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15 August 2012

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In 1994 a week after Mandela's inauguration, I finally decided to go to the Voortrekker Monument. Yes, I did gloat at the demise of the notorious political order that the monument symbolize. However, what surprised me was a bit of sadness that I felt when it struck me that it was possible that in a few generations there might not be any Afrikaners left since emigration would turn their grandchildren into Australians, Americans, Canadians, etc, and I surprised myself by feeling a little sad for all the toil, bloodshed and energy that would be reduced to this now tawdry seeming monument.

I am only now reading a number of your recent articles because I wanted to give them the necessary time they required. As always, thank you for the multilayered history lesson.

I find that monument fascinating- historically, architecturally, photographically. I think my legs would be somewhat wobbly walking up to it today- don't know how the hell you managed it back in '89!

This Life Magazine report unfortunately played into some damaging misconceptions as it infers that the Afrikaners are all descended from the Boers & places too much emphasis on the Boers' ancestors when in reality the Afrikaners are overwhelmingly of Cape Dutch descent. The creation of the Voortrekker Monument & the centennial celebrations of the Great Trek was part of the clever strategy which led to the Afrikaner capture of the Boer Nation. The report makes out as though the Boer people were ascending to power when in reality it was the Cape Dutch & the National Party in particular.

The report asserts a number of misconceptions as the Boers are not of Dutch descent but rather mainly of German [ north western region ] / French Huguenot & Danish origin. The Boers' language is not Afrikaans as Afrikaans was created & imposed by the Cape Dutch as the Boers' dialect was classified as being its own dialect.

The Boers would bivouac & congregate every year at Pretoria on December 16 [ as noted in the book Oom Paul's People published in 1900 ] to commemorate the date as a date of thanksgiving long before the Afrikaners' began to ascend & hijack this tradition to fulfill their teleocratic agenda [ driven by the Afrikaner Broederbond & manifesting within the National Party ] which was actually inimical to the actual Boer people as it relegated the Boers as a subordinate people to the will of the Afrikaners. The Boers tried to restore their old Boer Republics during the 1940s only to be opposed by the Afrikaner establishment which was united in its opposition to the efforts of the Boer Republicans. Prime Minister D F Malan himself was of Cape Dutch origin. The Life Magazine article was in fact documenting the Afrikaner usurpation of the Boers' heritage but the rightly noted naivety of the reporter did not appear to notice this significant fact.

The Boers are the smaller segment of the so called Afrikaners [ a political term promoted by the British & coined by Cape Dutch intellectuals prior at a time when the Boers were independent within their Boer Republics ] as they are out numbered by the larger Cape Dutch segment thus are marginalized within the Afrikaner designation.

Not all Boers were fooled by the Afrikaners' propaganda as Robert van Tonder - the founder of Randburg - left the National Party in 1961 in order to advocated for the restoration of the Boer Republics as a just alternative to the Apartheid policies of the British & Afrikaners. It is a crying shame that to this day the Boers' reputation has been calumniated by the actions of the Afrikaners who hijacked this pivotal event of Boer history & heritage to promote their agenda to take over the macro State of South Africa - as a lot of people around the world have no idea that the Boers were ALSO under Apartheid & were repressed by the National Party government which had suppressed the use of the term Boer which we still see happening. The true story of the Boers has been routinely suppressed as it was always a threat to those who control the macro State whether in the past or now.


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