by Fenek Solère
His polished analusite eyes swept slowly over the small crowd, catching sight of a young impressionable French reporter called Marie Sillegue who was covering the pre-dinner speech for the Paris-based Jeune Afrique magazine.
‘If you take the Settler’s version of history at face value you would think that this great hinterland had been empty and only sporadically inhabited. And even then, decimated by internecine black-on-black tribal wars. Such as the myth the whites have created about the difaquane! Apparently, these trekkers drove off swarms of murdering Matabele to the south of the Limpopo, despite being vastly outnumbered. They would have you believe that people like myself had only began to migrate here, many years later, once the Afrikaners had built cities and developed an economy that generated sufficient wealth to feed the feckless and monotone black masses. Slowly, they will tell you, with their help, we had raised ourselves beyond bare subsistence, began to earn money, gain basic skills by attending schools established by Dutch Huguenot ingenuity, benefited from things like running water, bestowed upon us by the newcomers, who stood like blonde gods, head and shoulders above the Khoi Khoi of the bush, who they describe as wearing grass skirts and mindlessly drumming while scratching their fly-infested orifices!’
Mabuza shook his head, lifting a menacing finger into the air over the poised heads of his audience. ‘Racist propaganda,’ he hissed. ‘They chose to ignore the truth that was written into the bones of the earth. That man first learned to walk upright on this continent, established communities, developed towns and cities along the coast that traded far and wide. During the apartheid days my people were trapped in this grotesque prison of un-knowing,’ Mabuza was saying, warming now to his theme, ‘but today scholars like Chancellor Williams and his book The Destruction of Black Civilization – 4500 BC to 2000 AD are being studied in our schools. Back then, under the National Party and Klopper and van der Merwe’s BroederBond, corruption was rife, our enemy fanatical, and Lord knows they squandered the wealth so richly created by the Black African!’
He stopped for a moment to take a drink from a passing waitress. Then, after a dramatic pause in which he gazed out over the crowd, he continued: ‘They almost succeeded in turning this blessed land into a racist abomination, like Hitler’s Germany!’ There was a sharp intake of breath from those listening before the Professor went on. ‘But we opposed them, though thousands died and millions suffered. Like the Jews, we too faced a holocaust, and like the Isrealites, who wore the yellow Star of David, we were forced to carry the dompas. We swore then we would share their whites only coaches, use the same toilets and swim alongside them on the beaches. Some of my brothers and sisters paid with their lives. We saw martyrs like Steve Biko die in police custody and Chris Hani fall to a killer’s blood lust. But I and my brethren would do it all again, to cast off the shackles, march side by side with those martyred spirits of Sharpeville.’
The small half-circle surrounding him broke into spontaneous applause as they stamped to the rhythmic Toyi-Toyi dance.
‘Please, please,’ Mabuza reassured his friends, his open hands pressing downward in the air, as if to quiet their rising enthusiasm. ‘A quarter of a century or so on from the end of that hateful system and we have yet to bury the septic carcass of supremacist rule. Once all of our land is returned to us, as President Cyril Ramaphosa has promised, and the righteous majority share fully in the national wealth, all will be well again, and peace and comfort will be assured by the visionary leadership of the ANC!’
‘Do you still feel their hatred?’ someone blurted from the back. Mabuza peered toward the speaker, and gave out a serious smile. Slowly, meaningfully, he shook his head, clucking his tongue and wagging a finger before him.
‘Not so much now,’ he said, smiling. ‘Their world his turned upside down! The sound of Nkosi Sikele’ iAfrika booms out loud around the football, cricket and rugby stadiums, whilst the Afrikaner notion of Vryheid is a pipe dream for the foolish and backward few who stubbornly cling onto their ill-gotten gains.’
‘Your government will make the reparations my government is still hesitant to agree to,’ enthused a corpulent American girl called Chekilla Chaitanya who had just graduated out of a Black Studies programme from Detroit, Michigan.
‘Yes, but your people have made great strides too. Look at the new wealth redistribution policies began by Obama! The enforcement of ethnic employment legislation, the removal of symbols of oppression from parks, civic buildings, the re-naming of schools and colleges!’
‘It isn’t enough. I mean, I read David Imhotep’s book, The First Americans Were Black. Our people built America’s wealth. Look at all the inventions we brought to the West — and don’t forget, they still owe us billions of dollars for slavery!’
‘Do not worry,’ Mabuza opined, ‘Now that Trump has fallen in a few more decades the ruling whites will lose the whip-hand there, too. Look to your southern border and the reconquest of Texas and California by our Hispanic brothers. Then there are the new Americans, a generation that identify with the Black Lives Matter Movement, people just like us who will take up the sword. And then you will see how swift and mighty justice can be!’
Later, Hastings arranged to be sat opposite Marie Sillegue, the fair-skinned journalist he had noticed among the throng. As they dined, the French woman observed that Mabuza’s table manners were distinctly African. Eating open jawed, white teeth spinning, his mouth like a tumble drier full of chicken and salad. But she thought to herself, What of it? This is his kingdom. Here, he is the Alpha male, and the settlers should do what he likes, not the other way around.
Over coffee Mabuza leaned in towards Marie. ‘You like Africa,’ he remarked. ‘You are familiar with some aspects of our many cultures?’
‘Oh, yes, I love everything about this land!’
‘Everything?’ Mabuza flirted. Marie became a little embarrassed.
‘Everything,’ she ventured.
‘You are a fine-looking woman!’ Hastings was gaining in confidence.
‘Merci,’ she giggled, a blush rising under her fair skin.
‘Now,’ Hastings said in conspiratorial jest, ‘if you like I can drive you around. Show you some sites most outsiders don’t get to see?’ He winked salaciously, licking his swollen lips, waggling his tongue at her. ‘Trust me,’ he whispered, ‘you won’t regret it!’
→ The South African President speaking at the African Union Conference in Lagos re-states his intention to continue ‘the expropriation of land without compensation’ which he envisages as one of the key measures to accelerate the redistribution of land to black South Africans. He adds once again that people ‘must see this process as an opportunity’;
→ A statue is raised in Kutama, birthplace of Robert Mugabe, to honour the ‘Liberator of the Nation’;
→ The South African Minister of Development demands immediate cash injections from the World Bank, stating, ‘I am a friend of Israel and South Africa is a friend of Israel’;
→ Claims that A.N.C. leaders and their business allies have corruptly misused tens of billions of dollars in public funds since apartheid ended in 1994 is staunchly denied by the government’s official spokesperson. Quoting the President, he added, ‘This is a new dawn in the fight against malfeasance in Africa’;
→ Old photos of tycoon Harry Oppenheimer, the Head of Anglo American, a man some theories implicate in the assassination of Dr.Verwoerd, in close and friendly conversation with Cyril Ramaphosa, a radical Trade Union leader, at the time, emerge on alternative media sites;
→ The Zimbabwean Minister for Economic Development agrees to the sale of the Mararge diamond mines to an Israeli-born financier;
→ The Philadelphia Arc farm collective is forced to close and the participants dispersed under threat of arrest. The head of the group, is held in solitary confinement;
→ Angolan rapper Ebony Man performs in front of 70,000 in Sun City.
Chapter 3
We can be good Christians and at t
he same time watch over the survival of our race with a holy gravity.
— Dr William Nicol
Johan Koekemoer was a plain-speaking Boer laanie, exuding authority, spitting out his English with a strong Germanic accent. He was a widower, his wife Anke having died of bone cancer three years before. Johan drove over to the de Wet place in his beaten-up red bakkie with a young wide-shouldered man called Jooste at his side, and waited respectfully, leaving the engine running, until Gijs came out and welcomed them.
When Gijs appeared and gestured for them to come inside, Johan and Jooste threw the key on the engine and stepped down onto the dry dust of the yard, wiping their feet and removing their hats before they entered through the stoep.
‘How are you, de Wet?’ Johan asked. The younger man accompanying him looked uncomfortable with so direct a question, especially since they were surrounded with the evidence of a man struggling to cope with trauma and loss. Crockery lay piled in the basin, empty bottles were lined up on the window sill and Gijs was unshaven, his blank face vaguely processing the question before replying automatically.
‘I am OK, will be starting back to work next week!’
Johan looked sceptical.
‘You haven’t heard?’
‘Heard what?’
‘Du Plessis’s factory got burnt out Wednesday night!’
Gijs stared uncomprehendingly. ‘Burnt out?’
‘Yes, the hotties got into the compound, killed the guard with an SKS semi-automatic and used kerosene and tetriel explosives on the building. It went up like an oil rig!’
The news seemed to shake Gijs out of his stupor.
‘But why, Du Plessis played along with the government! He never had problems before?’
‘Who knows, maybe his workforce weren’t demographically representative enough?’ Johan conjectured.
‘There certainly are a lot of inflammables there,’ Gijs nodded. Then, after a moment, ‘How’s Du Plessis taken it?’
‘Badly, he’s organising something.’
Gijs blinked. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Organising…’ repeated Johan, looking Gijs carefully in the eye.
‘You mean — taking revenge?’
‘Civil defence!’
‘It’s been tried before. When the farmers from Pietermaritzburg blocked the N3 the army came in.’
‘Whose army?’
‘You know, the government,’ Gijs said discursively.
‘Fok! Who do you think is behind these things?’ Johan snapped.
‘But what can we do, realistically?’
‘We’ve got good men in the Front Nasionaal,’ Johan nodded towards Jooste, ‘and I never go anywhere without my Musler 12 gauge.’
‘Yes, I understand.’ Carrying weaponry was second nature to these folk. Gijs pointed to a Mamba semi-automatic pistol on the coffee table. ‘I sleep with my new friend there,’ he joked. They all broke out in hardened laughter. Gijs offered them a glass and they sat out on the boarded stoep, chewing lazily on strips of biltong, watching the orange sunset fall over the veldt.
←→
After they had opened a second bottle, Johan began reminiscing loquaciously about the past, his friends and their adventures.
‘You know I am not a bookish man but I can remember one passage from Nicolaas van Rensburg.’ And he began to recite, ‘We are going to have more trouble with the blacks, for years ago, shortly after the war, I saw a small black person rising out of the earth. Then I had another vision. I saw he had grown into a mighty warrior who now appeared fully out of the earth, and the shadow of the spear and shield he held above his head fell right across the land. This is far into the future. Then he disappears in fog. But before that time, I also saw darkness descending down over the land. My advice is fight, even if you do so with your backs against the wall!’
‘The Seer,’ Gijs acknowledged, taking a deep sip from a chipped tumbler. ‘My father used to speak of him.’
‘Those words stuck with me,’ the old man said, turning to wink at Jooste, ‘I live by these standards.’
‘Whatever gets you through the day!’ Gijs was offhand, his mind filling once again with the ethereal ever-present ghosts of his wife and child.
‘That is why my father became involved with Hertzog’s old Herstigte Nasionale Party back in the eighties.’
‘They lost every election after they reformed!’
‘Yes, he never reclaimed a deposit and was sacked from his job. But sometimes that is the consequence of telling the truth!’
Gijs looked up suddenly, temporarily shaken free of his reverie.
‘So what are you advocating now? The days of the Conservative Party, The Afrikaner Volksunie, The Boerstaaters and the Blankes are long gone.’
Johan shifted in his seat and shrugged. ‘Well, people are worried. We stood in Gauteng, where they banned the opera for being too white, and demanded Stellaland. Look back at the success of the Red October March in Pretoria.’
‘True, and they have good cause!’
‘They are thinking of fighting back.’
‘Organising, you mean?’ Gijs said, emphasising the euphemism that Johan had spoken earlier.
Johan paused, taking a sip of the amber drink in his glass. He looked at Gijs. ‘We are reforming the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging,’ he said.
‘Did it ever go away?’
‘Not really, but organisations like the Boere Krisisaksie, the Kommandoleer and Brandwag Volksleer have been — dormant shall we say. Now we have a new crop of militants, like Jooste here.’ The young man’s broad chest swelled with pride.
‘But we are so few and they are so many?’ Gijs sounded morose.
Johan looked at him a moment. ‘At Blood River the odds were thirty to one,’ he said firmly. ‘Are we any less men than our forefathers were?’
→ Julius Malema continues to tour the black townships;
→ Alternative media outlets fronted by Alt Right pundits report that White South African Farmers are being killed at four times the rate of other South Africans, their families being subjected to extremely high rates of rape, mutilation and torture;
→ Independent researchers indicate that the murder rates of white farmers are 97 per 100,0000 compared to 31 per 100,000 per year in South Africa as a whole, making the murder rate of white South Africans the highest murder rate in the world;
→ There is strong evidence to suggest there is government support for the farm raids by supposed ‘intruders’, in order to displace white farmers;
→ The deputy CEO of the AfriForum is found dead in the back seat of an abandoned car;
→ One Afrikaaner farmer who asked not to be named stated to the Red Cross: ‘It is politically correct to kill whites these days’;
→ A popular, if controversial, Afikaans singer claims the numbers being murdered would fill Johannesburg’s Soccer City stadium. ‘Our people die like flies’ becomes the catcall.
When his guests had departed Gijs sat alone, listening to Sunette Bridges singing Bloedrivier, thinking about his childhood. His father had made him sit and watch old documentaries of the various government ceremonies and investitures. He recalled the clatter of hooves on the hard metalled roadway. The mounted police escorts trotting along the capital’s avenues, pennants fluttering gaily from the tips of gleaming lances of expert cavalry gallivanting in their jingling chains and regalia. He remembered going with his family on the annual pilgrimage up to the Ncome river on the 16th December to celebrate the Voortreckers’ victory over an overwhelming Zulu army — the same Battle of Blood River which Johan had mentioned. There he learned how Andries Pretorius had formed a laager before a donga, facing off against fifteen thousand warriors urged on by their Izinyanga Zempi, the battle doctors, men handing out inteleze drugs that made their men euphoric, seemingly invincible to their enemies. Later he had read that the same mind-bending concoction had crazed an army of twenty-five thousand Zulus at Isandlwana and then again when they came in the
night to murder hundreds of whites in sporadic raids like that at Umgungundlovu and Blaukraans, during the time of tears.
He cast his mind back to the irony of the Day of the Vow being renamed the Day of Reconciliation, the construction of an indigenous museum on the East of the Ncome, insolently staring back at the Voortrekker Monument on the West bank. What was it Mangosuthu Buthelezi had said to mark the occasion? Oh, yes — an apology for the clubbing to death of Piet Retief by the traitorous Chief Dingaan. Then something about ‘a new covenant which binds us to the shared commitment of building a new country.’
‘Go tell that to the thousands of dead farmers from Natal to Harare,’ Gijs murmured with bitter sarcasm into the flickering starlight. He wondered how the old horse commandos would have reacted? Would they have met the Zulu assegais head on? He was in no doubt: the impis were moving again, splitting open the chests of the settlers to release their spirits to the voodoo Sky God the natives still openly worshipped.
He drank long and deep of the bitter liquor, tilting his head back and gazing into the stars.
→ The IntoAfrica Foundation dedicate a new community building in the Guguleta township to the memory of Amy Biehl (1967–1993), whom, they re-affirm, made the ultimate sacrifice in support of the Anti-Apartheid movement. Accepting the keys to the adjacent lodgings from Amy’s siblings Kim, Molly and Zach, Mzikhona ‘Easy’ Nofemela and Ntobeko Peni, who were present at the time of her death, repeated what they had said previously: ‘We were in very high spirits and the white people were oppressive. We had no mercy on the white people. A white person was a white person to our eyes’ ;