Treason? Afriforum fights for SA, Ramaphosa hurts it

Key topics:.Hawks investigate AfriForum, but Ramaphosa's actions harm SA's economy.BELA and Expropriation Acts threaten property rights and Afrikaans education.ANC's stance isolates SA, while AfriForum fights for US trade benefits..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here..Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here..If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Andrew Kenny*.The Hawks are investigating dockets of high treason against AfriForum and Solidarity. This is because of their high-level meetings in Washington with Trump's administration. They would be better investigating high treason against President Ramaphosa for his long list of actions that have harmed the country and people of SouthAfrica, and will harm them even more in the future..I shall discuss this below, but here I just mention that Ramaphosa is making it likely that Trump will end the African Growth and Opportunities ACT (AGOA) for South Africa, which brings considerable benefits for the South African economy, while AfriForum is pleading with Trump's government to continue it. Who is guilty of treason: the party that wants to damage the South African economy or the one that wants to benefit it?.The mainstream media in SA, the EFF and MK, and most of the political commentators have no doubt: AfriForum is to blame for everything, and imply that it is treasonous; it is unpatriotic and racist; it wants to bring back apartheid; it doesn't want to redress the injustices of the part; it wants special privileges for Afrikaners; it spreads disinformation about SA abroad. And so on. All nonsense..This whole row seems to have been started by Ramaphosa signing into law highly contentious Acts, such as the Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Act and the Expropriation Act (EA). BELA is an assault on the Afrikaans language. EA allows the state to expropriate any property with "nil compensation" provided only it is "in the public interest", which could mean anything. Marxists believe that there should be no private property and therefore all expropriation without compensation is in the public interest..Read more: Neil de Beer: The State v/s AfriForum, Cyril's successors line up – and SA's "atomic" relationship with Iran.These awful laws were noticed in the US, and completely misinterpreted. Trump, who seldom troubles to get his facts right, and Elon Musk, who was brought up in SA and should know better, both understood the EA to be a specific attack on white Afrikaners. It was nothing of the sort. It was an attack on all private property, very much in line with the thinking of the SA Communist party and the ANC's National Democratic Revolution (NDR) – and the EFF. Poor blacks, not rich whites, would suffer most. In the same way, it is poor blacks that have suffered most under BEE, Employment Equity, Transformation and all the other wretched laws designed to enrich a small, politically connected elite. Redressing the injustices of the past? Don't make me laugh! They are being perpetuated..Feel threatened.Although the EA is not a specific attack on Afrikaners, they certainly have plenty of reasons to feel threatened. The song, "Kill the Boer! Kill the farmer!" was ruled not to be hate speech by a South African court. I cannot think of any other group or people in SA against which such a violent call would not be regarded as hate speech. It is lawful to chant for Afrikaners to be killed but not anybody else. (In many ways, the British oppressed black people more than the Afrikaners. Why not a chant: "Kill the Brits!"?) In 2023, Julius Malema chanted, "Kill the Boer! Kill the farmer! Shoot to kill!", in front of a huge, ecstatic crowd. It made headlines around the world..Ramaphosa uttered not a peep of criticism, making one wonder if he approved of the song's sentiment, especially when he saw that the mob did. The motives for farm murders in SA are not fully understood, but theft is clearly not the only one. Farmers and their wives and children, including infants, are systematically tortured, raped and slaughtered in the most gruesome possible way. The percentage of farmers who are murdered is higher than the percentage of the total population that is murdered, making them a vulnerable group. Of course, black farmers and their families are included in these murders. In September 2018, when SA farm murders were receiving wide attention in the US, President Ramaphosa told Bloomberg, "There are no killings of farmers or white farmers in South Africa." This was a deliberate, wicked lie. At the time, SA Police had recorded over 1,700 farm murders. Why did he lie like this? Because he felt absolutely nothing when children and women were slaughtered in vile ways? Or, like the crowd cheering for Malema, was he actually pleased that the farmers were being attacked?.In 2000, President Mugabe of Zimbabwe unleashed his soldiers and thugs to seize the private farms, murdering about twenty farmers, and driving 780,000 black farm workers and their families out of their homes and livelihoods into destitution and sometimes starvation. The ANC thought this was wonderful. It supported Mugabe's seizures 100%. It gave him standing ovations when he visited SA. How could an Afrikaans farmer not fear that the ANC wanted to do the same here? When Ramaphosa signed the Expropriation Act this year, it gave the ANC full legal powers to do just that. The BELA Act is obviously intended to stamp out Afrikaans at schools. With all these actions, words and laws of the ANC, how can Afrikaners not feel under threat? Since the SA Government shows them such contempt and menace, how could they not try to get some sympathy and maybe protection elsewhere? The US would be the obvious place to go to for help..American support.AfriForum is going out of its way to ask for continued American support for South Africa, in AGOA and other trade benefits, and in the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and other aid. Ramaphosa is going out of his way to do the opposite: to antagonise America and stop it from helping the people of South Africa. He is going out of his way to side with America's enemies, such as Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, and the terrorist group Hamas. The sickening article he co-wrote in Foreign Policy (an influential international magazine) in February was an obvious attempt to vilify the US. It was entitled, "Israel's Actions Strike at the Foundations of International Law". The ANC has an appalling record on human rights, supporting brutal tyrants in Africa who crush their citizens, and flouting an international court trying to protect persecuted people around the world. The ANC applauded the murder and persecution of the people of Zimbabwe by Mugabe and Mnangagwa, which sent millions of black Zimbabweans fleeing the country. The ANC even seems to condone genocide against black people. In 2015, the International Criminal Court asked the ANC to act against Omar al-Bashir, the dictator of Sudan, who was visiting SA. The ANC refused to do so. Bashir had been presiding over the genocide of about 300,000 poor black people..Read more: FMF's Van Staden: Bravo Afriforum (and Pres Trump); maybe ANC will now repeal 142 racist laws.The ANC obviously thought this was just fine. When Muhammad Dagalo, the Sudanese warlord who was then carrying on with the genocide against black Africans, visited Ramaphosa in Pretoria in January 2024, President Ramaphosa gave him a big warm smile, called him "Your Excellency" and uttered not a public word of criticism against him. Now Ramaphosa accuses Israel and the US of striking against international law. In the article, there is no mention of the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, the reason for Israel's retaliation. There is no mention of the unarmed men, women and children deliberately slaughtered by Hamas. Ramaphosa is totally immoral. He is a liar and a coward. I fear that this Foreign Policy article, which is intended to stop the US helping ordinary South African people, will have just that effect, no matter how hard AfriForum fights for us in the US..Why does Ramaphosa do these terrible things? Who is he trying to please? I suppose it must be a small group of ideologues – NDR and Communist types – within the ANC alliance and the EFF. Ramaphosa seems to kneel before them. He seems quite happy to ruin SA in order to appease them..Over and over again, looking on as an English-speaking outsider who has lived under the Afrikaners and the ANC, I am struck by profound differences between them. Last week, I was reminded of them once more when listening to a BizNews interview with Connie Mulder, a highly articulate spokesman for Solidarity. Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClSeJV3FoFU. Asked why these Afrikaners had gone to Washington, he said that they felt compelled to do something to stop the ANC sabotaging South Africa, the country they love, the birthplace of their nation..Evil of apartheid.Here are some of these differences. Afrikaners were responsible for the evil of apartheid. Mulder freely admits this and is ashamed of it. When the National Party took over in 1948, its secondary purpose was to perpetuate white minority rule, which it did with the mad ideology and brutal oppression of apartheid. Its primary purpose was to promote the Afrikaner nation. This it did very successfully. The Afrikaner leaders really cared about all their own people. They went to great lengths to advance their "poor whites". They took the education of all their people very seriously, including poor working-class Afrikaners. Afrikaner leaders sent their children to schools taught in Afrikaans. The Afrikaners produced generations of dedicated teachers for whom the school children came first..Read more: Gayton McKenzie: The GNU & VAT; AfriForum & America – and the Zuma threat in 2029.When the ANC took over in 1994, its primary purpose seems to have been to advance a small, rich, politically connected elite. It cared nothing about ordinary black people. It passed laws that kept them in poverty. It wrecked the education of most black children by sacrificing them to SADTU, the Mafia-like teaching union for whom the children came last but upon whose political support the ANC depends. The ANC elite made sure that its own children went to elitist schools teaching in English, with no SADTU teachers..The Afrikaners are the only real nation in SA, the only wholly South African tribe, with their own culture and their own language. English-speaking whites have very much the same culture and exactly the same language as people in Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Black South Africans comprise a large number of different nations or tribes, and feel their strongest sense of belonging to them, not to SA as a whole. (Ramaphosa is something of a tribal outsider within the ANC, which might explain some of his cowardly behaviour.) Afrikaners are proud of their culture. Elite black South Africans seem ashamed of their own languages and culture. They want the English language as the medium of teaching, not an African language. It is this sense of inadequacy the blacks feel towards the Boers that explains their paradoxical attitudes to Afrikaans at school..The ANC realises that Afrikaner teachers are dedicated and competent, unlike SADTU teachers. Because of this, Afrikaans schools are sought after by some black parents. But once their children are in these schools, they demand that they are taught in English. The ANC feels embarrassed that the Afrikaners value their own language while the black elite does not value its African languages. So it has passed the BELA Act to try to stamp out teaching in Afrikaans..Curious and revealing.(There was a curious and revealing episode in 2006. Bok van Blerk, an Afrikaans singer-songwriter, wrote a stirring song about Koos de la Rey, one of the greatest of the Boer generals in the Boer War. The song was about his war against the British and a call for him to return to lead the Afrikaner people. That was it. Black people didn't come into the song at all. The song was enthusiastically greeted by Afrikaners but furiously condemned by some black leaders, who wanted it banned. Why? I think it was just because they couldn't bear to see Afrikaners acclaiming the heroism and longing of their own people.).Mulder explained that the Afrikaners were patriotic South Africans who wished to preserve their own unique culture within the country at large. They didn't want their own province or any special favours. In the last few months, they have certainly proved to be patriotic, acting in the best interests of the people of South Africa. Cyril Ramaphosa has proved to be unpatriotic and acting against the best interests of the people of South Africa..Read also:.Unemployed South Africans and AfriForum united in struggleAfriforum – ANC, not us, brought Trump's wrath onto SA. For once, Cyril, accept responsibilityAfriForum goes after Lesufi for "covering up corruption".This article was first published by the Dailyfriend and is republished with permission..Andrew Kenny* is a writer, an engineer and a classical liberal.

Treason? Afriforum fights for SA, Ramaphosa hurts it

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