/ 26 July 2013

How Britain’s Prince George divides us

Prince William and Catherine
Prince William and Catherine

My late oupa was a real tough nut. He refused to accept cheques from the "Boere bank", Volkskas. As a Jan Smuts man, he only read the Rand Daily Mail and despised the National Party propaganda of the Afrikaans newspapers.

And he agreed when my dad decided to go up North and fight on the side of the Allies during World War II.

So one would have thought that he would have displayed royalist tendencies. But he did not. Our ancestors came from Ireland.

On my ouma's side, her family was on the receiving end of the brutality of the British concentration camps during the South African War.

Because your history helps in shaping you, it is a slight understatement to say I am not the biggest royal-baby watcher in South Africa. Add to that my lefty, anti-imperialist, monarchist-hating tendencies, and some people could well describe me as a hater. As a democrat, I see no use for the farcical royalty.

On Wednesday, Beeld had a massive picture of the royal baby that took over the paper's masthead, two Boer wars long forgotten.

Even the Daily Sun carried the story, albeit on page 10, but with an obligatory exclamation mark in the headline. One can safely say that the local Sunday papers will go large on Baby George.

Unfortunately I won't be here – unfortunately, because I will be in London. Based on what I have been seeing on the monarchist Sky News, I am in for media-wide, jingoist royal-baby overkill. Maybe it is the sins of the fathers being ­visited upon me.

I am visiting the Guardian next week too. I'll be looking for the person who came up with the brilliant idea of a "Republican/Royalist" button you can click on the paper's website for less or more royal-baby coverage. I'll offer to buy that person a beer. And I bet I'll be wishing I could apply that button in real life too.