www.thesouthafrican.com
15 - 21 October 2013
Issue 536
42294
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WHITE GENOCIDE PROTEST: EXTREMIST OR ACCURATE?
INSIDE:
p3| Gauteng to get e-tolls for Christmas, despite cheeky DA campaign
| Red October supporters demonstrated outside South Africa House in London on Thursday. They displayed both an old and new South African flag and carried signs that read ‘Black on White Genocide’; Stop the Boer Genocide and ‘No Farmer, No Food’
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By BRETT PETZER AND HEATHER WALKER
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THURSDAY’S Red October protests against the ‘oppression‘ and ‘slaughter’ of white South Africans, which saw demonstrators gather in South Africa, London and other public places around the world have been condemned as racist by the South African Institute of Race Relations. Red October supporters charge the government, and the electorate who continue to return the ruling party to power, with the decline of commercial farming in South Africa, the country’s declining food security and the sidelining of Afrikaner culture. They condemn the police and State for presiding over a general collapse of safety and security for all South Africans, with a particular focus on farm murders, which Red October see as symptomatic of something dark in contemporary South Africa: crimes not only motivated by property, but by revenge. Red October sees whites, and particularly Afrikaans-speaking white South Africans, as being especially exposed to South Africa’s epidemic of violence. The government has fundamentally failed them, as well as all South Africans, they argue. Against this narrative is a broad swathe of the South African public and academia. Respected think tank, the South African Institute of Race Relations, (SAIRR) condemned the protest as racist.
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| DIE STEM OR NKOSI SIKELELI’ iAFRIKA?: Red October protesters (pictured here in London) justify their use of apartheid-era symbols as appropriate for a systematic wave of atrocities that, they claim, are aimed at driving whites from South Africa. However, many commentators see the movement as a front for paranoia and apartheid nostalgia. Photos: Ronel van Zyl/ Facebook.
According to the SAIRR’s Georgina Alexander, Red October represents “a minority [of South Africans] that is very antiBBEEE and opposed to positive discrimination”. According to Alexander, a wealth of statistics show that white South Africans are in fact thriving in the New South Africa. “The annual per-capita incomes of white South Africans have…increased by 351% since 1996, versus a 308% rise in black incomes (which rose from a very low base)” she said. She confirmed that Red October are, like all South Africans, perfectly entitled to express their feelings, but that the facts had to
be respected: “It remains the case that in South Africa today, a black person is far more likely to be a victim of crime”. A number of readers expressed concern about the racial nature of the protest. Carla James commented on Facebook, “I agree with their memorandum, but the website is all about race and I cannot support it. If they invite all race groups to march for better governance and protection of all people, then people might take them seriously.” However, a number of social media commenters came out in support of a race-based response to what they see as race-based
persecution. Steve Hofmeyr, along with fellow singer Sunette Bridges one of the faces of the campaign, told The South African that his aim and wish for Red October supporters, was to “soberly articulate our problem to the world. If you are white, Afrikaner or any other minority group in South Africa, you are basically powerless.” News that some of the London protestors brandished an old SA flag got people particularly riled up on social media. “How sad that there are still groups that consider themselves unique to the horrors of crime in Continued on page 2
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