I was minding my own business in cyberspace when Facebook suggested I become a fan of Die ou Suid-Afrika. Facebook figured I’d be interested in joining the group, which is a fanpage for the previous regime and currently boasts 47 244 members.
I was minding my own business in cyberspace when Facebook suggested I become a fan of Die ou Suid-Afrika. Facebook figured I’d be interested in joining the group, which is a fanpage for the previous regime and currently boasts 47 244 members.
Its profile picture is the old flag, that oranje, blanje, blou creation, and its message boards deliberate a mysterious “plan op die tafel”, the purpose of which is difficult to ascertain.
Many of my high school friends are members of the group, so by association I’m a likely candidate to recruit – given my white, Afrikaans, Dutch Reformed Church background.
But what Facebook neglected to consider is that I’m also a 21-year-old open minded individual who believes in progress and equal opportunities for all people, irrespective of their race, gender or social status.
I do not adhere to the biological school of thought, which holds that one’s intelligence is somehow determined by the colour of one’s skin or the texture of one’s hair. Dr Irma du Plessis, a sociologist at Witwatersrand University, told Beeld recently that the Facebook group is sprung from nostalgia and melancholy.
She says it is common in a country in a process of change for the youth to long for an idealised past. A recent survey on Beeld.
com indicates 56% of the respondents (6 178 out of 11 000 respondents), would consider living in an Afrikaner homeland or a volkstaat. As a media practitioner I fight for freedom of speech for everyone.
Freedom of speech encourages open and fair debate, which is why I can say that this fanpage is misguided. The old South Africa was not that great.
It was damn awful. And before you accuse me of being a liberalist donning rose tinted spectacles consider this: would the previous regime have allowed anyone to create a group expressing their opposition to the reigning officials?
No, in the old South Africa you were thrown from buildings and murdered in prison if you openly opposed the policy of segregation. Separate development is not the answer to South Africa’s problems.
Building a volkstaat, the whole notion of a volk, underscores the misguided concept of cultural superiority. You think that if you move away from black people your problems will somehow miraculously disappear?
Do you really think you are so much better, that God has chosen you as his only worthy volk and that it is on His instructions that you must separate yourselves from those who, by your logic, are not ‘chosen’?
I do not have to recount the atrocities of the past; the facts of oppression speak for themselves.
South Africa as we know it now is not perfect, but to yearn for a system that allowed people to commit human rights crimes, that encouraged discrimination, is criminal.
We need to identify problematic thinking in all spheres of society, and although I defend anyone’s
rights to an opinion, I can condemn both Julius Malema and Steve Hofmeyer’s idiotic utterances without being either racist or liberalist.
Extremist views may cause a stir, but they don’t contribute to constructive progress for the benefit of all members of society.
