The recent rash of bombings in Gauteng reflected rising discontent among Afrikaners, the Afrikaner Group of 63 said on Thursday.
”We are worried that increasing disaffection … among
Afrikaners may lead to further violence and instability,” warns the group in a letter delivered to President Thabo Mbeki’s office in Pretoria.
”The bombings, which have been ascribed to Afrikaners, is a clear sign of the serious alienation being experienced by Afrikaners with respect to their situation in South Africa.”
It appears this sense of alienation is now being translated into violence, says the group which describes itself as an intellectual Afrikaner movement.
It condemns last week’s nine bomb blasts in Soweto, south of Johannesburg, saying acts of sabotage cannot be condoned. The loss of a life and damage to infrastructure were equally reprehensible.
A woman was killed because of one of the explosions that ripped a hole in the northern wall of a mosque in Soweto’s Dhlamini area.
Debris hit her shack in the Protea South informal settlement while she lay asleep. Other explosions cut railway lines between the sprawling township and Johannesburg.
In its letter — released to the media — the Group of 63 calls for the underlying causes of these actions to be examined and addressed.
”The underlying motive … must be sought in the constitutional powerlessness of Afrikaners in the face of the ruling majority,” the group submits.
”Afrikaners over a wide front are experiencing that their interests are being ignored, disrespected and disadvantaged, despite their own repeated requests and petitioning to the contrary.”
Examples include an apparent government drive to replace Afrikaans with English in education, the civil service, and the justice system.
Afrikaners are also suffering because of affirmative action, rural attacks and land reform.
”Unfortunately, too, your government’s policy concerning Zimbabwe has contributed greatly to Afrikaners’ loss of trust in government,” the group tells Mbeki.
”(This) has raised serious questions concerning the way in which their interests will be dealt with in future.”
So far, Afrikaners have reacted by emigrating or withdrawing into their own private world. Some kind of settlement between Afrikaners and Africans should
be found. Afrikaners do not want to return to the colonial days of minority domination.
”However, it is urgently necessary that a settlement now be attained which will provide for the equal protection of the interests of both Africans and Afrikaners,” says the group. – Sapa