Afrikaner White Racists Attend WCAR

Afrikaner White Racists Attend WCAR; Pose As \"Oppressed Minority\"
by JoNina M. Abron

(Durban, South Africa) -- At first glance, the exhibit of the Foundation for National Minorities of South Africa seems appropriate at the meeting of the United Nations World Conference Against Racism.

However, a closer reading of the foundation\'s literature reveals that the group is a front for white Afrikaner racists posing as an \"oppressed minority.\"

The policy statement of the FNMSA states that the group\'s focus is the white Afrikaner people of South Africa. It was the Afrikaner-run National Party that created the racist apartheid system in 1948 and ruled the country until 1994, when the African National Congress won the country\'s first democratic elections and Nelson Mandela was elected president.

To provide the pretense of legitimacy, the FNMSA has co-opted what it claims is the Declaration of Minority Rights adopted at an international conference last year of representatives of 38 indigenous peoples and national and ethnocultural minorities. A search on the Internet produced no information about this conference, which the FNMSA says was held in Berlin. The FNMSA says it wants the same rights that the apartheid regime denied to black South Africans for 46 years. According to the declaration:

\"...ethno-cultural minorities must enjoy the full and unrestricted rights that go with citizenship, including the right of political participation...\"

Under apartheid, black South Africans, who make up over 90 percent of the population, were completely stripped of their civil liberties. In effect, they were treated as aliens in their own land. They could not vote or run as candidates for office, except in the rural predominantly black \"homelands.\" Furthermore, apartheid law required them to live and work in certain areas.

One of the greatest indignities that black and mixed race (colored) South Africans suffered under apartheid was the passbook, which regulated their movement throughout the country. Any black or mixed race person 16 and over caught without a passbook could be arrested. On March 12, 1960, 69 black people protesting against the passbook law were killed by white police in what came to be known as the Sharpeville Massacre. In the aftermath of Sharpeville, the government put some 18,000 people in detention. Leaders of the two main black liberation movements, the ANC and the Pan African Congress, were forced into exile.

\"...national cultural or religious minorities are historically settled communities; moreover, their inclusion in a country with a majority population different from themselves usually is the result of developments beyond their control...\"

Dutch settlers invaded South Africa in 1652 for the purpose of plundering the country\'s wealth -- a \"development\" which they controlled completely.

According to its policy statement, the FNMSA also seeks:
\"the right to be taught one\'s own native language and its being employed as the prevalent medium of instructin in schools.

\"the freedom of opinion and its expression, including the right to publish in any language without restrictions.\"

It was the apartheid regime\'s policy that required black students to speak the Afrikaans language in school which sparked the Soweto uprising in 1976. One result of that uprising was the founding of the Black Consciousness Movement by Steve Biko, who was tortured to death in prison by white police in 1977.

Black, white and mixed raced activists who opposed apartheid were denied freedom of expression. They were either banned to their homes or jailed for speaking out or publishing documents critical of apartheid.

In recent months, groups like the FNMSA, as well as white farmers in Zimbabwe, have appeared on such U.S. television shows as \"60 Minutes\" and \"Dateline\" to proclaim their plight as \"oppressed minorities.\" Anti-racists throughout southern Africa must closely watch these neo-apartheid groups, who are cleverly revising the region\'s history in hopes of regaining some of the power they have lost under black majority rule.