Boer War Bitterness

South African embassies have been at some pains recently to stress that the old Afrikaner exclusiveness is dead, and that Afrikaners and English-speaking South Africans are now "one people," who have forgotten the divisions of their past. "Patrys," of October, 1969, wholly belies this claim. Particularly in the official educational insert of the junior edition, there is the inevitable—and undeniably bitter — preoccupation with the Boer War, (described as the Second War of National Liberation), which has characterised Afrikanerdom for a whole lifetime.

The eight-year-olds are carefully told how "the English later punished our women and children, burned their houses down and set their pastures alight. The women and children were put into camps. These concentration camps caused the deaths of 26,000 women and children through hunger and sickness" (which is not strictly accurate). The same age group is told of the heroic young Japie Greyling, a volk-hero. The English "never thought the children of the Afrikanervolk could be so valiant!" young Japie unless he gave them information. He refused. "The English marvelled at ...a young boy who was not afraid of the enemies of his people." And much else in similar vein.

South Africa's Africans get more mention than non-Afrikaner whites, but nearly all of it is derogatory. A photostrip series The building in the woods" has as its villain a savage, loin-clothed.

African who is preoccupied with plunging his spear into whites so as to add to his collection of skulls The heroes of the strip are three virtuous and brave Afrikaner children.