Of generations, arseholes, Israel and volkstate

'Don't you think your a bit too idealistic about Afrikaners?' alleman asked me the other day.

I had the pleasure to meet alleman for the first time. I have admired alleman's blog for some time now. And I find it hard to disagree with most he says.

This week a 'hewige' (heavy) debate raged on my blog. Somebody even called alleman a communist. A certain Marthinus, a young AWB sympathiser nogal, told us:

'Forgive me for getting worked up, but when i speak to older whites in south africa that still advocate this 'democracy' that we so suffer in, it just makes me see red. You wil have to go very far to find a liberal white youngster here in sa. Putting all political convictions aside, we will have to work together if we want a future here in africa. The only way 4ward for us is to create an exclusive afrikaner state. A simple fact is that we are white so the volkstaat will be white too otherwise its just another mini new sa, with all the same issues.'

I won't repeat all that was said in that debate wholesale. Go read it yourself.

But I thought about what alleman asked allot lately. Perhaps Afrikaners are irredeemable arseholes and I'm really wasting my time.

I mean Marthinus feels insulted that I said that the old ZAR Transvaal Republic was liberal. Which it patently was. The word liberal is a swearword to him. Incredible. Marthinus agrees with all those that say we were always arseholes. And apparently we should be proud of it!

My pro-Afrikaner arguments on this blog is probably over egging it on occasion. Marthinus has a point. Afrikaners are conservative. But I don't think Marthinus has been paying attention to the news lately.

The current government has been supporting the Burmese, a military dictatorship, the Sudanese, an ultra conservative Islamic state with a taste for genocide, and have been advocating beetroot as a cure for Aids instead of scientifically tested drugs. How do you out conservative that? Last time I checked a Kenyan tribe refused to give up power even though they lost an election. Time to learn a lesson from Afrikaners perhaps chaps?

What I find interesting is that somebody like Marthinus actually bothers to debate these issues with us. Recently (warning: name drop) I was speaking to Andries Bezuidenhout. Andries said its 'quite weird, when we were students, before the end of apartheid when we rode into a town with our long hair and boerepunk clothes we were made to feel distinctly unwelcome. Even in Pretoria you had men hanging out of windows shouting "Sny jou hare!" (Cut your hair!)

Now when traveling the small towns in the Free State your welcomed with open arms. Invited to braai's and fetted in the kroe (bars). But we still kinda look the same. '

It was true.

Afrikaans dorpies like Parys are pinning for more gays to move there, because nothing regenerates and ads cool to a town AND pushes up the property value like gay neighbors.

So what's changed? Power has changed. Power has a tendency to make you ugly. Lack of power makes people so much more accommodating.

But back to Marthinus. Apparently young Afrikaners are tired of us older ones telling them to give the new SA a chance.

We too felt fed up with our elders circa 1989. We listed to Johannes Kerkorrel singing "Ons is moeg vir apatie, ons soek anargie, ons soek 'n nuwe energie"

And boy did we get what we were asking for. Anarchy galore. I have often wondered where I would have stood politically then if I knew what I know now. I might make that a subject of a post sometime. But if you think this is a Damascus blogging moment, your out of luck. I would still have campaigned for the end of apartheid.

But I have to concede that many of the things the Afrikaners Nationalists had learn't from a 300 year history in Africa should probably not have been so easily been dismissed by us.

My message to the likes of Marthinus would be. Sure, we made some mistakes, but there's much you can learn from the ouer garde. We know what a white state of repression was like. We know that apartheid did not work practically and it was wrong.

And we helped lay the foundation - in a modest way - for Afrikanerdom to live and indeed perhaps to die in justice.

Coincidentally yesterday was the 60th commemoration of the founding of the state of Israel. Despite its power and military success the web is littered with articles of Israelies fearing for their countries future. Israel has secured its future and in the process of going about this securing they lost the moral high ground. Metaphysical rats are gnawing at the mighty Israel's soul.

And its having practical results. Increasingly educated and secular jews are choosing to emigrate. The country is becoming more fundamentally religious, more intransigent, less a hotbed of innovation and research and stretching the patience of even the USA. It's a vicious circle, if it spirals out of control it will threaten to reap a whirlwind that could destroy Israel from within.

Afrikaans poet N P van Wyk Louw wrote a long time ago that it's better for a nation to cease to exist than to live forth in injustice.

But of course nations don't just die. Not just like that.

In this era when it seems that half of white middle-class SA is contemplating emigrating I have been thinking of that concept that was in vogue shortly before 1994. An Afrikaner Volkstaat.

Personally I think the idea is premature. We have to see to what extent the new ANC can change it ways. There has been some encouraging signs. More importantly South African civil society has started to flex its muscles at last. If South Africa could work. It would be a remarkable country. It is an idea worth fighting and holding out for.

Most of my Afrikaner friends aver that they would not like to live in a Volkstaat. Some have an ideological objection to one. Personally I feel that if your contemplating emigration you can not really object to a Volkstaat per se. Many Afrikaners are not in a position to emigrate.

But the shape and conduct of such a state will matter very much to all Afrikaners whether you live in it or not. Just ask the jews.

PS: There's now an interesting blog form a BoereJodin. (An Afrikaner jew)

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Expanding Israel is heading for apartheid

US foreign policy is utterly in the grip of a loose but extremely effective group of pro-Isreal lobbyists. And this is not only bad for the US of A, but for Israel as well.


"Shema israel"
Originally uploaded by ido1.

Mhambi attended a speech on Friday evening by John Mearsheimer, who recently together with Stephen Walt, published a highly controversial book called 'The Israel lobby'. Controversial it should not be. It was a well argued but actually rather obvious point he made.

But the fact that it is so controversial just underscores his point. The lobby is stifling an open exchange of ideas around Israel's future.

Unconditional support

Mearsheimer argues that the USA is the only country with any real influence in the region. Consecutive US Governments have thought that the only possible successful resolution of the conflict, is a solution based on the Two States, and would entail the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

Yet even though Israel is the largest recipient of US Aid in the World, has been shielded by the USA in the security council, against express US wishes, Israel has continued to build and expand on Palestinian land.

So, what's the rational explanation for this unconditional support that the USA is giving Israel? It's not justified on strategic grounds. On the contrary, it's a strategic liability because the unconditional support is creating considerable resentment towards the USA in the Muslim world and elsewhere as well.

It can not be explained by US electoral pressure either. Surveys done in the US have shown that although US citizens have sympathy for Israel, this sympathy is not unconditional. They would rather their be a resolution to the Middle East conflict.

Is it not justifiable due to the fact that Israel is a democracy? There are many democracies, like Spain, and New Zealand, and they do not get unconditional support he argues.

So what explains this seeming irrational US foreign policy? The lobby he says. Who is this lobby? They are an extremely successful example of a typical American form of political organization. Another good example is the National Rifle Association.

The lobby consists of many groups, they are not centrally controlled, but are extremely well organized, well funded and very influential. Many of the are in fact Christian Zionists and other fundamentalist Christians and not Jews. And one of their most effective weapons is the smear.

Like for instance calling critics of Israely policy anti-Semites. As an example Mearsheimer mentioned Jimmy Carter, who's book which compared Israely policies with apartheid, was greeted with accusations that he is in bed with clansman David Duke.

So effective is the lobby, that no sitting US politician would dare criticize Israel. A few have, but very few have survived in their posts or progressed in their careers.

The lobby is harming Israel

But the result is not only bad for the USA, its actually harming Israel as well. Why?

Israel has basically three options if it does not choose the way of the Two State Solution and continues to pursue the path of a greater Israel.

The first is that greater Israel becomes a regular democracy affording all its citizens, including the Palestinians equal rights.

But says Mearsheimer, if he was a Jewish Israeli he would not be too excited by this option. Bi-national states do not have a very good track record. And what's more, soon the Palestinians will outnumber the Jews. (I would hazard a guess that not many Afrikaners would endorse this option as a sensible course for Israel to take.)

The second option is a kind of ethnic cleansing. This does not have to necessarily mean mass killings. But the expulsion of all the Palestinians from Palestine. It's unlikely that the Palestinians would leave without considerable resistance though. I say.

The third option is to have the Palestinians as second class citizens, so that they can not gain power even if the Jews are a minority. This option inevitably leads us to apartheid state.

Not great choices are they?

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