Jan Taljaard
NO ma’am, you’re most definitely not welcome. If there is one group that will not be curtseying along in the expected upsurge of post-colonial fawning that will accompany Queen Elizabeth’s visit, it will be the far-
Addressing a public meeting in Pretoria on Thursday night on the theme: “British Queen, keep out!” the Herstigte Nasionale Party’s Jaap Marais earlier even wrote a letter to the queen in which he politely expressed the hope that “Your Majesty will reconsider your intended South African visit and thus avoid adding insult to injury”.
Couched in dignified English that would do a member of the diplomatic corps proud, Marais cites as reasons for his earnest plea the “holocaust of 26 000 Afrikaner women and children in British concentration camps” and the “intensified British War against the Afrikaner people since 1948”.
But, if she should nevertheless come, Marais exhorted her to do as follows:
“If you do come to South Africa, there is an act your majesty as a woman and a mother may consider performing. You might go to Bloemfontein and in a symbolic act kneel at the monument erected to the memory of those thousands of Boer women and children whose lives were snuffed out by the British methods of barbarism. It would at least be a belated show of compassion with the suffering that British leaders inflicted on those who wanted to be a free Christian people in Africa.”
In his letter to the queen, Marais is also quite clear on what constitutes a real Afrikaner, while at the same time exhibiting an intimate knowledge of British intelligence history:
“Do not mistake the FW de Klerks and Pik Bothas as true representatives of the Afrikaners,” he tells the sovereign in a postscript. “Afrikaners have their political and other traitors just as others had the Burgesses and Macleans, the Alan Nunn Mays and the Anthony Blunts, although the ways of operation may differ widely.”
Robert van Tonder, a man who once led a two-man deputation to the queen to claim Stg 100-billion for war damages, is just as clear on his feelings towards the queen.
“As far as us Boers are concerned she is not welcome at all in the Boerestaat of Transvaal and the Free State,” said Van Tonder.
“She is the great grandchild of another queen who ruled England at the time of the Boer holocaust,” he said. “She is from the same dynasty. She will only be welcomed if she comes to announce that war reparations will be made.”
Van Tonder is also piqued by the special treatment that will be accorded to the queen during her visit. “The fact that other visitors are not treated in the same way just goes to show that people here still have a colonial mentality,” he said.
Speaking on behalf of the AWB, spokesman Fred Rundle is of the view that “her visit will only serve to reopen old wounds”. He also blames the queen for a visit that will serve to support “Mandela and the abyss he is dragging us into”.
“Her former empire has completely disintegrated. Now she is trying to put something together again,” said Rundle. — DigiNews