THE INDISPENSABLE AFRIKANER

Fergal Keane argues that lazy and selective

reporting conceals the truth about white South Africans

Eastern Transvaal ATTIE'S fat, sweating body barely squeezed into the khaki shorts and shirt of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement. Wads of flesh tumbled out over his waist- band as he strutted up and down outside the hall where the 'great traitor' was speaking. Every few minutes Attie or one of the other right-wingers in the square would approach the police line and rail against the men in blue. How could they take the side of de Klerk and the blacks against their own people? Had they no self-respect left?

`You are Mandela's men,' a particularly *vicious-looking youngster proclaimed, his right hand resting on the handle of a large automatic pistol. The policemen stood firm, refusing to be drawn into a verbal battle. Frustrated, Attie stormed away and sat down in the shade of a huge jacaranda tree. I approached tentatively and asked him why he hated de Klerk. At this the simmering frustration exploded. He stood up and answered in a great rush of beery breath. `You people,' he declared, `you think he's like Jesus Christ and you want the country to be destroyed by those black bastards. That's what you want.' Attie jabbed his finger hard into the centre of my chest and lowered his voice. 'Now lis- ten, my friend,' he said, lust take yourself 'Hi, honey, we're homeless.' and your communist pals out of here now. Move.'

Attie and his accomplices graced the screens of several television networks that evening, a menacing counterpoint to the pictures of the sweet and reasonable Presi- dent de Klerk. With their guns and fascist insignia and doom-laden prophecies of war, the legions of the extreme Right make excellent radio and television. Assuming he agrees to be interviewed, the average Boer extremist will readily testify to how blacks are mentally subnormal, how their wish is to drink and copulate all day, how they smell like sheep and steal whenever the boss's back is turned. The grand finale of any such interview is invariably a vow to fight to the death. This promise is fre- quently made with the subject posing in a field of maize, clutching a rifle and with several blond children (preferably armed) by his side. Thus the rural Afrikaner is por- trayed as the political and social nean- derthal, a creature far removed from the renaissance men who throng the ranks of de Klerk's reborn National Party. These new Afrikaners wear smart suits and silk ties, are on chummy first-name terms with ANC leaders, and fall over themselves to announce that they had personally been against apartheid all along. With the pious faces of reverend mothers, they deliver chorus after chorus of self-justification and snicker up their sleeves at the country cousins. I have even heard a good many self-proclaimed liberals suggesting that what is needed is a short, sharp military clampdown to sort out the right-wingers once and for all. Once those rednecks are out of the way everything will be fine, they argue. There is more than a hint of malice abroad.

For the lazy journalist, this picture 3f neo-Nazi baboons on one side and the new

moderates on the other provides a simple explanation of South Africa's current crisis. It is, of course, a gross distortion. The gun- toting fascists among the ranks of Afrikan- erdom are comparatively few, in spite of the overwhelming prominence given them by journalists. Hidden by the simplifica- tions of the mass media are the stoic majority who work hard and obey their God. They rise with the dawn and work until dark; they go to church on Sunday and are scrupulous about paying their debts, giving employment and housing to vast armies of black workers and their families. Of course, they profited from apartheid. They ardently supported the mass evictions, the tribal homeland system and the ruthlessness of the security police. Without cheap black labour they would never have created the vast ranches of the heartland. But in being guilty of the sin of profiting from apartheid are they any dif- ferent from the huge business conglomer- ates who built their empires on the backs of armies of black workers, while proclaim- ing themselves to be liberals? The rural Afrikaners were at least honest about their belief in white supremacy, refusing to cloak their language in the manner of the urban elite, which now rushes to condemn them.

In many ways they remind me of the dour Unionist farmers of County Antrim, possessed of a powerful sense of self- reliance and a flinty determination to hold fast to the land of their ancestors. Like the Ulster Protestants, they are outnumbered and live perpetually in fear of betrayal by politicians who hurry from one compro- mise to the next. The men who once urged them to worship apartheid are now scram- bling to secure their places in the new power structure. The fact that F.W. de Klerk and most of his cabinet were until a few years ago ardent supporters of racial discrimination is conveniently forgotten in the rush to heap all the blame on the country bumpkins.

Even the Broederbond — Afrikaner- dom's answer to the masonic lodge which controlled every level of govern- ment and engineered some of the worst cruelties of the apartheid years, has joined the ranks of the born-again multiracialists. This organisation, which sent police to scour people's beds for evidence of mul- tiracial sex, now speaks piously of the need to broaden the Afrikaner nation and include non-whites in its ranks. The sound of rodent battalions galloping from sinking ships is loud in the air. A new power elite is emerging, a conspiracy of political con- venience from which the stolid farmers with their antique views are excluded.

That the rural Afrikaners are badly served by the leadership of the oafish Eugene Terre'Blanche and the politically naïve General Constand Viljoen is undoubtedly true. The right-wing leaders have waited too long to define their objec- tives, and have now produced an unwork- able plan for an ethnic white state. But to sweep the conservative Afrikaners aside as if they were archaic irrelevancies or to sug-

gest that they should be quelled by force of arms is dangerous nonsense. They would almost certainly lose a war, but the resul- tant economic chaos could easily reduce the country to a wasteland. Without them South Africa would become a basket-case along the lines of Zaire or Zambia.

What is needed is less moral grandstand- ing on the part of the ANC/government alliance and its western friends, and more compassion and understanding. The people who turned the vast hinterland into thriving farmland should be treated as valued citi- zens, and not subjected to the odium and rejection which has become their lot. Any half-sane country should fall over itself to nurture people like these, and not reduce them to the status of outlaws.

Take the example of Boet Van Rens- burg, who farms several thousand acres on the rolling platteland about two hours drive east of Johannesburg. On the day I went to see him, teams of workers were busy in the fields tending the maize crop, others were hard at work in the dairy where a herd of fat Friesians was being lined up for milk- ing. Everywhere there was movement and bustle. Boet strode out to greet me with a warm handshake and an offer of coffee.

As we passed through the sitting-room, I noticed a large Bible sitting on an ancient dresser. Above the dresser was a water- colour depicting a pastoral scene from the days of the Voortrekkers: a tiny white- washed cottage sat in the folds of a vast mountainscape, the trail of smoke rising

'It's wrong to consider yourself a loser, Mr Conley. Rather, think of yourself as an enabler of others to win.' from the chimney like a prayer in the emptiness of the land. Boet told me that the cottage was like the one his grandpar- ents lived in before they trekked out of South Africa in the bitter years that fol- lowed the end of the Boer War. Defeated and disillusioned, they had crossed the Limpopo and travelled to Northern Rhodesia where they began farming deep in the bush. For a while they prospered in the adopted country, giving employment and producing food. Then came indepen- dence and the beginning of the country's slow economic death. The Van Rensburgs packed up and headed south to begin all over again on the platteland. As he talked, Boet pointed to the photographs of dead relatives on the sitting-room walls. Most had died young of TB or malaria on farms which were hundreds of miles from the nearest hospital. Their thin, grey faces spoke of hard lives and long journeys back and forth across the wilderness.

Boet wanted me to understand that he did not hate blacks. He did not call them kaffirs (dogs) or beat them up, and he paid a living wage to his workers, as well as tak- ing care of their food, housing and medical requirements. 'I just don't want to be ruled by them,' he said. He spoke of the rise in violent crime in the area, the break-ins and murders and the endless theft of livestock and farm machinery. There was also the drought which ravaged the previous year's maize crop and turned the soil into dust.

All of this he believed could be linked to the political situation, as if the Afrikaners were being punished by God for relaxing their iron grip. 'Look what happened to us in Northern Rhodesia. They'll do the same here, just you watch. And then, when peo- ple are starving and the economy is in ruins, then they'll come to us for help,' said Boet. I asked whether he thought there would be a civil war of the kind pre- dicted by Terre'Blanche and his stormtroopers. Boet flinched at the men- tion of the name. If people tried to take away his farm, then he would fight. But talking about war was a lot easier than actually going out and waging it. 'I don't want a war and people should be very careful about threatening it. It is an easy way to lose everything,' he added. He clearly had as little time for the AWB as he had for the opposition.

Boet was determined to stay put. There would be no more trekking away to a new white homeland, no abandoning the land and the people who worked on it. All he wanted was the recognition that he and men like him could live in peace and secu- rity and not be treated as lepers. He was secretary of the local farmer's association and he said his neighbours shared his feel- ings. They did not like what was happen- ing but they recognised the reality of the situation. Unlike the Ulster Protestants, there was no larger power willing to guar- antee — however conditionally — their position; black rule was coming and it was a case of running to the city or making the

best of things on the farms. Most were tak- ing the second option. To abandon the land was a sacrilege that could not even be contemplated.

The sacred attachment to the land will, I believe, eventually save the rural Afrikan- ers from the folly of their leaders and the cynical manoeuvring of their opponents. The new regime might be tempted to treat them roughly, but the economic wasteland in the countries to the north should serve as a warning against alienating those who produce the food and create the wealth. Subtle changes in ANC attitudes towards the farmers suggest that South Africa's future leaders have realised this. A minori- ty of right-wingers will probably take up arms and the situation will appear desper- ate for a while. But a mass uprising of Afrikaners seems distinctly improbable. In their three and a half centuries on the continent of Africa, the Boers have watched the empires of the Dutch, the British, the Zulus and now their own fall away. Through it all they have maintained a simple belief in the certainty of their divine deliverance, a conviction which has enabled them to overcome the mightiest odds. It is that steadfastness which leads me to believe that men like Boet van Rens- burg will be tilling the soil of Africa long after the pious braying of their critics has been swallowed up by history.

Fergal Keane is BBC Radio's southern Africa correspondent.