Oh yes, our land is lovely – but one day we may have to consider leaving it.

As a white South African born in the ‘50s I have been conscious of this much of my life.

In the ‘50s there was the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. Parents talked about it in low voices. In the late ‘60s there was Africa Addio, a controversial, Italian-made  “shockumentary” about the wars of liberation and independence happening in Africa at the time. The usually censorious National Party, unsurprisingly, allowed it into local cinemas. Again, parents talked about it in hushed tones in front of the children.

In the ‘70s there were the news reports about Indians being expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin, the Portuguese colonial powers leaving Mozambique and Angola.

In the absence of a government that is non-racial in word and deed, or in the event of a government of mal fides, there is likely to come a time when it would appear to be wiser to leave than to stay.

For some South African citizens that time came when they were faced with the change from a known to an unknown in government at the end of the ‘80s.

For others it has come with a declining economy and the 143 race laws governing employment, businesses and ownership that disadvantages minorities in particular and severely limit the country’s prospects.

Conversations

Conversation in white middle class and wealthy social circles today inevitably come round to updates on who has just emigrated, the births of relatives in other countries, planned visits to overseas family members, It often moves on to  discussions of how to go about acquiring  another country’s passport, residency visas,  ancestral visas – just in case. 

Afrobarometer reported in December last year that about one in four South Africans say they have considered emigrating. These respondents were among the wealthiest, the most educated, in skilled full-time jobs – and the youth. North America was the most popular destination among them.  

Around a million South Africans have “gone for good” since 2000 and are part of the diaspora …living in the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States and many other countries.

There are also, it may interest you to know, already around 4,258 SA refugees abroad, some of them living in the US.

So why, you may, like me, ask yourself, have South Africans been so hysterical, vile, vicious and hot under the collar over 49 Afrikaners who left on 11 May for the United States after being accepted as refugees from persecution by the Trump’s administration in the US.

We know almost nothing about these adults and children in the process of being resettled. Nothing as to their motivation for applying, their backgrounds, their skills, their experiences. We don’t even know if there is farmer among them. After all, perhaps a revelation to some, Afrikaners are not all farmers. Unconfirmed reports say they’re the first of 8,000 others who intend following them. But Trump has also said anyone from a minority believing they are being discriminated against can apply, So, there could be many, many more.

It’s likely these 49 people who’ve chosen to go will be shepherded all the way to American citizenship and achieve it faster than any other refugees from Africa. They do, after all, have the dubious fortune of being Trump’s current African cause celebre, as the first to take advantage of his Executive Order of February 7.

Don’t underestimate

Trump critics should not underestimate Americans’ fondness for Afrikaners and other minorities who’ve been trashed as colonisers or “anti-transformation” at home. Many US citizens see parallels between their history and ours: slavery, race discrimination, hardy pioneers making their way into unknown territory to establish towns and cities and lay claim to land, wars with indigenous people, wars of liberation from colonial powers.

Next to my laptop as I write is a book titled A West Pointer with the Boers. Published in 1903 it’s the memoir of Colonel Y F Blake, a Missouri-born American who arrived in Cape Town in 1895. It is all about his experiences in southern Africa and of serving with the Irish Brigade on the side of the Boers in the Anglo-Boer war of 1899-1902.

President Trump could have even read it himself as a boy or young man.

The African National Congress is talking tough about this public departure of Trump’s first Afrikaner refugees although it made no moves to stop them.  It calls them alleged refugees and says it will consider stripping them of their South African citizenship or refusing them re-entry should they wish to return.  

President Cyril Ramaphosa has labelled them cowards. The party says they’re people frightened by the ANC’s catchword “transformation” and refusing to accept “accountability” for historic privilege.

Clearly the ANC is very embarrassed.

That’s understandable.

Shocked

What government, wishing to be regarded as democratic, modern and scrupulous in the observance of and protection of human rights both at home and, as South Africa has done, on behalf of others, such as Palestinians, wants to be seen as driving its own citizens to seek refuge in another country in peace time?

What leaves me somewhat shocked though is the  virulence of the reaction from the left of all shades, the influencers and general rabble  on social media, the mainstream media and even ordinary South Africans one seldom speak out on politics and you’d think would show a little more humanity to people who have done nothing to them personally and who have made a difficult, painful decision.

Instead, they have all made an extraordinary fuss around the event, almost as if they regard the group’s decision as an act of treason. Perhaps, too, they’re worked up because these hot under the collar because these “Amerikaners” have handed a victory to Trump in his dealings with the African National Congress- dominated government.

Perhaps the “great unease”, always lurking in the minds of South Africa’s race minorities has been triggered by the sight of these refugees. Could this be the signal for even the most die-hard or optimistic patriots to reconsider their declarations they ‘ll stay and fight for a better government and a better country, come what may?

What does it say about our country if Afrikaners whose very language was born in South Africa, and who’ve been woven into the history and land for over 300 years, South Africa, can up and go so suddenly?

By my reckoning. though, South Africa’s governments’ policies have been driving away citizens for around 60 years.

At first, under the National Party government, it was mostly black apartheid resisters and fighters who went off as “refugees from persecution” to lives in exile, but so did  white men avoiding conscription, detention, or the security police. 

Then, under the African National Congress, it was racial minorities, squeezed out of job opportunities, by affirmative action, employment equity programmes, and subsequently BEE, and quotas, who felt they had to leave their home country to do better for themselves and their families. All that, and the persistence of racist rhetoric on Boers or settlers continues to push us apart and push us away.

Settlers

Perhaps it is time we agreed we South Africans are all descended primarily from settlers. Well, almost of all of us, except of course, for the groups of people descended from the “first people” occupying this land; the indigenous roaming foragers and pastoralists the Dutch and earlier European voyagers met and traded back in the 1600s.

We have settled here both voluntarily and involuntarily, from other countries, from other parts of the continent, for centuries, seeking pastoral land, land to cultivate, or peace.

We have been brought here to work as indentured labour or slaves, or lured with a paid passage, the promise of improving our fortunes, and of jobs.  We have fled here, from famine, foolish socialists, and dictatorial regimes. Sometimes we turned up simply to seek glory or adventure.

At one time or another our ancestors were all settlers. If we would at least acknowledge this we’d come a step closer to creating a country we’d all want to stay on in.

Edmund Burke, an 18th Century philosopher has said:  To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

It is not the physical “loveliness beyond the singing of it” of “grass covered and rolling hills”,* that will keep us here.

It must be a country that is lovely because its government has respect for the reciprocal pact between it and its citizens: A government that instils patriotism and successfully promotes unity among its citizens, a government that is fair and respects everyone’s history, and tradition, and but also ensures everyone’s prosperity and security.  

Obviously, there’s a long way to go to ensure that we have such a “lovely” government, one that will ensure we all will want, and be able, to stay.

Hopefully there are, and will be, enough of us still here who wish to engage in the struggle to achieve this.

* From the opening chapter of Cry the Beloved Country

The views of the writers are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.

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contributor

Paddi Clay spent 40 years in journalism, as a reporter and consultant, manager, editor and trainer in radio, print and online. She was a correspondent for foreign networks during the 80s and 90s and, more recently, a judge on the Alan Paton Book Awards. She has an MA in Digital Journalism Leadership and received the Vodacom National Columnist award in 2007. Now retired she feels she has earned the right to indulge in her hobbies of politics, history, the arts, popular culture and good food. She values curiosity, humour, and freedom of speech, opinion and choice.