All the mudslinging currently going on about whom historically own what in South Africa. I found the following article I will name part 1. This was quoted from an unknown source found on the internet and submitted to 3rd Degree “Are White South Africans a “settler nation”? Or are Black South Africans a “settler nation”! Find out yourself. While reading the excerpt from South African president Jacob Zuma’s speech early on Friday night, the following anonymously said quote came to mind: “In the world we live in, history is being turned into modern day lies, and modern day lies are being turned into history”. After twenty years of public abuse by black politicians who assert that the white nation of South Africa is a “settler nation” that “dispossessed African land”, Jacob Zuma grabbed at the opportunity to address the problems of South Africa at the 103rd birthday party of the African National Congress. The expectations were not high, and many suspected that some favourite scapegoats such as Apartheid and racism would be mentioned. The Zulu president, amidst the electricity problems that faces South Africa for the first time in its modern history, took full swing at the white population in general, stating that the problems of South Africa emerged along with the arrival of what he believes to be the first white man in South-Africa. “You must remember that a man named Jan van Riebeeck arrived here on 6 April, 1652 and that was the start of the trouble in this country”, Zuma told at the Friday evening event, where guests paid R3 million to sit at his table. Needless to say that the date and name are the only historically correct segments of this statement, it must also be remembered that about 4 million Afrikaner people, descendants of Jan van Riebeeck’s groups, currently live in South Africa. Taking the South African constitution into consideration, this whole scale condemnation of and contempt towards a substantial population group of South Africa, can be regarded as hate speech. Zuma is known for singing “Kill the Boer (white people)” at ANC rallies where he speaks of the ANC’s defeat of white colonial rule and the “settlers in our midst”. Is the white Afrikaner nation a “settler nation” that dispossessed black people’s land, as black politicians so often asserts? To reach a valid historical perspective of the human relations pattern in present-day South Africa, one has to go back to the days of Columbus, close to five centuries ago. In the 14th century, five years before Columbus set out on his trans-Atlantic voyage which resulted in the discovery of America, the Portuguese navigator, Batholomew Diaz, reached the southern-most part of Africa. Here, in 1652 at the Cape of Good Hope, halfway between Europe and the East, the Dutch East India Company established a victualing station for passing East Indiamen. The Dutch intended the station to be self-supporting, but this soon proved to be impracticable without allowing officials to settle as “free burghers”. In 1657, the first free burghers were permitted to become private farmers, and in this way the foundations of a new nation in Africa were laid. The ranks of the original free men were subsequently strengthened by the people of Dutch, German and French descent. The term “boer” (farmer) was elevated to the honourable concept of “Boer”, with a wider connotation, pioneer and settler. “Boer” became synonymous with the appellation “Afrikaner”, a term used as early as 1706 to denote people who had their roots in the African soil. Their permanent links with Africa were emphasized by the spontaneous and natural way in which the various 17th century Dutch dialects evolved into a new tongue, Afrikaans. The only indigenous peoples to come in contact with the Boer-Afrikaner community were nomadic Bushmen and Hottentot tribes. In the case of the Hottentots, deculturisation and the ravages of a series smallpox epidemics led to the disintegration of the main tribes and their subsequent progressive involvement with Negro and East Indian slaves, as well as with sailors, soldiers and people of other races, in the crystallization of a new ethnic group, the Cape Coloureds. A further element was admixed with the Cape Coloured community upon the arrival of Bantu tribes. The Bantu tribes, the forefathers of the majority of modern day black people in South Africa, are established mainly in the part of the continent south of the Sahara desert. Today many local Black sophisticates prefer to be called Africans, a misleading appellation considering that contemporary Africa is the mother continent of a large number of different ethnic, racial, linguistic and religious entities. The first meetings between Afrikaner farmers, or Boers, and black tribes took place during 1750-1770 roughly where the Eastern Cape is today. For an entire century, unaware of the existence of black tribes, Afrikaner farmers, who have mostly already been born on African soil, expanded their settlement to over 170 000 square kilometres (more than twice the size of Austria) of desolated and unoccupied land. Only towards the end of the 16th century did the Afrikaner farmers increasingly come into contact with Black tribes. In the 1770’s, somewhat thousand kilometres to the north-east of Cape Town, the Afrikaner migratory stream came into substantial contact with the vanguard of another migratory movement, namely the Xhosa-speaking tribe. They were the advance guard of a Black migratory movement from the vicinity of the Great Lakes of Central Africa. It would appear that by the end of the 15th century these tribes had moved as far as present-day Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. They probably crossed into the present-day Republic of South Africa in appreciable numbers in the course of the 17th century – at about the same time as the Afrikaner free farmers’ settlement was expanding inland from the Cape of Good Hope. The Black population movement into the area which later became known as British South Africa did not constitute a single coherent expansion. It took the form of successive waves of small tribes representing four different Black ethnic groups – Nguni, Sotho, Venda and Tsonga – responding to the push and pull of economic conditions and tribal conflicts. These migratory tribes simply moved to wherever nature offered most and enemies threatened least. Among these tribes the modern Western concept of a geo-politically defined country and land ownership was practically unknown. In the case of the white group this concept was strongly developed, and it was therefore quite natural for the Dutch Governor at the Cape to react to the White-Black contact situation by proclaiming in 1778 the Fish River as the official boundary between the two groups. This deliberate geographical demarcation, coupled with recognition of the existence of specific Black territories, has remained the basis of the White-Black relationship pattern for many years. After the Napoleonic Wars, the Cape of Good Hope was formally ceded to Britain. From 1806 onwards, relatively large numbers of English, Scottish and Irish settlers arrived at the Cape The Boer-Afrikaner trekkers, increasingly dissatisfied with British colonial rule and with a growing sense of independence, decided to leave British jurisdiction. From 1835 onwards – at about the same time that the American pioneers undertook their famous westward trek – nearly a quarter of the Cape’s White population left the colony in a series of organized movements, collectively known as the Great Trek. The movement coursed over vast tracts of empty land. Areas that had been inhabited by migratory Bantu tribes had become depopulated as a result of the “Mfecane” (the “crushing”) – a series of Black, specifically Zulu, reigns of terror. For nearly a quarter of a century, there was an era of internecine warfare characterized by the most appalling bloodshed and devastation. The impis (regiments) of the Zulu king, Shaka, reigned supreme in Natal and even penetrated the Transvaal across the Drakensberg Mountains, leaving a trail of destruction, exterminating or dispersing all other tribes with which they came into contact. Shaka was not the only ruler responsible for this kind of destruction. Mzilikazi, one of his former lieutenants, broke away from the Zulu king and established a following of his own – the Matabele tribe. The Afrikaner trekkers who moved into Natal encountered various Zulu tribes. In February 1838 Piet Retief, the leader of the trekkers, negotiated with Dingaan, the Zulu king and successor to Shaka, and obtained from him a document granting the trekkers “the place called Port Natal, together with all the land from the Tugela to the Umzimvubu rivers…”. Before Retief and his party could return to their people they were murdered in Dingaan’s kraal. The written contract was however retrieved by the trekkers and still exists today. In the light of this, the claim that the Afrikaner nation is a “settler nation” is unfounded and historically incorrect. Considering that the first Whites at the Cape arrived only 32 years after the Pilgrim Fathers set foot on American soil in 1620, it would be fallacious to label present-day White South African society a still a settler or immigrant community. In fact, there were stable White communities in the South African interior before the founding of most of the Latin American republics. The first West European arrivals at the Cape antedated the colonization of Australia (1788) and New Zealand (1790) by 136 and 138 years respectively. The white community was also economically settled on unoccupied or negotiated land before the most and major black tribes even crossed the modern day borders of South Africa. Coming closer to the present time, one cannot ignore the significance of the White South African nation’s role in the two world wars, amongst others as a founding member of the the League of Nations and the United Nations. The white South African nation has been created by the historical forces of more than four centuries. Measured against all accepted historical and demographic criteria, this nation exists as an integral part of the African continent’s socio-political structure. Today, the Whites of the Republic of South Africa rightfully consider themselves a permanent established African nation, geo-politically rooted in a part of the continent which has in the course of more than four centuries become their only motherland.”
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 09:11:09 +0000