The case for Afrikaners Sir: Attacking the antics of Messrs
Carter, Mondale and Young in confronting 'multinational complexities' in southern Africa, Mr Ashton (Letters, 28 May) appreciates the widely disregarded bedrock principle that 'the Afrikaner people have as much right to independent existence and selfgovernment within their own homeland as the Israelis in theirs'. More, in fact. The Afrikaners established themselves in largely uninhabited territory some three centuries before the Zionists set up the state of Israel. No Western power would tolerate Arab 'majority rule' for the Jews in Palestine, let alone their expulsion or massacre. Why then not similar justice for the indigenous white people at the southern end of Africa?
Afrikaners have as much right to be where they are as the black tribes who moved from the north; they have always wished to remain a separate nation, while recognising the same right of selfdetermination for other nations in that vast region of immense wealth: they have every right to retain their own government, as have other white people who contemporaneously settled in the US and the former British Dominions. In due season, they could assimilate both the Afrikaansspeaking coloureds and English-speaking whites; but they would unjustifiably be swamped by trying to amalgamate the Bantu peoples into a single subcontinental politicalsystem.
Even granted the right of an imperfect outside world compulsorily to intervene in the complex internal affairs of the existing Republic, and in a manner never expected in cases of other territories whose record of communal discriminations or political repressions is demonstrably more severe, by what moral right has anyone to demand the political genocide of the Afrikaner nation, particularly by submission to a Marxist inclined clique at the head of a less advanced 'foreign' population? Maybe the West will help the Communists destroy the Afrikaner nation, as Lithuania and Tibet were destroyed yesterday and as Taiwan and Israel may be destroyed tomorrow, bY enforcing 'majority rule' bunkum with sanctions or militaiy invasion. Instead of risking an immense loss of blood and treasure by such a folly, another 'Boer War' of uncertain outcome, why cannot the Western democracies discuss with the Afrikaner leaders the use of military force and economic resources in the carefully planned political partition of southern Africa, so that each of its nations retains home rule, and the white nation can survive to guarantee the free-world supplies and its Cape route? Do you people in Britain, Europe and Africa find our instinct for self-preservation so offensive primarily because you lack one yourselves?
Hendrik Pienaar 5 Chung I-Isla East Road, Talpeh, Taiwan
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