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COPYRIGHT 2002 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)
Cape Town
A SERIES of terrorist bomb blasts across South Africa, one of which killed a woman in Soweto, has rubbed a wound of resentment between Africans and Afrikaners. This terrorism, unlike 11 September, has not required us to worry about its `root causes'. It has required only simple condemnation. This is because the bombs are believed to be the work of `right-wingers'.
South Africa has enriched political philosophy by giving definition to the terms `left-wing' and `right-wing', which otherwise mean nothing at-all. (Is Fidel Castro left-wing or right-wing? He persecutes homosexuals, supports capital punishment, bans trade unions, is a billionaire in an impoverished country, and has decreed that his brother should succeed him in absolute power.) In South Africa, as might be expected, the meaning is racial. If you hate capitalism and globalisation, loathe the US, seethe with ethnic nationalism, see your people as the victims of an evil conspiracy and have a black skin, you are `an extreme left-winger'. If you hold exactly the same set of beliefs but have white skin, you are `an extreme right-winger'.
The `extreme right-wingers' are tiny groups of hardline Boer nationalists. They have as much chance of taking over South Africa as the Druids have of taking over England. There is no hard evidence that they are behind the bombings but the circumstantial evidence points towards them. This month members of the Boeremag (`Boer Power') were arrested with large amounts of explosives. I have spoken to members of similar groups, such as the AWB (Afrikaner Resistance Movement), and I know what they stand for. They feel that South Africa rightly belongs to the Afrikaners, and is given to them by God. It has been stolen from them by a wicked Jewish--capitalist conspiracy,...
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