The future of the Afrikaner was assured because he was starting to integrate with a larger, inclusive Afrikaans-speaking community in which race was playing a lesser role or none.
Former ambassador Dr Franklin Sonn said at the annual opening of the Free State University in Bloemfontein on Friday: ”An important historical institution of the Afrikaner (the Free State University) had conclusively decided that existence within justness was its choice for the road of the future,” Sonn said, quoting the Afrikaans poet NP van Wyk Louw.
”The larger Afrikaans community is on its way to a just existence, to participating in the building of a nation that includes all the elements of a good democracy. The Afrikaans community wants to be part of a greater, non-racial nation,” Sonn
said.
He was inaugurated as the university’s sixth chancellor, taking over from Free State premier Winkie Direko.
Former president Nelson Mandela, a friend, was the first to congratulate Sonn on his new chancellorship. Mandela, who earlier received an honorary doctorate from the university, had to leave early to attend another function on Robben Island.
Sonn said the fact that Mandela had taken time from his busy schedule to attend the university opening was proof that the traditionally white, Afrikaner-dominated institution had now exchanged exclusivity for inclusivity.
”One of the greatest figures of the century embraced you for that,” Sonn said.
He told the audience that ”many of us understood the Afrikaner’s fears of being swallowed up, although we were not happy about it”.
However, the Free State University had now apparently freed itself, being both inclusively South African and a proud university of Africa, Sonn said.
Professor Frederick Fourie was inaugurated as the university’s new rector and vice-chancellor. – Sapa