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Do Afrikaners Have a Future? | Jerm Warfare · UK Column Radio

• 0:30
  Speaker 1: My name is Jim. This is Germ Warfare, the Battle
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: of Ideas.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Dan.
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: The last time you and I did recording together was
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: I actually think before the whole COVID era. I mean
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: a lot of a lot of us A lot of
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: time has passed, a lot has happened, but here in
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: South Africa.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Not that much has happened.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: I mean we we still talk about the same stuff
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: we were talking about years ago, sort of domestically.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: But for those I feel like groundog day in a way.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: M hmm.
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: But Dan, so because as your first time on my
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: UK column show, for those who don't know who Dan
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: Root is, who is Dan Rout?
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: Oh wow? Yeah, you know that's a sort of an
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: incistential question to ask. Yeah. See, you know, I I
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: kind of you know, I studied. I was a bit
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: lazy when I was young, so I kind of studied
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: stuff that took like fun, like you know, literature and philosophy.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: And you've got you've got six degrees. You've got six degrees, that's.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Right, Yes, including a PhD. And I've got a thing,
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: a kind of a pre PhD in France as well.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: You know, I studied at the most left wing university
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: campus in France. It's in the Sandy Nie area, just
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: north and north of Paris. And yeah, but so yeah,
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: I'm almost like a master of what, jack of all trades,
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: master of none. But yes, I've got a fairly broad
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: perspective on the world. And you know, I'm flint in
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: French and I read obviously, I read Dutch, with Afrikaans
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: and German, and you know, I've even studied a bit
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: of Russian and Swedish and Italian and stuff. So I
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: look at the world from a very broad perspective, you know.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: And I've come to know quite a lot about the
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: US as well. I've been there a couple of times,
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: you know, I've got a few American friends, so I
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: think I've got a feel for the US as well.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: But I've also studied, you know, even though I'm not
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: officially an historian, I've gone really deeply into South African
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: history as well. Yes, exactly, but also the stuff, you know,
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: all the intricacies and I yeah, for example, why did
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: the Anglo burb War really happen? And and stuff like that,
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: you know, things that you don't normally come across much. Yeah,
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: I've read Smutsist speeches and all sorts of things, you know. So, yes,
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: I've I think I'm quite grounded in South African history,
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: and i've really when I was young, I also read
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: all this Marxist all these Marxist historians in South Africa,
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: what they had to say, and it's actually very funny
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: because according to them, a partit came about because of capitalism,
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: and in order to destroy a partit, you had to
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: destroy capitalism. But when they came to power in South Africa,
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: they kept capitalism or they kept it for themselves, and
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: they've enriched themselves enormously. I mean, I don't think any
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: country in the world has ever had such greedy rulers
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: as Yeah, and they're all communists, or they don't say
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: it publicly, but I mean if you read between the
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: lines what they say and the whole kind of the
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: whole their ideology and the basis of their thinking, it's
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: all rooted in Marxism. And they haven't really progressed beyond that.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: They don't have an alternate ideology, so they still kind
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: of that's why they like Cuba so much, you know.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: They A while ago I found out that there's actually
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: the ANC built a statue, they put up a statue
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: for Fidel Castro in Bloemfontein. I mean, can you believe it?
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: And apparently there are a whole lot of street names
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: there that changed to how she mean and you know,
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: lean and whatever. So you know, I think there are
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: parallels between our history and the history of Eastern Europe
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: very much. So, you know, I've gone also, I know
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: a few people in Eastern Europe and Czech Republic and
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: other places. I've been to Prague and you know, I've
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: traveled a bit in Poland and Czech Republic. I've been
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: wants to very briefly to Russia as well, and I
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: see real parallels between our history and that of Eastern
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Europe because people don't realize it, but we've had a
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: very strong communist movement throughout the twentieth century, but it
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: was kind of the media and the old government. They
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: kind of didn't inform people about this because they didn't
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: want to think scare them. But eventually this movement succeeded,
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: and when communism fell in the rest of the world,
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: it succeeded here. And now they are this kind of
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: hybrid system. It's sort of capitalism but with communist aspects.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: You know, so that's why it's so weird it's here,
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: and that's why it feels like ground all day because
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: we and nothing ever changes in South Africa. You know,
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: every election they say, okay, after this election, things will
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: get better, but it never does.
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: I think you're being very modest though. Your your significance
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: here in South Africa is a lot bigger than what
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: you're making it out to be in terms of your
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: your work, your literature. You're writing your poetry Prague which
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: not the city Prague, but the website Prague p or
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: AAG which stands for Pro Africa.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: Just give me the name ACT Pro Afrikaans Action Group.
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: That's correct, yes, And and why I'm chatting to you
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: actually is because you represent a type of africanadom that
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: seems to be dying. And I know you are very
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: critical about the future of Africanas. Now, I obviously you
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: can hear I'm not I'm not entirely Afrikaans. My background
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: is fifty Africana and I'm and I'm married. I'm married
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: into an Afrikaans family, so I've got a very close
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: connection to africanadom and of course the coltural history and
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: more importantly where it's going. And I think a good
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: starting point, Dan is to you, what does what does
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: it mean to be an africaner?
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: Well, lately I've come to think it's sort of been
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: it's sort of trying to escape from the empire in
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: a way, because we we escaped. You know, the Dutch
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: Empire came here and they founded South Africa in sixteen
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: fifty two. But within a few years we started moving
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: away from them and we got some sort of titular
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: freedom by having they dished out a few farms to us,
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: you know, in sixteen fifty seven, and from that moment
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: on we became rooted here. And then we we've been
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: moving away from you know, the Dutch India Company and
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: then the British Empire, and we trecked inland and so on,
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: but they pursued us all the time, and eventually we
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: had in almost a utopian situation with a bird Republicans
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: in the north. And you know, especially when gold was discovered,
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: first diamonds and then gold, and we could have become
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: another Switzerland. I mean, it would have been so brilliant.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: The transvoll was the motor of South Africa. It became
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: the motor of the South African economy afterwards and almost
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: of the whole subcontinent. And if that had to I mean,
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: if it hadn't been for the Anglo ber War, I think,
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: you know, it would have been completely different. But we
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: were always in a fight, you know, with the Empire.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: And eventually in the twentieth century there was sort of
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: reconciliation between bur and Britain in South Africa, and then
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: we became very successful. We became the twentieth biggest economy
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: in the world, and we were developing very rapidly. But
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: again then the Empire kind of changed and it became
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: this son of a quassi multicultural empire, and you had
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: the big left wing movement in the nineteen sixties in
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: the West. And again then they came down hard on
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: US sanctions and they took out this they pulled this
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: kind of rabbit out of their hat in the form
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: of this very weird quasi communist thing called the ANC
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: which was a sort of a conspiracy in a way.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's what called them back in the nineteen sixties.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: He said it was a kind of a communist conspiracy.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: And eventually they sort of handed the country on a
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: plate to them and since then, we've had a new
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: set of problems that's getting worse by the day. You know,
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: every day we've got a whitesapp group for our complex
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: here gated community, and the most important thing is just
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: to track of whether we're going to have water or
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: not for the day. You know, it's like it's absurd,
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: and before it was never like that. As a child
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: or as a student, a con'try called that we were
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: ever without water. It never happened, and now it happens
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: every other week.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: And electricity it's crazy.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: And electricity, of course, yeah, we had the various crises
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: around what they call load shedding. But back to your question,
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: you know, what does it mean to be an Africana
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: It's it's a I mean when yeah, the other thing. Okay,
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: first of all, okay, the first point, we've been trying
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: to flee from the empire, and then secondly, this kind
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: of rootedness in Africa. It's it's a very on the
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: one hand, it's a very beautiful thing, but on the
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: other hand, it's also very painful because you you run
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: into very many problems and we've been accred and in
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: the nineteenth century, especially.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: By the concentration gaps.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but even before that, you know, during the Great
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: tech I mean, you know about the whole thing with
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Petrich Tiff actually, but what the amazing thing is that
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: we've quite so many beautiful historical writings and novels and
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: so on. I read I've got a friend down in
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: the Cape, but she's also actually from the northern Transvoll.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: But she lost her family farm. Her father was a farmer,
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: and she lost it. She inherited it, but she lost
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: it because there was a land claim on her land.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: And she now lives in the in the in the
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: Western Cape, and she's written about fifteen novels. And I
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: recently read a thing by her. It's called Blood Lily
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: if you had to transfer translate the title, and it's
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: a really beautiful book and it's set in the nineteenth century,
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: and it's about Petro TIFF's wife, you know, because she
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: survived because she didn't go. Obviously, only the men who
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: went to the Zulu crawl, the eighteen men and got massive, but.
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: They were just jumping there, just jumping it down. So
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: for my international audience, who was Petro tif and why
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: was the important PETTERD.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: Tief was was an Africana leader, and he was the
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: leader of the first trackers, the people who checked inland. Now,
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: this word trek is an Afrikaans word. It means to
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: go on a long journey, a long audious journey. And
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: that's why they talk about star trek. You know, we
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: gave this word to the world because of this teck Inland.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: One third of the people in the Cape Colony at
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: the time decided, no, this is it, We're going to leave.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: We're just gonna go inland, go to the check to
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: the interior and seek some new land there. And that
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: that's what happened. And he was the leader, and he
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: negotiated for land with the Zulu king ding Gon and
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: then ding Goon betrayed him. He ambushed him right inside
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: his own krawl where he invited them there, and then
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: he got his and he told them leave your weapons outside,
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: because it's not it's not etiquet to come to me
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: with your weapons. And they were naive enough. Petter Tief
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: was naive enough and trusting enough to actually it was
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: a bit paranoid about that, I think. But they left
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: the weapons outside and then they just got massacred. They
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: got tortured to death, and so on. So that was terrible.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: And then the Zulus went and they massacred another five
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: hundred women and children as well, and of course then
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: afterwards there was a great battle, the Battle of Blood
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: River in on sixteen December eighteen thirty eight, and then
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: we triumphed over the Zulus. And people compare that, you know,
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: to some of like the Gates of Vienna or the
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: battle or the Greeks against the Persians. You know. It.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: It was a very significant battle in South African history
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: and that sort of opened up the interior to European
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: settlement and that's how South Africa came about. But yeah,
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: we've got so many, you know, beautiful things that you
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: can read about history, and you become so involved in
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: it that it's very difficult to just become a European again,
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: even though I love Europe. I go there regularly and
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: you know, but still I don't feel at home there.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: I feel it, you know. And the sun here being
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: baked by the sun, that's just part of it.
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: That's what the word Africana means. It means African, yes, yes, exactly.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: And the irony is that we and we speak Afrikaans,
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: which is really a West Germanic language very similar to
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: Dutch and Flemish. I mean, there are about forty dialects
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: of Dutch, and they say Afrikaans would be about number
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: twenty eight on the list, you know, in distance from
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: Standard Dutch, which is spoken in the Netherlands and Floridas.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: But yeah, we called it this thing, we called it
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Afrikaans in the nineteenth century. And it's the only language
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: in African in Africa that's called African, you know. That's
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: the irony. And yet these other Africans think we don't
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: belong here. They tell us we are settlers and so
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: but like, okay, I suppose we are settlers like the
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: Americans or settlers in America, or the Australians or settlers
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: in Australia, and even most of the Europeans or settlers
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: in their countries because they came from maybe one thousand
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: to two thousand years ago. They came from another place.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: So I don't think it's necessarily bad to be a settler.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: The people who I mean, there have been population movements, yeah,
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: people who checked around throughout history. And I also object
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: to this kind of autophonous ideology that you find here,
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: especially under this regime. It's so artificial and dishonest.
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: Really, you mentioned the Great Track and the africaners who
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: left the Cape Colony to go Inland. Now those would
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: be considered the boors, am I right?
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, although you know, I don't see. Look, I think
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: in the British media at the time they used this
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: word were a lot, especially during the Anglerberg War, and
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: therefore it became a sort of an international term at
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: the time. It was used in German and Russian and
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: whatever at the time. But the sort of the more
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: cultural movement in the twentieth century. We had a tremendous
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: kind of a nationalist movement in the twentieth century that
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: established the term Afriquana more than so. I would say,
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: it's a little bit like you in French they talk
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: about the Gauls. I mean, the French call themselves Gauls
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: someone sometimes, you know, but that's a sort of a
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: more like a yeah, what would you call it, a
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: sort of an endearing sort of a term. Yeah, you know,
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: it's more an historical term. It's more of a kind
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: of almost a jocular term. And but the real nationality
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: is really Frenchmen. In a way, I see it that way.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: And I mean there's a small minority of people, especially
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: in the north of the country, who we're saying, no,
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: we are burs and we don't like the Africanas. But
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: I always ask the I always want to ask him
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: a question. But if you if a Burner Africana marry
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: each other, what do they get? What is the offspring
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: gonna be called? It's just absurd because they also speak
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: everybody speaks Africans. Afrikaans is so standardized. I mean it
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: sounds the same whether you come from the north. I mean,
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: South Africa is bigger than Western Europe. So if you're
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: from the Popa River down to Cape Point and even
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: right up into Namibia to the border and Golan border,
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: where everywhere as people speak Afrikaans, it's all the same language,
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: very minor differences in accent.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: So it's I clung yourself to everyone sounds the same exactly.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean in the Cape there's a slight accent difference,
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: but it's certain vowels and so on. And then they
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: say that we here in the north, we tend to
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: have these round vowels, but which sounds a little bit
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: like Swedish or Scandinavian languages. And I think there was
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: influence way back, even before we came to South Africa
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: from even the Scandinavian languages. Regarding the pronunciation and so on.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: Dan Afrikaans is very close to your hot language itself.
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: Do you think it will be around Do you think
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: it'll be around one hundred years time?
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: I think so, because the thing is that we've I mean,
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: we are in a During the Anglo wer War, they
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: I mean the British army they raised the country to
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: the in the north, they raised the country to the ground.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: There was nothing left. It was scorched earth policy, so
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: everything was destroyed, all the animals were killed. It was
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: just absolutely horrific. Every single farmstead, every church, every town
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: hall was torched. So it was so destructive that it
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: took us. I mean, it was almost like the Thirty
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: Years War in Europe. I mean they say that it
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: took Germany in one hundred and twenty years to recover
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: from the Thirty Years War, and I think it took
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: us at least fifty to recover from the Anglo Wer War.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: So all these sort of material things and our economy
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: and so on, it's been destroyed a couple of times.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: But the language and the tradition. I mean, we kept
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: on building that and so that sort of more abstract
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: thing than the kind of spiritual intellectual edifice. I mean,
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: that thing kept ongoing and it's now so big that
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: I don't I think it's it's indestructible. Even if we
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: die out, it will be like Latin. I mean, it
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: will be dead, but it will continue because people will
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: still read the books or translate them or something like that.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: And because of our connection to the Low countries, I mean,
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: they've also got easy access to Afrikaans, you know, with
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: a little bit of effort that can read it and
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: understand it, and a lot of stuff I think. I
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: mean that the Dutch especially have digitized a lot of
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: books and newspapers and whatever. So some of our books
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: be when their libraries ended up in the National Digital
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: Library of the Netherlands. So it's there. It's it's gonna survive.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: And you know, if you look at the history of Israel,
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: Hebrew was a dead language, but they revived it when
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: the State of Israel came about, they revived it and
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: now they're speaking it. They're speaking Hebrew Hebrew there. I
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: went there once and you saw I saw the signs
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: and it's actually tri lingual, their sort of Hebrew, English
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: and Arabic all the science, but but Hebrew is their language.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: So I think it will be hard for a Frequans
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: to die out. And currently I see that. I think
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: there's a new kind of almost a renaissance in Afrequans,
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: especially in the popular music and you know on the
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: Internet as well, YouTube and Facebook and everywhere. I always
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: say that I think the Internet came just at the
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: right time for us, because before Africans was very much
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: entangled with the state. It was you know, spoken in
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: the parliament, and lots of Africaners worked in government and
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: there were official translators who kept the country bilingual. And
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: they also gave it a lot of support to culture
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: because in the nineteen thirties there was a huge cultural movement,
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: and especially in theater, you had these actors who moved
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: around and in the countryside and they would perform in
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: town halls and church halls and so on, and out
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: of that, after nineteen forty eight it developed this kind
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: of European style formal theater and opera and whatever, and
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: that with a lot of state support, as in most
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: European countries, but the ANC immediately, you know, they immediately
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: canceled that. So then Afrikaans was sort of cut off
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: from funding and we had to go back to where
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: we were in the nineteen thirties almost. But I think
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: there's now a new kind of very passionate movement, and
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: especially in the literature and books and so on, the
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Afrikaans as an academic subject, I mean, that's amazingly vibrant,
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: and people are writing all sorts of interesting things, and
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: you know, I once I think I once asked groc
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: or something. And as a regarding literature, Afrikaans is by
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: far the biggest tradition on the African continent. I mean,
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: there were more than a hundred million Egyptians, but we've
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: produced more books than they have. So it's it's and
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: I think the main challenge for us is to yo
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: is to share it with the rest of the world
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: in a way, because I think a lot of experiences
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: that we've had here and that we've described in very
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: intimate terms, can be very useful for the rest of
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: the world now that they are encountering very similar problems
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: of confronting other cultures that are radically different from theirs,
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: and where they also have to live with violence, and
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: you know, and this kind of cultural divide and communications divide.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: It's and in very subtle ways, we've been you know,
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: documenting that in fiction and nonfiction for ages, and that
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: stuff should be translated and it should be read in
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: the rest of the world. I think we've got something
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: to bring to the West because we've been experiencing these
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: sorts of things for four hundred years. I mean even
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: in the beginning in the fairly in the sixteen fifties,
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: there were already problems with crime and so on that
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: the Dutch East India Company or experienced in the sixteen fifties,
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: so they had to try and work around that, and
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: that's why they built that hedge or something, which people
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: said was the beginning of a part eight. But they
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: needed that hege in order to protect their livestock from theft.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: And we've been living with that problem up until the present.
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you mentioned a partet and it's always important to
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: note that it wasn't the Afrikaner who was the architect
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: of apartheid.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: It actually was the British Cecil.
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: Roads back in the late eighteen hundreds was already forming
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: the foundations for aparthe eight.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, although it I think, you know, I partate the
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: word and the concept. You know, once it became internationalized,
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: it it developed a life of its own. That's why
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: they now apply it to Israel and things like that.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: And you know, when the Soviet Union and Guinea sponsored,
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: you know, the UN General Assembly resolution in the early
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: nineteen seventies to declare a partate a crime against humanity
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: in order to really deflect from the human rights violations
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: in the old Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe. I mean,
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's a whole history there that goes back
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: to the nineteen fifties, when you know, especially after the
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: invasion of Hungary by the Soviet Union, where they needed
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: to focus on some other country into order to deflect
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: from the criticism that they were getting, and they specifically
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: chose South Africa for that. So there was a lot
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: of state involvement other states in you know cha in
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: developing this notion of part it as a great crime,
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: whereas in Afrikaancy you don't find that at all. It's
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: even to this day and people don't use it that
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: much as well. The term in Afrikaans, it's it's very different.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: I mean we more look at the reality behind the
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: language and behind the terms or the terminology, and yeah,
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: it's it's I think it became a sort of a
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: label that's also divorced from reality in very respects. But
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: regarding Rhods, he did actually give the trans guy some
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: nominal independence in the eighteen nineties. They already had some
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: form of a parliament there, so, in actual fact, that
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: was in the beginning of this notion of separate development
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: and so on. You're right, but they're sort of what
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: they call Pettio party or the segregation that you're also
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: found in the Southern United States. I think that came
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: here with the British Empire and the Anglo Saxons. I mean,
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: they also practiced it. It wasn't so much a Dutch thing.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: It was the strict segregation of facilities and separate but equal.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: That was an Anglo Saxon thing. But of course we
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: sort of formalized it because we are very you know,
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: very disciplined and we like rules. So yeah, we formalized it,
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: and then we sort of dismantled it afterwards and even while.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: But the irony is once that we started reforming all
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: of these things and then that was when the the
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: rest of the world hated us the most. They didn't
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: hate us when you had separate entrances and you know
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: the post office in in what we call your bottle
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: stores or liquor stores. I remember when I was a student,
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: I still work. I did some holiday or I worked
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: on saturdays in a liquor store, and that was segregated.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: You had the white side and then you had the
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: black side where you were and the white side was
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: sort of self service. You can just you could take
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: you you you take your liquor off the shelves and
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: then go to the cashier and pay for that. But
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: the black black side was you were behind a counter,
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: although the liquor was behind the counter, and people stood
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: in front of the counter and then said no, no,
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: I want such and such a drink bottle of that.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: All this and there's a completely different market. Well at
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: that time there were there were completely different markets and
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: different brands for black and white as well. You know,
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: the black people preferred they had certain brands that they liked,
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: and funny sort of like fortified wine or there was
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: sort of mixtures of wine and brandy and stuff like
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: that that they preferred. And and you know, you would
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: never find those drinks on the white side. So I
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: worked in this thing. It was very just quite you know,
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: there were these students. We were two or three students
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: on a Saturday behind the counter serving all these black
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: people who come in in, you know, to buy their
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: liquor for the weekend. And sometimes we were extremely is
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: it busy as well? I think the guy there was
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: a Greek guy who owned the place, and he I
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: think he became very wealthy out of his liquor store.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: But that was sort of a practical example of how
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: it operated. But it wasn't I'm not sure if it
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: was laid down by the law that way, but it
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: was sort of a custom and nobody really questioned it
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: until it became very a very controversial issue. And these days,
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: you know, there are all I mean, there are all
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: these artificial sort of scandals where somebody takes a cell
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: phone video of a group of white kids sitting at
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: a table at a kindergarten or a crash or whatever
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: you might want to call it, and then it would
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: be a black kid sitting at another table, and then
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: that would be that would cause a scandal, but it
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: would be something that's complete coincidence, you know, just for
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: that moment they've been playing together or something, but for
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: that moment, it's there was an illusion of this racial segregation.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: And then the ANC politicians would you know, come down
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: hard on the school and find them more, accuse them
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: of racism and so on. So they are all these
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: kind of culture wars around racism swirling all the time
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: in South Africa. And that's also very artificial because my
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: experience is that you know, there are still really apart
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: from you know, formal politics, I think there are very
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: good race relations in South Africa. People are very polite
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: towards another one another. There's never really been a big
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: problem except what they call the optics to the outside world,
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: you know, that was the main problem. It wasn't an
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: internal thing.
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: Well this is true, Yeah, this is exactly true. If
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: I mean, we go away quite often, you know, for
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: weekends away, we'll go on a road trip around the
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: western Kpah, you know, drive two or three or four
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: hours for a couple of nights, and we always see
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: you know, different groups of people colored, black, whatever, right,
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: and there is never conflict.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: Everybody gets on.
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: Well's it seems to be a complete, a completely artificially
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: manufactured media, top down imposition that we all hate one
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: another exactly.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: Now you've summed it up there. It was an artificially manufactured,
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: top down media campaign. And the people who they were
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: people are behind it overseas, and then the people locally
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: who supported it were very rich people in Johannesburg and
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: Cape Town who were so rich that they are and
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: they still are, and they completely insulated from any of
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: the effects of their politics, and their politics has now
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: had disastrous effects on South Africa. You know, this is
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: almost like a failed state.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: Well, I think it is a failed state. I think
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: it is.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: It is a feld state, definitely, definitely. I mean it's
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: so corrupt that I don't think I don't think it
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: can ever be. It's sort of like a humpty dumpty state,
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: you know it, all the kings horses and all the
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: king's men will never put it together again.
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: But that's sort of the beauty also of our story, Dan,
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: Our story is one of constant.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: Conflict.
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: If you go all the way back to the sixteen hundred,
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: it's never been peaceful here in that sense. We've always
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: had foreign interests, for example, also trying to.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: Ye, although I think after the Anglo World War after
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: nineteen to until about you know, until this kind of
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: terrorist campaign started in the early nineteen sixties. But even
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: then it wasn't that bad because it was the damage
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: was fairly limited.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: It picked up in the seventies and eighties.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, true, but for about seventy or eighty years, South
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: Africa was very peaceful, and more of our people died
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: in the First and the Second World War than then
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: ever died here in conflicts. That's the irony. We we
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: spilled our blood for the West, and the West turned
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: around and said no, no, we're going to sanction you
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: and you're going to get you. We're going to give
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: you a government that's going to be hostile to you,
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: and that's going to make laws discriminating against you, and
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: you know, they will try and destroy you as a people.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: That's what we're going to do for you.
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: So, I mean, the outside world will never really understand
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: the identity politics that we have here in South Africa.
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: It's difficult to explain. We're constantly battling within ourselves also
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: like our identity, you know, it's an ongoing thing. And
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: one of the questions I was asked recently, is you know,
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: as a South African, are you Western? And I think
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: the answer is yes and no. I think that we
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: are African with Western heritage.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: Would you agree with that, Yeah, I mean I do.
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: I don't know so much about Yeah, I think Western
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: has also become I know the Russians have a very
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: negative idea of the West. I mean they what they
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: call it the collective West or something like that. They've
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: got the standard sort of term that they use. But
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: I do feel European in very many respects. You know,
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: I think we do come from Europe and we still
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: have some connection with Europe and when we will always
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: have an exchange with Europe. But at the same time, yes,
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: we very much we are African. I think that something
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: I came across well back was you know, the old
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: Rudy brothers that and the one Rudy brother around the
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: Information which is a department of information for South Africa
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: in the nineteen seventies. But his other brother was an
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: academic at the University of Pretoria and they wrote a
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: few books as well, and they spoke about the Third Africa.
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: Because you know, oh, yes, I was very interesting on
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: this topic. I was about three weeks ago, I was
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: in Antwerp at a translation conference all to do with
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: Dutch translation song and there was a woman there translating
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: Arabic books. She's an Arabic Dutch translator, and I asked
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: her specifically, do the people in North Africa feel African?
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: Do they describe themselves as African? And she said no,
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: absolutely not. They are part of the Arab world, of
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: the Islamic world, and they don't see themselves as African
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: at all. So that's that's your That's the one Africa,
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: the one in the North, and the second one is
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: sub Saharan Africa. And I think it ends at there's
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: a Limpopo and we are the third Africa. And that's
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: what the Rudy brothers wrote in their books, that we
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: are the third Africa. It's a different Africa. It's Africa,
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: but it's not the same as the Tree or Gola
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: or whatever so I mean, or Ethiopia or anything like that.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, over here, we've got first world standards. You know.
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: I can order I mean I can go on an
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: app now and order my groceries an oft an hour later,
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: the guy will knock on the door and deliver my groceries,
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: and we were talking about it before. I mean, we've
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: got fiber internet here, We've got faster internet than many
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: parts of the US. So we are integrated into the
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: first world. And we've always been integrated into the first
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: world financially, economically, etcetera, etcetera. You know, we've we've been
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: part of the of that. I mean, we're not because
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: if you look at Africa, there's very little intra African trade.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: You know, Zimbabwe doesn't trade much with the DRC. Zambabwe
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: trades more with countries in Europe or especially these days
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: with China than they do with the countries around them.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: And we've been always integrated in the Western system in
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: a way. So that makes us very much different. Another
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: interesting term that I've come across there's a French guy
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: who is also very very knowledgeable about South Africa and
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: Africa generally. His name is Bernard Lougan l U G
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: A N. And he said, we are an exclave of Europe,
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: and that's an interesting idea as well. You know, we're
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: not an inc we're not an African enclave. We're also
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: but we are kind of an African enclave in the
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: sense that we are part of the continent, but at
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: the same time, we're also an exclave of Europe. We
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: weigh out there geographically, but wow, we still I mean,
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: you can go to a classical music concert in Pretoria
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: and you can you know, we can study French or
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: German or whatever.
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: It's But yet at the same time, Dan, at the
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: same time, while you.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: Are I like this third Africa idea, Yeah, because you know,
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: we've got a people have also got a very stereotypical
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: idea of Africa and its history as well. They see
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: it as the Black continent. But it hasn't It isn't
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: really a black continent, as I explained to you, because
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: of the the Arabic part, of the Egyptian part and
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: doing the I mean during the Roman Empire some of
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: the biggest Roman is we're in Africa. So I see
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: us as part of that history a lot that we're
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: part of Greeko Roman culture but in Africa, and there's
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: absolutely no difference between us and you know, Queen Cleopatra
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: or the I really think not so long ago about
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: the new the new the Roman Carthage. I mean, at
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: first the Romans destroyed Carthage and then they rebuilt the thing,
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: and Carthage became an extremely important port and city in
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: the Roman Empire. But in Africa, right, it's about apparently
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: just about fifteen or twenty kilometers above the current capital
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: of Tunisia Tunis that was where Carthage was, and you've
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: still got the Roman ruins there. So we are part
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: of that kind of millenarian tradition of call it European
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: Greek Roman culture in Africa. That's how I see it,
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: and that's in Africana, and Africana is a sort of
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: uh yeah, there's this decentered European living in Africa under
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: different circumstances, but we've still got this link to the
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: ancient history.
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: I like that Third Africa idea. It's very interesting. But
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: then at the same time, Dan, I mean, this conversation
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: comes up all the time in my circles. There are
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: a lot of there's an Africana dear spora, right, there
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: are a lot of Africanas around the world. Now, so
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: here's here's a question for you. Will they remain Africanas
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: or is Afrikana dom designed by its own its own
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: making to be here on the African continent.
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's very it is very difficult to.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: Well, let me give an example. Let me give example.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: So I've got close we all have got close.
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: Friends who've emigrated, and I've got the same I've got
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: close friends who emigrated to Canada. Let's say I think
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: fourteen or fifteen years ago, they had a child. The
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: child was born in Canada, the child is Canadian. Will
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: the child, will the child be on Africana. No, No,
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: the fact the fact.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I also no family that sort of emigrated to Canada,
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: and I mean the kids were even born. Yeah, but
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: but those kids are now Canadian. They don't even speak Afrikaans.
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: I mean they know that they come, that their parents
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: come from here and so on, but no, they aren't Africans.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: And apparently I've heard from you know, this whole expat
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: community now in the Netherlands and Belgium as well, and
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: I've heard that there's sort of discussions where people ask themselves,
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: should I should I raise my child to be an
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: Africana or to be Dutch, you know, And that's sort
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: of an existential question because the whole environment is Dutch,
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: and Dutch is different to Afrikaans. But at the same time,
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: Afrikaans has also got a lot of attraction for people
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: even from outside, and especially in the Netherlands, Flanders, you know,
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: where people can understand it more easily. And I've come
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: across people there who they first get a CD from
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: South Africa or they start listening to Afrikaans music, and
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: eventually those people become so involved here that they turn
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: it into Africanas while still living over there, because they
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: follow what's going on here on the Internet, and they
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: learn Afrikaans, they speak Afrikaans, and they feel so engaged
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: in our situation here that they're almost like Africaners. So
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: I think the Internet has changed things a lot as well. Before.
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: I mean, my wife and I lived in France for
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: about seven years and in those days, prior to the Internet,
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: you were completely cut off from it. I mean unless
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: you made a phone call, which cost an absolute fortune,
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: there was no immediate way of connecting to South Africa.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: Whereas now somebody goes to Canada or Australia or whatever,
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: they never get away from South Africa because it's on
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: their screen every day, it's on the WhatsApp, it's you know,
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: they still and a lot of them are still connected
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: and involved here. And I mean, I know if people
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: in Australia who you desperately want to come back because
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: they don't like it in Australia, or somebody or their
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: husband and the wife, I mean the husband wants to
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: go to Australia, to go to Australia, but then suppose
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: but then the relationship breaks apart and the wife is
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: now stranded there and she hates the place. So and
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: those people remain Africanas even though they feel trapped in
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: Australia or trapped in Canada or whatever, but they remain Africanas,
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: you know. So it's a very I think we are.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: So there's a notion of being decented. I mean, I
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: said in Africana was sort of a decented European European
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: mile because we live outside Europe. But in a way
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: many with the Internet now you find these descented Africanas
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: in other countries in the Middle East or Australia, the Netherlands, Canada,
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: USA and so on. The Netherlands is now so you know,
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: it's economically a very dynamic country, so it's actually pulling
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: a lot of Africaners from here as well. Before it
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: wasn't one of the big destinations for immigrants, but it's
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: becoming that now, so, which is also kind of interesting
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: because it's a very i mean, it's culturally quite close
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: and people pick up Dutch in no time. And the
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: Dutch now know that, of course, and that's why they
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: seek out our trained people, because they need they need
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: US's funny though, we've got this brain drain going going on.
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: I remember I was in Amsterdam with my wife just
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: a few years ago and we were with the Dutch
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: friends of ours and they were making the joke that
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: Afrikaans is frowned upon. It's seen as like the kitchen
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: version of Dutch. Yeah, it's like it's like we are
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: the peasant classes.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: Yees. Yeah, yeah, there's a ah sure, because Afrikaancy has
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: got a sort of a simplified grammar. But but the
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: thing is that, you know, if you go deeper into it,
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: you find out that, i mean, the Scandinavian languages also
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: have a simplified grammar, and you know, Dutch compared to French,
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: Italian or Russian, is also very simplified. So you know,
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: it's all kind of a question of degree. But but okay,
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: I'll tell you now that three weeks ago, when I
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: was in Antwerp, there was a sort of a thing
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: in a bookshop, gathering in a bookshop which was part
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: of this conference, and there I read a few pages
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: of Afrikaans, and my daughter was there as well, and she,
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: you know, I was just reading it, but she was
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: watching the audience and so on, and they were very much,
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: you know, they were intensely involved with what reading. They
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: could understand it very well, and they were moved by it.
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: So I think Africans as a great potential. Also, I mean,
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: it's already a language that you know, in Southern Africa
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: is sort of it's got more second language speakers than
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: first language speakers, Whereas you know, something like Dutch, it's
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: only really people born in the Netherlands of Flordos who
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: speak Dutch. It's not studied that much outside of those
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: two countries, whereas we Africans sort of lives in a
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: large geographic area in South Africa and it's a lingua
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: franca in some places. So it's there's sort of an
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: international you know, it's got a sort of a regional
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: connotation as well, So I think it could. But in
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: a way, Afrequans could also go back to Europe. In
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: a way, I think it could because you know, in
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: the north of Germany about twenty million people used to
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: speak Low German, which is also very close to Afrikaans
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: and Dutch and so on, so in a way and
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: they lost that heritage. But in a way we are
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: part of their heritage because some of the people who
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: came here after the Thirty Years' War, that a lot
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: of Germans also came here, and that's why they were
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: integrated so easily, because they already spoke a form I mean,
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: their languages or their dialects were already so close to ours.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: It was part of the same thing. In fact.
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I mean, if you go back in our history,
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, one of the questions that you could ask
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: is when did africanadam begin. You could probably say around
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: the early seventeen hundreds, Yeah, exactly.
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: There was this guy. There was this famous guy where
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: drunk or something and you're he he he got into
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: an altercation and he said, I won't shut up with
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: you know, with some form of official police officer or something,
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: and he said, you know, I won't shut up because
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: I'm an africaner. And that was it was around Hendre.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: Three, Hendra Bibau, I think or something yes.
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: That's his name, yes, ye, yes, yes, bib Yeah, and
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: he had terrible because eventually he was he got arrested
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: and imprisoned and he was actually banished or something like that.
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: And he didn't say he didn't he did Africana. Well,
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: what I mean is it was like a variation. It's
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: like Afrikaan dirt or something like that. It wasn't Afrikan dirt.
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he did say that it was more of
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: a Dutch pronunciation or spinning even, but it was the
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: profound was it was a profound movement, Yes, because the
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: identity he said, you know, I was born here, identified
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: with this continent, and I won't listen to your authorities
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: from Europe. And that comes back to what I was
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: saying that we've also always been in revolt against that
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: overseas empire, which first was the you know, the voc
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: or the Dutch is India India Company, and then the
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: British Empire obviously took over from them, and so there's
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: this revolt against the empire that in a way, it's
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: very similar to the US identity as well, because they
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: Americanism also started when they decided to declare themselves independent
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: from from Britain, and I was actually at Washington's house.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: You know, it's not too far from Washington, DC itself,
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: and it's right on the Potomac River there, and I was,
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: and there's a huge museum and everything there. But in fact,
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: our Cape Dutch, you know, homesteads in the Cape look
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: a lot better than Washington's house over there. I mean,
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: our stuff is just quality, why so much. Yeah, it's
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: on and it's on a much better level than these
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: was in the seventeenth century.
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: So but yeah, I was sorry.
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: I was going to say, I live on a farm
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: that's been here since the seventeen hundreds, and we've still
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: got those Cape Dutch houses. I mean, the one is
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: the manor house where the owner of the farm lives,
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: and one of the others now is a little coffee
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: shop or restaurant, and they've got a few guest houses.
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: But they're still the original Cape Dutch houses and they're beautiful.
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, exactly. But I was I was going to
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: make another point there, which I now kind of sorry,
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: I interrupted, No, No, it's it's fine. You're talking about
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: Washington's house. The quality you're talking about the quality, the
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: quality of it. Yeah, Oh, yes, but I know that
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: the point was that. And then we went to They've
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: got this huge museum. You know there must have cost
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: millions of dollars. I won't got too much into it
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: the whole history of how the museum came about. But
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: then I asked one of my American hosts there and
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: you know, you're so you had all these battles gainst
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: the British just like we did. Said yes, but they
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: we were absolutely massacred by the British and if the
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: Fringe hadn't intervened on our side, we would have lost
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: the War of independence. And then the light went up
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: for me. The US became independent with the help of France.
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: On their own, the American farmers would never have been
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: able to become independent from Britain. So but our tragedy
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: is that the Germans and the French and everybody we
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: were left alone. We had to face Britain alone at
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: the peak of its power. And that's the great tragedy
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: in a way. You know that we never managed. I mean,
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: we lost that battle, whereas the Americans won theirs thanks
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: to the French. So that makes it different as well.
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: We sort of on our own. We've never been helped.
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: We had to fight the Russians in Angola and the
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: Cubans and so on, so we have to fight our
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: own battles. But I think, what, as you know, as
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: Nietzsche said, what doesn't kill me makes me stronger. And
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: I get that impression now that we are getting stronger.
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: And I can see this sort of hysteria in the
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: liberal media in South Africa because I can sense that
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: the Africanas are regrouping and they are getting more and
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: more organized. And you know, I've got a Greek brother
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: in law, sort of his sort of off Greek of
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: English or something, but he speaks fluent Africans, and he
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: told me once that the first time when he realized that,
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: you know, this Africanas were very much different to anything
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: he'd experienced in a sort of an English speaking environment
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: as a child and so on, was when he went
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: to a primary school athletics meeting and he found that
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: it was so well organized and everything ran like clockwork.
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: And then he realized that these people, these ordinary Afrikanas,
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: they've just got a capacity for organization that's unmatched. Maybe,
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: you know, maybe the Germans before they got completely wiped
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: out in two World Wars or the Austrians or the Swiss. Yeah,
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: I think the Swiss have still got that that they
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: can organize themselves, you know, in a very effective way,
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: which I think explains the economic success of Switzerland as well.
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: But we've got that capacity that we can organize and
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: out of almost nothing. You can take a couple of
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: farmers there out in the bush and tell them, you know,
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: do such and such, and within an hour it will happen.
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, there was even one of the best examples
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: of that I have. The was a riot in a
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: private prison up in the north, you know, in the
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: Popo province of what we used to call the Foreign
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: Northern Transvolve and the head of the police, the head
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: of the prison or you know, you got the he
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: phoned the police and they sort of arrived, but they
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: couldn't handle the situation, and he eventually, out of desperation,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: he called the local farmers' association and within an hour
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: about sixty guys in BUCkies as we call it, or
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: pickup trucks arrived and and they sorted the thing out,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: you know, within minutes. And then it's done so and
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: people fear that, I think in South Africa, you know,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: the government fears that and the liberals fear that as well.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: They know if this off economy machine wakes up and
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: stop it, I mean it will just roll over everything
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: in its path, like we have been able to do
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: a lot of the times in the past, especially also
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: in you know, in the old politics, which which depended
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: on organization as well, and that that was very successful.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: I mean we out organized the English speakers in this country.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: That's eventually why we how we under the old system
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: we became so dominant, because we were just better organized.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: Afrikaans is more spoken in South Africa than English.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true, especially with you know, with the brown people,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: colored people in the Western Cape who also eighty percent
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: of them also speak Afrikaans and they've got you're very yeah.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: I mean they used to have a lot of kids
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: as well, so they grew from about four hundred thousand
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: people to four or five million over a few decades.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: So the majority of African speakers now or the colored
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: people of the Western Cape. And there are all sorts
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: of issues there as well, because there are some leftists
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: who want to create a new language for them, but
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: I don't see that getting anywhere, because creating a new
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: language from scratch is Yeah, that's a big job. And
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: I don't see I don't see.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: That happening, right Dan, I'm looking at the time. How
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: can I follow your work?
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well I'm on Twitter, Dan wrote, excess is called
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: now and on Facebook and I've got a there's a
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: YouTube channel mainly in africuons called prog tv p r
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: a g tv and and there's even a website similar
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: webs at prog dot tv where you can see all
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: the all the YouTube videos and some books that we publish.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: I think these days now with YouTube you can probably
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: I mean you can get almost your own subtitles in
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: almost any language, I think so. And Afrikaans that's another thing.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: A frequency is very connected to the Internet, you know,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: it's almost like Swedish or something. It's and I actually
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: think we should give a prize to to Google because
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: they are actually, you know, pushing Afrikaans on the Internet.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: And yeah, I mean my email functions in Africans and
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: YouTube you see, I mean, all the instructions are in Afrikaans.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: So it doesn't feel to me as if Afrequanc is
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: a marginalized language anymore, because it's just so a lot
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: I've on the internet. And therefore it also means that
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: you can translate it. Any Afrikaans article that you pick
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: up on the internet, you can translate it immediately into
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: Russian or Chinese if you feel it, feel like it.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: And and also yeah, you're probably going to be able
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: to watch a lot of Afrikaans YouTube videos with English
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: subtitles if it comes to that.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining me in the trenches.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: Well thanks, yes, yes, thanks to you as well. I
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: know the Americans have got this term foxhol. You know,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: they don't talk about the trenches. They talk about the
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: fox ol. Just the other day it struck me that difference.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I've never well, I used the metaphor of the informational,
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: but I've never used lupkra that is trenches.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: Am I right?
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, you're yeah, said Marcus Wontaigne the famous Battle
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: of Marcus Montaine. In fact, they say we invented the
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: loupkraft at Marcus Montaigne prior to the First World War,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: and the British, I mean Scots especially, they were massacred there.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: All right then, let me press stop
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: H