Afrikanerdom bids for power
Sir: Frank Clements's 'Rhodesia : Afrikanerdom Bids For Power' (25 August), by implying that such a bid is sinister, may suggest to some readers that Rhodesian English-speakers are not. There is a connection here with the previous page of the same issue, 'Why They Hate the Tories by Andrew Alexander. On my way back to Britain in 1964, I met Rhodesians and Kenya Englishmen and I was appalled. They had an air of con- sciously exuding superiority which I had neser met before. Not in fifteen years lived in the land of apartheid, Verwoerd and Vorster! After I had met these English colonials, I began to feel that even half-educated Afrikaner cops from the Transvaal backveld were angels with wings. Extreme they might be: violent too; but only the English Rhodesians and Kenyamen have that fearsome arrogance.
They are, in fact, Mr Alexander's Archetypal Tory—only (like that line we learned of in school geometry) projected to infinity. The South African English-speaker, by contrast, is, for many reasons, a moderate animal (though many of him, I admit, now vote for Vorster). The worst you can say of him is that if the Afrikaners are. roughly, the Nazi Party, the South African English-speakers are those "decent Germans" who disapproved of the Nazis, but not strongly enough to stop them.
It is worth noting also that in every liberal and/or welfare organisation in South Africa there is'usually a rebel Afrikaner, fighting twice as hard for the cause as Anglo-Saxon, Celt or Jew. In joining any non-Nationalist organisation. he has probably been cut completely adrift from his family, like a 19th-century Scot going over to Rome. Whereas if English-speakers fight the Nets, it is at least considered as part of their tradition and their folk stay with them.
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