David Dimbleby of the BBC made a four-part series in 1979 entitled “The White Tribe of Africa”. The notion must have met with universal acclaim, for in the same year Dimbleby’s film received the Supreme Documentary Award of the Royal Television Society. Since the late seventies the expression has become something of a commonplace, and of course it is intended as a pejorative term, to ridicule us; “tribes” are after all backward peoples, lacking in civilization.
Prospects for the white tribe: the future of the Afrikaner people in South Africa
Dan Roodt
Talk presented to the American Renaissance conference in the Hyatt Dulles Hotel, near Washington on 25 February 2005
This cover from Time in 1977 first designated the Afrikaner people as a “white tribe”
I was given the opportunity to change the title of this topic but I have preferred not to, even though I do not think that South African whites in general or the Afrikaner people in particular are a tribe. Rather, as I have suggested in my essay published in American Renaissance in May/June 2004, which was reprinted in my book The Scourge of the ANC, Afrikaners are a "cultural nation of the European type": "During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they went through a great Romantic movement, a flowering of literature, translations, music and historical reflection that bound them into (such a nation)."
However, upon accepting the challenge of this topic, I was presented with one further dilemma: what to wear. These days in South Africa, the motley collection of people occupying the beautiful Cape Dutch building in Cape Town that used to be our Parliament often arrive in tribal dress for the annual opening, brandishing clubs and spears. We call these knobkieries and assegais. In coming to talk to you about our “tribe”, I would therefore also have to appear in tribal dress. What does Afrikaner tribal dress look like? After thinking about it long and hard, I have decided that I should at least wear a three-piece suit. As you can see, I have also consulted my local witch-doctor who has furnished me with charms called cuff-links to protect me from the bad spirits at this conference.
The Union Building in Pretoria, seat of government, now occupied by the Xhosa tribe
Nowadays on the internet one may look on a site such as Google Earth at satellite images of various monuments in the world: the Eiffel Tower, London Bridge, Manhattan Island, as well as our seat of government, the Union Building in Pretoria. Not so long ago I spent a whole day in Pretoria with a magazine photographer who was taking pictures of me, one of those faintly embarassing moments when I as a grey-haired middle-aged male have to pose like a nubile female model of twenty. The photographer concerned was of a certain type: equally middle-aged but dressed like a teenager and professing what she thought were artistic views on politics, a kind of predictable liberalism in the American sense. She welcomed black rule in South Africa, considered crime and violence a passing blip on the upward sloping chart of optimism regarding the formation of one multiracial, multicultural nation in South Africa where, to quote Samora Machel, the former communist president of neighbouring Moçambique, "for the nation to live, the tribe must die".
In South Africa, there can be no doubt as to which tribe must die. As far as I know, the term "white tribe" was first used by Time magazine to refer to my people in 1977, after which David Dimbleby of the BBC made a four-part series in 1979 entitled "The White Tribe of Africa". The notion must have met with universal acclaim, for in the same year Dimbleby's film received the Supreme Documentary Award of the Royal Television Society. Since the late seventies the expression has become something of a commonplace, and of course it is intended as a pejorative term, to ridicule us; “tribes” are after all backward peoples, lacking in civilization.
http://www.praag.co.za/essay73.jpg
The author in front of the Union Building, from the magazine Insig
However, as I continued to gaze at the exposed abdomen of my hipster-wearing, politically correct photographer, I finally could not help passing a few ironic comments on her stereotypical views. As we stood at the Union Buildings I mused aloud, "I wonder what the people who built these buildings would have thought today if they knew that a few tribal chiefs almost one thousand miles from here, huddling around their campfire outside their huts would come to Pretoria in eighty years' time and forever subjugate their descendants to rule by their tribe, the Xhosa."
As I shall argue, South Africa is not just a story of one tribe conquering another, as the BBC or Time would have it. The greatest Xhosa chief in history, Rohlihlala Mandela, sometimes referred to as Nelson, did not just outwit FW de Klerk, the last white president of South Africa to subjugate South African whites to the most draconian regime of race preference the world has ever seen, taking the form of institutionalised anti-white racism and even "racial revenge" as a left-wing French journalist (Stephen Smith) has quite rightly called the continuing calamity of farm murders. The BBC's cliché, "the white tribe", has been followed by other slogans regularly chanted in South Africa, such as "kill a Boer, kill a farmer" or the charming one recently coined by the so-called Pan-African Students Movement of Azania (PASMA): "kill all whites, English and Afrikaans", chanted on 19 February 2005.
. . .
Talk presented to the American Renaissance conference in the Hyatt Dulles Hotel, near Washington on 25 February 2005
I was given the opportunity to change the title of this topic but I have preferred not to, even though I do not think that South African whites in general or the Afrikaner people in particular are a tribe. Rather, as I have suggested in my essay published in American Renaissance in May/June 2004, which was reprinted in my book The Scourge of the ANC, Afrikaners are a “cultural nation of the European type”: “During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they went through a great Romantic movement, a flowering of literature, translations, music and historical reflection that bound them into (such a nation).”
However, upon accepting the challenge of this topic, I was presented with one further dilemma: what to wear. These days in South Africa, the motley collection of people occupying the beautiful Cape Dutch building in Cape Town that used to be our Parliament often arrive in tribal dress for the annual opening, brandishing clubs and spears. We call these knobkieries and assegais. In coming to talk to you about our “tribe”, I would therefore also have to appear in tribal dress. What does Afrikaner tribal dress look like? After thinking about it long and hard, I have decided that I should at least wear a three-piece suit. As you can see, I have also consulted my local witch-doctor who has furnished me with charms called cuff-links to protect me from the bad spirits at this conference.
http://www.praag.co.za/essay720.jpg
The Union Building in Pretoria, seat of government, now occupied by the Xhosa tribe
Nowadays on the internet one may look on a site such as Google Earth at satellite images of various monuments in the world: the Eiffel Tower, London Bridge, Manhattan Island, as well as our seat of government, the Union Building in Pretoria. Not so long ago I spent a whole day in Pretoria with a magazine photographer who was taking pictures of me, one of those faintly embarassing moments when I as a grey-haired middle-aged male have to pose like a nubile female model of twenty. The photographer concerned was of a certain type: equally middle-aged but dressed like a teenager and professing what she thought were artistic views on politics, a kind of predictable liberalism in the American sense. She welcomed black rule in South Africa, considered crime and violence a passing blip on the upward sloping chart of optimism regarding the formation of one multiracial, multicultural nation in South Africa where, to quote Samora Machel, the former communist president of neighbouring Moçambique, “for the nation to live, the tribe must die”.
In South Africa, there can be no doubt as to which tribe must die. As far as I know, the term “white tribe” was first used by Time magazine to refer to my people in 1977, after which David Dimbleby of the BBC made a four-part series in 1979 entitled “The White Tribe of Africa”. The notion must have met with universal acclaim, for in the same year Dimbleby’s film received the Supreme Documentary Award of the Royal Television Society. Since the late seventies the expression has become something of a commonplace, and of course it is intended as a pejorative term, to ridicule us; “tribes” are after all backward peoples, lacking in civilization.
Prospects for the white tribe: the future of the Afrikaner people in South Africa
Dan Roodt
Talk presented to the American Renaissance conference in the Hyatt Dulles Hotel, near Washington on 25 February 2005
This cover from Time in 1977 first designated the Afrikaner people as a “white tribe”
I was given the opportunity to change the title of this topic but I have preferred not to, even though I do not think that South African whites in general or the Afrikaner people in particular are a tribe. Rather, as I have suggested in my essay published in American Renaissance in May/June 2004, which was reprinted in my book The Scourge of the ANC, Afrikaners are a "cultural nation of the European type": "During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they went through a great Romantic movement, a flowering of literature, translations, music and historical reflection that bound them into (such a nation)."
However, upon accepting the challenge of this topic, I was presented with one further dilemma: what to wear. These days in South Africa, the motley collection of people occupying the beautiful Cape Dutch building in Cape Town that used to be our Parliament often arrive in tribal dress for the annual opening, brandishing clubs and spears. We call these knobkieries and assegais. In coming to talk to you about our “tribe”, I would therefore also have to appear in tribal dress. What does Afrikaner tribal dress look like? After thinking about it long and hard, I have decided that I should at least wear a three-piece suit. As you can see, I have also consulted my local witch-doctor who has furnished me with charms called cuff-links to protect me from the bad spirits at this conference.
The Union Building in Pretoria, seat of government, now occupied by the Xhosa tribe
Nowadays on the internet one may look on a site such as Google Earth at satellite images of various monuments in the world: the Eiffel Tower, London Bridge, Manhattan Island, as well as our seat of government, the Union Building in Pretoria. Not so long ago I spent a whole day in Pretoria with a magazine photographer who was taking pictures of me, one of those faintly embarassing moments when I as a grey-haired middle-aged male have to pose like a nubile female model of twenty. The photographer concerned was of a certain type: equally middle-aged but dressed like a teenager and professing what she thought were artistic views on politics, a kind of predictable liberalism in the American sense. She welcomed black rule in South Africa, considered crime and violence a passing blip on the upward sloping chart of optimism regarding the formation of one multiracial, multicultural nation in South Africa where, to quote Samora Machel, the former communist president of neighbouring Moçambique, "for the nation to live, the tribe must die".
In South Africa, there can be no doubt as to which tribe must die. As far as I know, the term "white tribe" was first used by Time magazine to refer to my people in 1977, after which David Dimbleby of the BBC made a four-part series in 1979 entitled "The White Tribe of Africa". The notion must have met with universal acclaim, for in the same year Dimbleby's film received the Supreme Documentary Award of the Royal Television Society. Since the late seventies the expression has become something of a commonplace, and of course it is intended as a pejorative term, to ridicule us; “tribes” are after all backward peoples, lacking in civilization.
http://www.praag.co.za/essay73.jpg
The author in front of the Union Building, from the magazine Insig
However, as I continued to gaze at the exposed abdomen of my hipster-wearing, politically correct photographer, I finally could not help passing a few ironic comments on her stereotypical views. As we stood at the Union Buildings I mused aloud, "I wonder what the people who built these buildings would have thought today if they knew that a few tribal chiefs almost one thousand miles from here, huddling around their campfire outside their huts would come to Pretoria in eighty years' time and forever subjugate their descendants to rule by their tribe, the Xhosa."
As I shall argue, South Africa is not just a story of one tribe conquering another, as the BBC or Time would have it. The greatest Xhosa chief in history, Rohlihlala Mandela, sometimes referred to as Nelson, did not just outwit FW de Klerk, the last white president of South Africa to subjugate South African whites to the most draconian regime of race preference the world has ever seen, taking the form of institutionalised anti-white racism and even "racial revenge" as a left-wing French journalist (Stephen Smith) has quite rightly called the continuing calamity of farm murders. The BBC's cliché, "the white tribe", has been followed by other slogans regularly chanted in South Africa, such as "kill a Boer, kill a farmer" or the charming one recently coined by the so-called Pan-African Students Movement of Azania (PASMA): "kill all whites, English and Afrikaans", chanted on 19 February 2005.
. . .