AT the tail end of a surreptitious visit to South Africa, a prominent Dutch rightwinger last week declared South African rightwingers as being “too lazy to work” and “not prepared to do kaffir work”. In an exclusive interview with the Weekly Mail & Guardian, Henk Ruitenberg (47), chairman of the rightwing CD-86 Party in the Netherlands, spoke frankly about his reasons for visiting South Africa and his impressions of his hosts.
If local rightwingers cannot be taught to do menial tasks themselves, they will always be subservient to the rest of South Africa and will never realise their ideal of a volkstaat, Ruitenberg said.
Fromwhat he had experienced during his short visit, internal squabbles among rightwingers seems to be another problem in the way of a volkstaat.
During a visit to Orania in the North-West province he was surprised to find three different church groupings were actively campaigning against one another. This lack of co-operation does not bode well for the community and he cannot see Orania still existing in three years’ time.
According to him, the battle for white supremacy can still be fought in the Netherlands as foreigners are still a minority. Developments in South Africa have, however, made a white supremacist solution well nigh impossible.
He also said that he and his party are continuously prosecuted in the Netherlands by the internal security service and that leftwing agitators are funded by the security service to campaign against him.
The slogan of the party, “Eie volk eerste” (Own nation first), is frowned upon in the Netherlands and, according to Ruitenberg, can result in a prison sentence when used.
Party propaganda has to be printed in neighbouring Germany and then smuggled back across the borders for dissemination in Holland.
He said that the nature of the prosecution is such that he had to go “underground” three days prior to leaving for South Africa from fear of being detained by the internal security service.
A rightwing colleague from Belgium, Karel Elzen from the Flemish Block, was stopped from coming to South Africa after alleged pressure from his employer.
South Africa was the seventh country visited by Ruitenberg in six months. He said his aim is to make contact with rightwingers across the globe and to investigate avenues of possible co-operation.
During his visit to South Africa he was in contact with officials from the Conservative Party and the Herstigte Nasionale Party. He also addressed a gathering of Robert van Tonder’s Boerestaat Party to commemorate the Day of the Vow.
At least one man among those gathered there must have hankered back to a Europe of old. He was Heinrich Beissner, a 80-year-old regular at BSP meetings, an avowed Nazi, one of the few people still wearing his AWB uniform daily and a man alleged to have flown Stukas on the Eastern Front.