Tim du Plessis on the new Afrikaner

Tim du Plessis, editor of Rapport disagrees with lefty Afrikaner journalist Max du Preez. Max reckons the De la Rey song phenomena is due to bad old attitudes refusing to die and an inability to adjust. Du Plessis, has already warned that the Afrikaners are restless and that he thinks that when Afrikaners stand together, it's a bad news. But now he his opinion has shifted somewhat.

I Believe in Light
Originally uploaded by Arnold Pouteau's.

Like the Soweto generation of 1976, who brushed aside the "quiet diplomacy" approach of their parents, the De la Rey generation of 2006 is telling my
generation (50-plus): "If you feel hesitant to reclaim your Afrikaans identity,
then make way. We don't."

White Afrikaners, even progressive ones, firmly believe that only cities and towns with Afrikaans names are being targeted for name changes.

And they were quite upset to learn that the, mostly white, military conscripts who died in the conflict in Namibia and Angola in the 1970s and 1980s will not be honoured in the proposed wall of remembrance in Freedom Park in Pretoria, while the names of the Cuban victims, who fought with the ANC and Swapo, will be there.

Does all of this mean an Afrikaner rebellion is brewing? I don't think so. Rise and resist to achieve what? End up in C-Max like the Boeremag trialists?

No way, though some people did feel a tinge of sympathy, especially when seeing the gloating presence of police commissioner Jackie Selebi in court following the arrest of the two fugitive trialists three weeks ago.

Afrikaners are merely migrating to a new space. It's a natural, spontaneous process without the erstwhile marshals of the Nat party, the Broederbond and the Afrikaans churches.

It's not the dead-end radicalism of the Boeremag, but it's also not ANC
co-option personified by the acquiescent presence of Marthinus van Schalkwyk in
the Mbeki cabinet.

They had no choice but to become new South Africans. Now they want to be new Afrikaners.

Read the whole article here.

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