BEHIND THE "BOEREHAAT"
From TRUMPET, #234, P.O. BOX 141, RONDEBOSCH 7701 SOUTH AFRICA
This long article is by the late Jaap Marais writing as leader of the Herstigte Nasionale Party (HNP) of South Africa. It is an ongoing saga that continues as we write: "In his booklet How They Hate Us by H.M. Moolman provides many examples of the Kaleidoscope of libellous slandering of Afrikaner leaders by English journalists in the years following the electoral victory by the National Party in 1948.
What would serve as an introduction to this collection of infamy is a revealing admission by Lord Deeds a former editor of Daily Telegraph who later became a Minister in the Conservative Party Government.
In an interview with Jack Viviers, published in the Afrikaans Sunday newspaper, Rapport, on 22 May 1994, reference was made to the anticipated return of South Africa to the Commonwealth, and Lord Deedes intimated that if F.W. de Klerk might have been a party to such a decision "It would remove a large part of venom from the view held by a considerable number of influential Britons on Afrikaners."
So here from the horse’s mouth, is proof of the real English sentiments about Afrikaners, the buzz word being "venom".
The relevant newspaper article reads further: The attitude of the Brits particularly the Mandarins of the British Foreign Office, who were in the vanguard of the fight against the National Government, was explained to me by Lord Deedes."
This makes it clear that the fight against the National Government of South Africa was British policy. That being so, it means that a secret undeclared British war was being fought against the Afrikaner people, as represented by the legitimately installed Afrikaner government. The British Ministry and the Foreign Office were in the vanguard of this resumption of the Boer War. The defeat of General J.C. Smuts in the 1948 general elections was the trigger pulled for the renewal of the British war against the Boers. As long as Smuts ruled South Africa, the Boers could be kept in place and South Africa could remain a British country, as was the object of the Boer War, voiced by Winston Churchill in 1899: "The issue of this war is whether South Africa is to be a British country, or a Boer country".
In May 1948, as a result of the political defeat of Smuts – "the greatest Englishman south of the equator" – the alarm bells started ringing in the entire British establishment. "Smuts’ as the former editor of The Natal Witness’, G.H. Calpin wrote, "Had made South Africa a British country". The British flag flew over South Africa and one of the public holidays was Empire Day.
But on 26 May 1948 Smuts was defeated at the polls, and as Calpin wrote in the book referred to above, the Afrikaner rejoiced: "At last we got our country back". The outcome of the Boer War had been reversed. That was when "the Mandarins of the Foreign Office" stepped into the vanguard of the fight against the National Government to make South Africa a British country again.
"I seem to sense the same lies’, wrote Arthur Barlow in that we may tread safely, "the same attack on the Afrikaner and his Government, the same knavish tricks that characterized the years before the English War in our country".
Barlow was a former newspaper editor and later member of the South African Parliament for many years. What he was referring to had previously been succinctly described by Gen. Smuts before the outbreak of the war in October 1899.
In A century of Wrong Smuts wrote: "We have been slandered, harried, and treated with all possible disdain and contempt….Our people have been represented by influential statesmen, and on hundreds of platforms in England as incompetent, uncivilized, dishonourable, untrustworthy, corrupt, blood-thirsty, treacherous, etc. etc. so that not only the British Public, but nearly the whole world, has begun to believe that we are on the same level as wild beasts….We have been forced to hear from formal Blue Books issued by Her Majesty’s Government that our unscrupulous government, our unjust, unprincipled and disorderly administration, was a running, festering sore which, like a pestilential vapour, has defiled the moral and political atmosphere in Africa….We have been accused in numerable newspapers of all sorts of misdeed against civilization and humanity: crimes have been imputed to us, the bare narration of which makes ones hair stands on end! If the reading public were to believe a fraction of the enormities which have been laid at the doors of our people and government, they would be forced to conclude that this land was a den of thieves and a sink of iniquity, a people, in fact, whose very existence is a blot upon humanity, a nuisance to mankind…. "This is the calumny that the Afrikaners had to endure while the British power centre was preparing for a war against the Boer republics.
There is truth in the saying that history repeats itself. A hundred years after Smuts had written these words, the Afrikaners are again being accused in innumerable newspapers of all sorts of misdeeds against civilization and humanity, and are represented as "a people, in fact, whose very existence is a blot upon humanity…."
(This incidentally was the same General Smuts who, after the war deserted his people and was engulfed by the British establishment.)
What makes this slanderous campaign against the Afrikaner people more shocking is that it was not the first time that these disgusting tactics had been employed.
James Anthony Foude, the British historian, wrote in 1886 in Oceania about the annexation of the Transvaal by Shepstone in 1877: "We justified our conquest to ourselves by taking away the character of the conquered, and we constituted ourselves the champion of the coloured races against them, as if they were oppressors and robbers. They (the Dutch) were regarded I England as slave owners at heart, as barbarians and tyrants, as illiterate savages, as the real cause of all that had gone wrong. The unfavourable impression of them became a tradition of the English press, and unfortunately, of the Colonial Office. The Boers have been so systematically abused and misrepresented that the English scarcely regarded them as human beings to whom they owed no moral consideration."
How deep-seated must malice be to make people sink to such a level? And yet as shown above in the quotation from Smuts’ writing, it was repeated just some fifteen years on.
To confirm Smuts’ perception, a journalist, Julian Ralph in 1900 wrote: "The curious breed the Boers, produced in Africa, is descended from the scum of the Netherlands, and has since degenerated even further beneath the level of its lowly origins: the people have become even more stupid, filthy and crude than their forefathers…."
What is more shocking being that a further fifty years later, as Moolman shows in How They Hate Us, the same calumny was again repeated a second time.
It is impossible to think that a person such as the writer could claim even a semblance of ethical standards in his writings about the Afrikaners. Such fulminations can only have emanated from a mind poisoned by hatred.
The quotation above was not the product of the hate-filled mind of a single person, but an inculcated animosity towards Afrikaners that even spanned two generations, was shown by a report in The Telegraph published in 1959, almost 60 years later: "Today’s Afrikaners are the product of the scum and dregs of the 18th century Holland and Germany…. The Afrikaans language has emerged from the idiom that these dregs took with them to the Cape…."
This language only demeans the writer who simply adds to his insults and stupidity by continuing: "How could it be otherwise since the children were brought up by Coloured slaves, and the parents were ill-bred louts from the lowest levels of Dutch society.... The inevitable occurred: the inherited lack of intelligence of their Dutch forefathers has brought the Afrikaners where they are today."
Could Afrikaners be blamed if they were enraged by such a calculated vilification of their people? Such ragged talk merely reflects the discomfort their critics feel with the beautiful nation so recently developed despite British hatred and adversity. Plain "Boerehaat" is what this phenomenon is called in South Africa.
To show how deliberately slanderous are remarks such as the above-quoted, one may merely look at what men of repute said about the Afrikaners. For example, Ramsay MacDonald, a former Prime Minister of Britain, visited South Africa shortly after the South African War, and his report stated clearly that he was against the war. MacDonald was shocked about the devastation of the two republics brought about the British Empire.
Perhaps more remarkable for various reasons is the statement by Joseph Chamberlain in 1881, when he was not a member of the Tory Government. "The Boers", he said, "are not by nature a belligerent race…. they are inspired by a deep-seated and austere religious feeling from their forefathers, from whom they inherited their unconquerable love of independence. Is it against such a nation that we are called upon to bring into practice the awfully arbitrary decision of the sword? They are the people who settled in the Transvaal to be rid of foreign domination. In 1852 we undertook to recognize and guarantee their independence. Under these circumstances, is it possible to maintain the annexation of that country by force, without the charge being levelled at us: the commission of a national crime?"
A few days later in the Lower House he stated: "The annexation was an act that I could describe as an act of force, deceit and foolishness."
His is the more significant in the light of the previously quoted statement by prof. J.A. Froude about the annexation, namely that the "Boers have been so systematically abused and misrepresented that the English scarcely regarded them as human beings."
Another Englishman who made remarks about the Afrikaners, was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who had been involved in the South African War. In The Great War he wrote that the Boers were the most formidable antagonists ever to cross the path of Imperial Britain, which taking into consideration their numbers, meant that they were superior fighters. Perhaps because Afrikaners have confounded their detractors it was more the reason for the British foreign office continuation of the campaign against them as will be partially highlighted herein.
In 1960 a South African Minister Paul Sauer, visited various countries. On his return he expressed his shock at the hostility shown by the British media against South Africa under Afrikaner rule.
I was struck by the stream of poison which had it origin in BRITAIN. You are constantly aware of it. Almost every country has newspapers, and all of them spread poison against South Africa. The same goes for the BBC. What proceeds from Britain today is nothing less than hymn of hate against South Africa.:
Everybody knows that a hate campaign is symptomatic of the conduct of war – the Boer War continued by other means from the British Foreign Office.
What is of paramount importance is the uniform and orchestrated vengeful way in which English newspapers dealt with South Africa.
Edward Hallett Carr in The Soviet Impact on the Western World published in 1964, throws light on this question, particularly in view of the Foreign Office’s undeclared war against the National Party Government of South Africa, as mentioned by Lord Deedes and dealt with earlier herein.
Carr writes "A method employed by the British Government with far greater success was the institution of a press department at the Foreign Office which issues regular information and guidance on the British point of view to the British press, and such parts of the foreign press as are amenable to it. Its services to the foreign press may be regarded as part of the British propaganda of foreign countries.
"Its services to the home press are more significant and less familiar. It easily makes itself indispensable, since the Foreign Office has at its disposal a large volume of interesting and important news not accessible in any other way. Its function of selection gives it enormous power to mould opinion. His mere decision to release or withhold certain information about Britain may profoundly affect public emotions about that country and radically change the public attitude towards it: and the discreet advice the department sometimes gives to play up or play down points of friction with particular countries is scarcely needed. The same carefully selected information, and the same guidance and advice, reach the BBC through other channels, and are still more effective….
So the hymn of hate emanating from Britain against the Afrikaners undoubtedly has its origin in the Foreign Office. But what is more is that the Foreign Office works in collaboration with the British secret services. And in The Silent Conspiracy published in 1993, Stephen Dorril writes, "Journalism has been the natural recruiting ground for the security services. John le Carre, who worked for MI 6 and MI5 between 1960 and 1964 has made the amazing statement that the British Secret Service controlled large sections of the press. In 1975 American Senate hearings revealed that half the foreign staff of a British daily was on the MI6 payroll."
So, there we have it. Behind the slanderous attacks on the Afrikaners in English newspapers is the British Foreign Office and the British Secret Services. There the "hymns of hate" against the Afrikaners are composed and from there they are orchestrated. The Boer War, after 1948, was continued as Alfred Milner had previously said, "The South African Struggle continues. It is no longer war with bullets, but it is still ‘War by vilification and character assassination."
The Boer War of 1899-1902 did not achieve the object as envisaged by Winston Churchill when he was reporting for the Morning Post. "There is’ he said, "only one way to break the Boer’s resistance, namely the harshest suppression. In other words, we must kill the parents so that the children can learn to respect us." It is difficult to imagine what the ethical standards of such a man might have been, but evidently, he would not have baulked at what in World War II was called "the final solution, and which meant extermination.
An English academic, Prof. Callender, writes on Churchill: He was typical of his class, and especially of Tory society, in that he was drenched with overwhelming self-esteem. Ethics meant nothing to him…. Obsessed with Rule Britannia they stood the Darwinian hypothesis on its head and argued that to ensure the survival of the fittest (themselves) the elimination of the unwanted (by them) was a patriotic duty."
Winston Churchill’s callousness towards the Afrikaners might have been inherited, as in the 1890’s Lord Randolph Churchill was saying: "The days of the Dutch as an independent people in South Africa are numbered. They will disappear, unloved, unsung, scarcely ever remembered."
Was he expressing a wish, or was he voicing the real policy of the British establishment, which was to cause the disappearance of the Afrikaner people?
Yet, though losing 27,000 of their women and children (about 15% of the population) in concentration camps in an ethnic cleansing operation, and having 30,000 of their farms destroyed, the spirit of the Boers was not broken. The heroic struggle and the superior military qualities shown by their leaders, commanded the respect of the world and filled them with pride. Defying the British power after the war, they took up the political struggle and in 1948 "got their country back" as G.H. Calpin wrote.
That was when the hymn of hate against South Africa was released by the Foreign Office and Secret Service and taken up by the English press in a resumption of the "Boer war."
Many nations have gone to war in defence of their freedom and fatherland, but it is revealing that of the 278 wars in which European states were involved from 1480 to 1940, England had proved to be the most aggressive, being responsible of 28% of the total, followed by France (26%), Spain (23%), Russia (22%) and Austria (19%), with the Netherlands and Prussia-Germany 8% each. (Quincy Wrote in A Study of War. 1942).
Already in 1883 Sir John Seely had written: "Surely war has always been England’s Prime Industry". And England’s Wars were fought for financial gain, as Sir William Harcourt once admitted to Scaweb Blunt when he said: "The British public was insisting on the slaughter of the Matabeles to procure for themselves markets. But whereas it used to slaughter for glory of the thing…. now they had given that up, now it was slaughter for trade". This is part of the history of a nation whose establishment is telling others about ethical standards!
Mahatma Ghandi, before an English court that sent him to prison for six years in 1922, said: "India has and as for Ireland, Pendergast wrote in his "Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland". "From 1949 on, five-sixths of the total population lost their lives in wars of conquest. When Cromwell died in 1658, Ireland was one great wilderness….one could travel for 50 kilometres without finding a single living thing: plant, animal or human being…."
So the Afrikaners are not the only nation that have had to be content with British belligerence and inhumanity. But for the last century outside of Europe, the Afrikaners have been the White nation that was a prime target of British avarice and vengefulness.
The vilification of the Afrikaners by English journalists and others is so outrageous that one suspects some psychological motivation behind it. And history may provider some clue to it.
Already twice Afrikaners have undone their conquest by Britain. First, by the battle of Majuba Hill in 1881, And second by the political victory in 1948. This is probably one of the compelling reasons for British enmity of Afrikaners – a small nation frustrating British aims humiliating its military forces before the eyes of the world in two wars, and in protracted political conflict taking their country back in 1948.
But it is not only on the battlefield that the Afrikaners proved their abilities. In every other field they had to contend with British abilities. On every other field they had to contend with British power and influence. Yet, the major political developments in South Africa were pioneered by Afrikaners, as were the major agricultural and industrial developments. Culturally they had to fight against the massive operation of denationalization in 1902. And yet, they succeeded in establishing a new language and creating a literature of high standard.
For those English who have been straining their wits to revile Afrikaners it may be well to ponder whether Englishmen in South Africa, under similar circumstances as the Afrikaners, would have been able to achieve what the Afrikaners have. If the English South Africans had been separated from the cultural, political and economic power centres of Britain and the USA, and had to lend for themselves against the Afrikaners, it is doubtful if they would have been able to hold their own and survive as a separate cultural group in South Africa.
An interesting sidelight is provided in "Geography of the Intellect" by two Jewish American Academics, Stefan Possony and Nathaniel Weyl. They reported on an enquiry into the performances of descendants of various nationalities that settled in the USA. From this enquiry it appeared that the descendants of the Dutch immigrants had outperformed all the other nationalities. This may be of relevance in relation to the Afrikaners, as the Dutch element in their makeup is preponderant. Invoking this testimony might contribute somewhat to putting in perspective the vituperation by English journalists quoted herein.
This is not to make a claim for Afrikaner superiority, but to give some indication of the unfairness and malice of the continual efforts to brand the Afrikaner people as inferior and uncivilized, as for example Moolman shows in "How they hate us".
In the new situation in South Africa, with a government acting as the extension of British cultural and political influence, there is every reason to assume that the psychological assault on Afrikaners will not only continue, but will be intensified. A completely unprovoked attack on Afrikaners in the British newspaper, Express, international edition of 23 to 29 March 1994, is indicative of what is stirring in the minds of the Boer-hating Britons.
On the front page in colour and conspicuously placed, there appeared this villainous piece, written under a pseudonym of Peter Tory: "The Boers are largely stupid. They are gross foul-mouthed and bloated with arrogance. They are probably the most unattractive breed on earth."
This is almost literally a repetition of what Ralph Julian wrote in 1900, quoted on page 17 and 18. "The curious breed, the Boers, produced by Africa, is descended from the scum of the Netherlands and has since degenerated further…. the people have become more stupid, filthy and crude…."
There can be no doubt about motivation for such outbursts of slanderous smears: it is calculated character assassination by those who harbour a sense of inferiority against Afrikaners, about whom Ramsay MacDonald said: "The Boer eat us hollow. We were more stupid than he was."
And about whom Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said: "The most formidable antagonists to cross the path of Imperial Britain."
The hate campaign will gain momentum through the proceedings of the so-called Truth and Reconciliation Commission headed by an arch bishop of the state church of Britain, whose anti-Afrikaner policies in South Africa in the sixties were represented by amongst others, Joost de Blank, Trevor Huddleston, Ambrose Reeves, French Beytagh, Arthur Blaxall and John Collins.
The Afrikaner will, as after 1877 and 1902, fight to regain the right to rule over themselves; and it is therefore well to take note of the means and the methods employed by the British establishment in fighting the Afrikaner people in a continuation of the "Boer War", using the knavish tricks referred to by Arthur Barlow.
From TRUMPET, #234, P.O. BOX 141, RONDEBOSCH 7701 SOUTH AFRICA
This long article is by the late Jaap Marais writing as leader of the Herstigte Nasionale Party (HNP) of South Africa. It is an ongoing saga that continues as we write: "In his booklet How They Hate Us by H.M. Moolman provides many examples of the Kaleidoscope of libellous slandering of Afrikaner leaders by English journalists in the years following the electoral victory by the National Party in 1948.
What would serve as an introduction to this collection of infamy is a revealing admission by Lord Deeds a former editor of Daily Telegraph who later became a Minister in the Conservative Party Government.
In an interview with Jack Viviers, published in the Afrikaans Sunday newspaper, Rapport, on 22 May 1994, reference was made to the anticipated return of South Africa to the Commonwealth, and Lord Deedes intimated that if F.W. de Klerk might have been a party to such a decision "It would remove a large part of venom from the view held by a considerable number of influential Britons on Afrikaners."
So here from the horse’s mouth, is proof of the real English sentiments about Afrikaners, the buzz word being "venom".
The relevant newspaper article reads further: The attitude of the Brits particularly the Mandarins of the British Foreign Office, who were in the vanguard of the fight against the National Government, was explained to me by Lord Deedes."
This makes it clear that the fight against the National Government of South Africa was British policy. That being so, it means that a secret undeclared British war was being fought against the Afrikaner people, as represented by the legitimately installed Afrikaner government. The British Ministry and the Foreign Office were in the vanguard of this resumption of the Boer War. The defeat of General J.C. Smuts in the 1948 general elections was the trigger pulled for the renewal of the British war against the Boers. As long as Smuts ruled South Africa, the Boers could be kept in place and South Africa could remain a British country, as was the object of the Boer War, voiced by Winston Churchill in 1899: "The issue of this war is whether South Africa is to be a British country, or a Boer country".
In May 1948, as a result of the political defeat of Smuts – "the greatest Englishman south of the equator" – the alarm bells started ringing in the entire British establishment. "Smuts’ as the former editor of The Natal Witness’, G.H. Calpin wrote, "Had made South Africa a British country". The British flag flew over South Africa and one of the public holidays was Empire Day.
But on 26 May 1948 Smuts was defeated at the polls, and as Calpin wrote in the book referred to above, the Afrikaner rejoiced: "At last we got our country back". The outcome of the Boer War had been reversed. That was when "the Mandarins of the Foreign Office" stepped into the vanguard of the fight against the National Government to make South Africa a British country again.
"I seem to sense the same lies’, wrote Arthur Barlow in that we may tread safely, "the same attack on the Afrikaner and his Government, the same knavish tricks that characterized the years before the English War in our country".
Barlow was a former newspaper editor and later member of the South African Parliament for many years. What he was referring to had previously been succinctly described by Gen. Smuts before the outbreak of the war in October 1899.
In A century of Wrong Smuts wrote: "We have been slandered, harried, and treated with all possible disdain and contempt….Our people have been represented by influential statesmen, and on hundreds of platforms in England as incompetent, uncivilized, dishonourable, untrustworthy, corrupt, blood-thirsty, treacherous, etc. etc. so that not only the British Public, but nearly the whole world, has begun to believe that we are on the same level as wild beasts….We have been forced to hear from formal Blue Books issued by Her Majesty’s Government that our unscrupulous government, our unjust, unprincipled and disorderly administration, was a running, festering sore which, like a pestilential vapour, has defiled the moral and political atmosphere in Africa….We have been accused in numerable newspapers of all sorts of misdeed against civilization and humanity: crimes have been imputed to us, the bare narration of which makes ones hair stands on end! If the reading public were to believe a fraction of the enormities which have been laid at the doors of our people and government, they would be forced to conclude that this land was a den of thieves and a sink of iniquity, a people, in fact, whose very existence is a blot upon humanity, a nuisance to mankind…. "This is the calumny that the Afrikaners had to endure while the British power centre was preparing for a war against the Boer republics.
There is truth in the saying that history repeats itself. A hundred years after Smuts had written these words, the Afrikaners are again being accused in innumerable newspapers of all sorts of misdeeds against civilization and humanity, and are represented as "a people, in fact, whose very existence is a blot upon humanity…."
(This incidentally was the same General Smuts who, after the war deserted his people and was engulfed by the British establishment.)
What makes this slanderous campaign against the Afrikaner people more shocking is that it was not the first time that these disgusting tactics had been employed.
James Anthony Foude, the British historian, wrote in 1886 in Oceania about the annexation of the Transvaal by Shepstone in 1877: "We justified our conquest to ourselves by taking away the character of the conquered, and we constituted ourselves the champion of the coloured races against them, as if they were oppressors and robbers. They (the Dutch) were regarded I England as slave owners at heart, as barbarians and tyrants, as illiterate savages, as the real cause of all that had gone wrong. The unfavourable impression of them became a tradition of the English press, and unfortunately, of the Colonial Office. The Boers have been so systematically abused and misrepresented that the English scarcely regarded them as human beings to whom they owed no moral consideration."
How deep-seated must malice be to make people sink to such a level? And yet as shown above in the quotation from Smuts’ writing, it was repeated just some fifteen years on.
To confirm Smuts’ perception, a journalist, Julian Ralph in 1900 wrote: "The curious breed the Boers, produced in Africa, is descended from the scum of the Netherlands, and has since degenerated even further beneath the level of its lowly origins: the people have become even more stupid, filthy and crude than their forefathers…."
What is more shocking being that a further fifty years later, as Moolman shows in How They Hate Us, the same calumny was again repeated a second time.
It is impossible to think that a person such as the writer could claim even a semblance of ethical standards in his writings about the Afrikaners. Such fulminations can only have emanated from a mind poisoned by hatred.
The quotation above was not the product of the hate-filled mind of a single person, but an inculcated animosity towards Afrikaners that even spanned two generations, was shown by a report in The Telegraph published in 1959, almost 60 years later: "Today’s Afrikaners are the product of the scum and dregs of the 18th century Holland and Germany…. The Afrikaans language has emerged from the idiom that these dregs took with them to the Cape…."
This language only demeans the writer who simply adds to his insults and stupidity by continuing: "How could it be otherwise since the children were brought up by Coloured slaves, and the parents were ill-bred louts from the lowest levels of Dutch society.... The inevitable occurred: the inherited lack of intelligence of their Dutch forefathers has brought the Afrikaners where they are today."
Could Afrikaners be blamed if they were enraged by such a calculated vilification of their people? Such ragged talk merely reflects the discomfort their critics feel with the beautiful nation so recently developed despite British hatred and adversity. Plain "Boerehaat" is what this phenomenon is called in South Africa.
To show how deliberately slanderous are remarks such as the above-quoted, one may merely look at what men of repute said about the Afrikaners. For example, Ramsay MacDonald, a former Prime Minister of Britain, visited South Africa shortly after the South African War, and his report stated clearly that he was against the war. MacDonald was shocked about the devastation of the two republics brought about the British Empire.
Perhaps more remarkable for various reasons is the statement by Joseph Chamberlain in 1881, when he was not a member of the Tory Government. "The Boers", he said, "are not by nature a belligerent race…. they are inspired by a deep-seated and austere religious feeling from their forefathers, from whom they inherited their unconquerable love of independence. Is it against such a nation that we are called upon to bring into practice the awfully arbitrary decision of the sword? They are the people who settled in the Transvaal to be rid of foreign domination. In 1852 we undertook to recognize and guarantee their independence. Under these circumstances, is it possible to maintain the annexation of that country by force, without the charge being levelled at us: the commission of a national crime?"
A few days later in the Lower House he stated: "The annexation was an act that I could describe as an act of force, deceit and foolishness."
His is the more significant in the light of the previously quoted statement by prof. J.A. Froude about the annexation, namely that the "Boers have been so systematically abused and misrepresented that the English scarcely regarded them as human beings."
Another Englishman who made remarks about the Afrikaners, was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who had been involved in the South African War. In The Great War he wrote that the Boers were the most formidable antagonists ever to cross the path of Imperial Britain, which taking into consideration their numbers, meant that they were superior fighters. Perhaps because Afrikaners have confounded their detractors it was more the reason for the British foreign office continuation of the campaign against them as will be partially highlighted herein.
In 1960 a South African Minister Paul Sauer, visited various countries. On his return he expressed his shock at the hostility shown by the British media against South Africa under Afrikaner rule.
I was struck by the stream of poison which had it origin in BRITAIN. You are constantly aware of it. Almost every country has newspapers, and all of them spread poison against South Africa. The same goes for the BBC. What proceeds from Britain today is nothing less than hymn of hate against South Africa.:
Everybody knows that a hate campaign is symptomatic of the conduct of war – the Boer War continued by other means from the British Foreign Office.
What is of paramount importance is the uniform and orchestrated vengeful way in which English newspapers dealt with South Africa.
Edward Hallett Carr in The Soviet Impact on the Western World published in 1964, throws light on this question, particularly in view of the Foreign Office’s undeclared war against the National Party Government of South Africa, as mentioned by Lord Deedes and dealt with earlier herein.
Carr writes "A method employed by the British Government with far greater success was the institution of a press department at the Foreign Office which issues regular information and guidance on the British point of view to the British press, and such parts of the foreign press as are amenable to it. Its services to the foreign press may be regarded as part of the British propaganda of foreign countries.
"Its services to the home press are more significant and less familiar. It easily makes itself indispensable, since the Foreign Office has at its disposal a large volume of interesting and important news not accessible in any other way. Its function of selection gives it enormous power to mould opinion. His mere decision to release or withhold certain information about Britain may profoundly affect public emotions about that country and radically change the public attitude towards it: and the discreet advice the department sometimes gives to play up or play down points of friction with particular countries is scarcely needed. The same carefully selected information, and the same guidance and advice, reach the BBC through other channels, and are still more effective….
So the hymn of hate emanating from Britain against the Afrikaners undoubtedly has its origin in the Foreign Office. But what is more is that the Foreign Office works in collaboration with the British secret services. And in The Silent Conspiracy published in 1993, Stephen Dorril writes, "Journalism has been the natural recruiting ground for the security services. John le Carre, who worked for MI 6 and MI5 between 1960 and 1964 has made the amazing statement that the British Secret Service controlled large sections of the press. In 1975 American Senate hearings revealed that half the foreign staff of a British daily was on the MI6 payroll."
So, there we have it. Behind the slanderous attacks on the Afrikaners in English newspapers is the British Foreign Office and the British Secret Services. There the "hymns of hate" against the Afrikaners are composed and from there they are orchestrated. The Boer War, after 1948, was continued as Alfred Milner had previously said, "The South African Struggle continues. It is no longer war with bullets, but it is still ‘War by vilification and character assassination."
The Boer War of 1899-1902 did not achieve the object as envisaged by Winston Churchill when he was reporting for the Morning Post. "There is’ he said, "only one way to break the Boer’s resistance, namely the harshest suppression. In other words, we must kill the parents so that the children can learn to respect us." It is difficult to imagine what the ethical standards of such a man might have been, but evidently, he would not have baulked at what in World War II was called "the final solution, and which meant extermination.
An English academic, Prof. Callender, writes on Churchill: He was typical of his class, and especially of Tory society, in that he was drenched with overwhelming self-esteem. Ethics meant nothing to him…. Obsessed with Rule Britannia they stood the Darwinian hypothesis on its head and argued that to ensure the survival of the fittest (themselves) the elimination of the unwanted (by them) was a patriotic duty."
Winston Churchill’s callousness towards the Afrikaners might have been inherited, as in the 1890’s Lord Randolph Churchill was saying: "The days of the Dutch as an independent people in South Africa are numbered. They will disappear, unloved, unsung, scarcely ever remembered."
Was he expressing a wish, or was he voicing the real policy of the British establishment, which was to cause the disappearance of the Afrikaner people?
Yet, though losing 27,000 of their women and children (about 15% of the population) in concentration camps in an ethnic cleansing operation, and having 30,000 of their farms destroyed, the spirit of the Boers was not broken. The heroic struggle and the superior military qualities shown by their leaders, commanded the respect of the world and filled them with pride. Defying the British power after the war, they took up the political struggle and in 1948 "got their country back" as G.H. Calpin wrote.
That was when the hymn of hate against South Africa was released by the Foreign Office and Secret Service and taken up by the English press in a resumption of the "Boer war."
Many nations have gone to war in defence of their freedom and fatherland, but it is revealing that of the 278 wars in which European states were involved from 1480 to 1940, England had proved to be the most aggressive, being responsible of 28% of the total, followed by France (26%), Spain (23%), Russia (22%) and Austria (19%), with the Netherlands and Prussia-Germany 8% each. (Quincy Wrote in A Study of War. 1942).
Already in 1883 Sir John Seely had written: "Surely war has always been England’s Prime Industry". And England’s Wars were fought for financial gain, as Sir William Harcourt once admitted to Scaweb Blunt when he said: "The British public was insisting on the slaughter of the Matabeles to procure for themselves markets. But whereas it used to slaughter for glory of the thing…. now they had given that up, now it was slaughter for trade". This is part of the history of a nation whose establishment is telling others about ethical standards!
Mahatma Ghandi, before an English court that sent him to prison for six years in 1922, said: "India has and as for Ireland, Pendergast wrote in his "Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland". "From 1949 on, five-sixths of the total population lost their lives in wars of conquest. When Cromwell died in 1658, Ireland was one great wilderness….one could travel for 50 kilometres without finding a single living thing: plant, animal or human being…."
So the Afrikaners are not the only nation that have had to be content with British belligerence and inhumanity. But for the last century outside of Europe, the Afrikaners have been the White nation that was a prime target of British avarice and vengefulness.
The vilification of the Afrikaners by English journalists and others is so outrageous that one suspects some psychological motivation behind it. And history may provider some clue to it.
Already twice Afrikaners have undone their conquest by Britain. First, by the battle of Majuba Hill in 1881, And second by the political victory in 1948. This is probably one of the compelling reasons for British enmity of Afrikaners – a small nation frustrating British aims humiliating its military forces before the eyes of the world in two wars, and in protracted political conflict taking their country back in 1948.
But it is not only on the battlefield that the Afrikaners proved their abilities. In every other field they had to contend with British abilities. On every other field they had to contend with British power and influence. Yet, the major political developments in South Africa were pioneered by Afrikaners, as were the major agricultural and industrial developments. Culturally they had to fight against the massive operation of denationalization in 1902. And yet, they succeeded in establishing a new language and creating a literature of high standard.
For those English who have been straining their wits to revile Afrikaners it may be well to ponder whether Englishmen in South Africa, under similar circumstances as the Afrikaners, would have been able to achieve what the Afrikaners have. If the English South Africans had been separated from the cultural, political and economic power centres of Britain and the USA, and had to lend for themselves against the Afrikaners, it is doubtful if they would have been able to hold their own and survive as a separate cultural group in South Africa.
An interesting sidelight is provided in "Geography of the Intellect" by two Jewish American Academics, Stefan Possony and Nathaniel Weyl. They reported on an enquiry into the performances of descendants of various nationalities that settled in the USA. From this enquiry it appeared that the descendants of the Dutch immigrants had outperformed all the other nationalities. This may be of relevance in relation to the Afrikaners, as the Dutch element in their makeup is preponderant. Invoking this testimony might contribute somewhat to putting in perspective the vituperation by English journalists quoted herein.
This is not to make a claim for Afrikaner superiority, but to give some indication of the unfairness and malice of the continual efforts to brand the Afrikaner people as inferior and uncivilized, as for example Moolman shows in "How they hate us".
In the new situation in South Africa, with a government acting as the extension of British cultural and political influence, there is every reason to assume that the psychological assault on Afrikaners will not only continue, but will be intensified. A completely unprovoked attack on Afrikaners in the British newspaper, Express, international edition of 23 to 29 March 1994, is indicative of what is stirring in the minds of the Boer-hating Britons.
On the front page in colour and conspicuously placed, there appeared this villainous piece, written under a pseudonym of Peter Tory: "The Boers are largely stupid. They are gross foul-mouthed and bloated with arrogance. They are probably the most unattractive breed on earth."
This is almost literally a repetition of what Ralph Julian wrote in 1900, quoted on page 17 and 18. "The curious breed, the Boers, produced by Africa, is descended from the scum of the Netherlands and has since degenerated further…. the people have become more stupid, filthy and crude…."
There can be no doubt about motivation for such outbursts of slanderous smears: it is calculated character assassination by those who harbour a sense of inferiority against Afrikaners, about whom Ramsay MacDonald said: "The Boer eat us hollow. We were more stupid than he was."
And about whom Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said: "The most formidable antagonists to cross the path of Imperial Britain."
The hate campaign will gain momentum through the proceedings of the so-called Truth and Reconciliation Commission headed by an arch bishop of the state church of Britain, whose anti-Afrikaner policies in South Africa in the sixties were represented by amongst others, Joost de Blank, Trevor Huddleston, Ambrose Reeves, French Beytagh, Arthur Blaxall and John Collins.
The Afrikaner will, as after 1877 and 1902, fight to regain the right to rule over themselves; and it is therefore well to take note of the means and the methods employed by the British establishment in fighting the Afrikaner people in a continuation of the "Boer War", using the knavish tricks referred to by Arthur Barlow.
