I’m a south african and I want to leave badly, as soon as possible. I’m writing this to tell you why. Perhaps if you read this, you will understand why so many white people, especially Afrikaners are leaving.You may even understand why this country isn’t what it used to be and certainly is no country for white men.
First, a bit of background on myself. I was born in 1979 and moved to a homestead at the age of six. I went to school in the nearest small town seven kilometers from my house.The school was named after Japie Greyling. A hero of my people who was prepared to stand in a firing line rather that give away our positions to the British.
When I was a small boy, I was taught black people are not the same as us, just like my parents and their parent’s before them were taught. I was taught not to associate with them. In terms of my experiences with them at a young age, I was mostly exposed to the farm workers and their children. They were often unwashed, I couldn’t understand their language, they had ceremonies to their ancestors and strange superstitions. These are differences even a child can notice and coupled with what I was taught by my family, my minister and my schoolteachers(pretty much every authority figure in my life) , I believed it was true.
During apartheid days, black people were not allowed on the streets at night. I remember the senior year boys in primary school inviting me to drive along with them on a bakkie at night and beat up black people with baseball bats. I also remember other farmers workers arriving at work on a monday, still so drunk they can barely walk nevermind work and then get beat up by the farmer so bad I could not bear to watch. People told me that life is not so hard for black people, their just kept separate from us. I did not see the shacks and poverty because no-one dared go into a loction(informal settlement or area put aside for black people to live), for fear of their lives.
What people easily forget or perhaps don’t even think about is the level of fear we lived under during those days. We were drilled on emergency procedures , land mine identification, taught firearms and camouflage to stop the terrorists that were bombing innocent civilians. There were armored vehicles surrounding my school more than once since it was believed that the schools may be attacked by the terrorists.This fear was a constant presence as I was growing up. I remember me and my cousin sitting by a swing as children, thinking we can see the terrorists coming over the mountain.
What I also remember about those days were clean streets and safe neighborhoods, roads without potholes and a solid electricity supply. The trains were on time , you could order livestock via train and have them arrive alive. You could put yourself on a train to cape town and arrive in one piece, unmolested. Highways were well marked and pothole free. Also, less things were vandalized and things that were vandalized were actually fixed.
Then, in 1992, a referendum was held to determine whether black people should be given the vote. The majority of white people at that time voted yes and this is how apartheid actually ended.
When I reached my senior year in primary school, I decided to go to a high school in sasolburg, quite a distance from my home, so I had to stay in a boarding house. I did this to avoid the bullies and other hateful and untrustworthy individuals that I went to primary school with as well as to have an opportunity to study latin. My time in hostel was difficult the first two years, luckily later on a close friend also came to the school to stay in the hostel because his school only went to grade 10. Sadly, I did not manage to push through on the latin and chose history for matric instead.
It was during this time, whilst at Sasol, that a convicted terrorist was made president, we were expected to think of him as a hero and this was also the first time black pupils came into our school. I clearly remember standing on the second floor outside my class, looking at all the new happy faces and thinking, finally, that people will be treated equally and there would be no more reason to fear the terrorists. I believed that there lay a bright future ahead for this country and we would lead africa into a new age of prosperity.
As I met and made friends with black pupils at school and later on started working with black professionals, I began questioning what I was taught and managed to deprogram myself with some effort of the beliefs I was indoctrinated into. These included all of my beliefs and I started finding my own truth.
The difficulty with trying to not be racist is that the behavior of those your trying to accept as being like you, is often exactly what racists tell you it is. For example, if your racist teacher says black people are dirty and don’t wash and many of the black people you meet smell like they didn’t wash, you think he’s right. He doesn’t tell you they have to walk to get water and wash from a bucket. Or if you get told black people are criminals and every single crime commited against you is committed by a black person. Another example would be if your told that black people are like animals and your shown images of your own people viciously chopped up on a farm somewhere. What would you believe?
Anyhow, I managed to see the truth for myself, how people just wanted to feel their better than someone else without actually having to do something for it. I realised quite early on (high school) that not being clean is not limited to black people and neither is being dirty. These and other things helped me to move on from the racist ideology I grew up in, and I started making black friends and treating people the same. I was actually in a way relieved because now I could admit to liking certain black ladies, even though people I was surrounded with mostly didn’t approve.
After leaving school I had quite a difficult time finding work. You see, after apartheid, the terrorist government just changed the racism back around on white people, taking revenge for what was done to them by someone else. Despite this, I luckily now have solid employment, even though years of my life were wasted at home whilst I went to interviews to see less qualified and capable candidates get selected over me because of my skin colour.
Which brings us to south africa today. The town I went to school at, is now a dump with beggars, criminals and drug dealers everywhere. Young kids on meth(here we call it tik) and dirty streets. Everywhere I go, towns are filthy and roads are filled with potholes. Infrastructure was not kept up by the new government and services quickly started going backward so that we now have water shortages and rolling blackouts.
Our terrorist communist leadership sold out our country to foreign interests and the people involved are not imprisoned but celebrated. The school I grew up in is now just called a primary school(apparently, it’s not fitting in the new south africa to have a school named after someone who stood up to the colonists) , our street names and town names have been changed(often named after some famous terrorist) and our monuments removed or destroyed. Those of us lucky enough to be working sponsor a horde of parasites living on welfare.
As the country swiftly advances toward becoming a communist state, the government wants to take away the land we have farmed for generations to feed the nation and give us nothing for it.We are also being murdered on our farms in large numbers whilst black people pretend it’s not happening. I am shocked at the level of hatred still in this country and don’t think it will stop anytime soon. Fake Christians don’t forgive.
I do not intend to stay here and see the famine that these measures will eventually cause. I no longer wish to sponsor parasites with my labour. Also, I don’t want to contribute to a country where I am hated, discriminated against and my daily help is not appreciated.Most importantly, I am tired of the fear. The threats did not stop after apartheid, people still call for our deaths in public and on t.v. and no-one, even those black people I used to think of as friends, are saying a goddamn thing.This is why I want to leave.
The country I knew as a child is gone. That flag flies no more. That anthem is no longer sung with pride and I have no homeland anymore. It’s time to find something better.
PsiPriest 