Free Republic

What the heck is going on in South Africa? South African President Jacob Zuma was booed by his own people at Nelson Mandela’s memorial and his translator was fake. The same translator, by the way, also did his weird mime when Zuma infamously sung “Shoot the Boer.” Last year, Zuma’s party, the African National Congress (ANC) “promised to stop singing the anti-apartheid ditty Dubula iBhunu (Shoot the Boer) to avoid hurting the feelings of white farmers and inflaming racial tension,” as reported by the Guardian. The story of South Africa has been on my mind ever since I wrote about...

The horror started just before midnight on Wednesday this week. After listening to the latest television news about the health of Nelson Mandela, a South African family living not far from the former President’s hospital unit turned in for the night. But Roelof and Laura du Plessis, a married couple with four children who live on a heavily fortified farm outside Pretoria, did not have a peaceful night’s rest. In fact they were about to become the latest victims of what white pressure groups in this troubled nation say is nothing less than a savage war against them. Hearing noises...

This year on April 6 marked the founding of Cape Town. On that day in 1652 Jan van Riebeeck led colonists to found what would become Cape Town. For Afrikaners this was akin to our Pilgrim Father’s establishing a colony in 1620. Remembering, let alone celebrating, Dutch settlement in South Africa has been tossed into the memory hole. The grand scheme of the Dutch East India Company was for Cape Town to be a supply link to aid the main chance: trade with the Spice Islands [today’s Indonesia]. The role of citrus in preventing scurvy was known and the farmers,...