A Grim Detail by Henry Rollins

Author:Henry Rollins [Rollins, Henry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781880985960
Publisher: 2.13.61

23. Live In South Africa

05-04-10 En Route To Johannesburg South Africa: 0348 hrs. local time. Nine hours and forty-two minutes into the flight. If we have an on-time arrival, we should be on the ground in less than two hours. The man next to me got drunk and spent a good amount of time tossing in his seat, moaning and talking. Not a great flight for me.

South Africa is in a very interesting place. Last month, on 04-03-10, AWB (Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging) or Afrikaner Resistance Movement leader, Eugene Terreblanche, was killed on his farm. He was beaten to death by two of his workers. The reports said it was over a payment dispute. I looked up photos of his funeral yesterday. Over three thousand people showed up. I saw one photo of what looked like the entire crowd giving the coffin the Nazi salute. I remember reading about this briefly last month. I saw an interview with Terreblanche years ago in some documentary. It was the first time I had ever heard of the Boer Party in South Africa. I remember the AWB’s stupid uniforms and their three-armed almost swastikas and all I could conclude was they didn’t have the guts to lay it on the line and use a real swastika. I remember that I hated this coward immediately.

I read another report, filed by Pumza Fihlani for the BBC, that said the white power groups there see Terreblanche’s murder as an act of war. Hundreds of protestors massed outside of the court in Ventersdorp, where the two men accused of killing Terreblanche were. The photographs I saw on the BBC site were intense. Angry white men dressed in camouflage, vowing revenge. One young man, Shaun Labuschagne, was quoted as saying, “For the past seven years, our people have been wiped out. We are here to plan our next move.” Another young man, Dirkie Cronwright, said, “The blacks want everything-they have the country what more do they want? They don’t care about us-about the white guys-and that makes me very angry. This means war.” The rest of the report is dire. A white woman threw water in a black woman’s face, white people started calling black people baboons and kaffirs (a racial slur which is regarded as more offensive as the years go on).

Meanwhile, the ANC (African National Congress) youth leader, Julius Mulema, has been rabble-rousing, singing a “struggle song” from the Apartheid era that contains the lyric “kill the Boer.” South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, is angry at the actions of Mulema, who supports Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe, which threatens Zuma’s position as a mediator in the fragile power sharing agreement there.

Oh, and the World Cup is being held in South Africa in June. I wonder how that’s going to go down.

When thinking of South Africa, I see myself in quite the same position as someone considering America. I wonder what percentage of white people these white power groups represent in South Africa. Perhaps in the same way people would

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