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In a few short weeks, the group has intentionally disassembled the cultural relations bridge Nelson Mandela had built for them to be considered part of SA’s future.
AfriForum’s delegation to the US. Picture: X/@afriforum
In the week that saw the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky publicly humiliated in the US Oval office, a group of four men from AfriForum concluded its tour of the United States.
The Afrikaner civil rights group went to the US to raise support for Afrikaners in South Africa who, according to them, not only face a genocide, but are losing their land to the government through expropriation without compensation.
It would not be far-fetched to think that they probably watched the utter humiliation of Zelensky with glee, hoping that in the near future, President Cyril Ramaphosa would be invited to the White House for a similar session with Donald Trump and his vice-president.
It is ironic that AfriForum has wormed its way into the White House because of the economic dominance of the very same group that it alleges faces persecution in South Africa.
It is because of their economic dominance that tech billionaire Elon Musk has taken up their cause and placed it on US President Donald Trump’s urgent to-do list.
Having cancelled any form of financial aid to this country through aid agency USAid, South Africa now faces the real possibility of Trump going all the way and removing it from benefiting from the African Growth and Opportunities Act.
In its zeal to get the country “cancelled” by the US, AfriForum has become the snake that bites its own tail.
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The very same farming community that it claims it went to the US to garner support for might turn out to be the community that becomes the most hurt by US actions.
But the real harm that AfriForum managed to achieve is destroying whatever ounce of credibility it had in the eyes of the majority of South Africans.
For years, people who were disadvantaged by racial segregation have watched with little interest as AfriForum used its financial muscle to build Afrikaners an economic and cultural island.
What it has done through this ill-conceived notion of garnering support from right-wing conservatives in the US is isolate its group from the rest of South Africa.
Some within its group will suffer the consequences of being viewed with suspicion.
AfriForum has got away with a lot of activities that, if they had been done by another group of people in South Africa, would have been considered questionable.
There is nothing in the constitution barring any language group from creating economic opportunities specifically for its language group, but given South Africa’s recent history, establishing an e-hailing service particularly for the benefit of Afrikaans-speakers is borderline questionable.
ALSO READ: Hawks investigating high treason over disinformation about land expropriation
Is it illegal? No.
Does it play on South Africa’s cultural and race divisions? Yes.
These are considerations that Trump’s trigger-happy administration will surely never take into consideration as it ill-advisedly offers refugee status to the Afrikaner people in the US.
South Africans are well aware of the exaggerations and half-truths that they used to gain the attention of the US president and resentment to their ill intentions will grow.
In a few short weeks, they have intentionally disassembled the cultural relations bridge that Nelson Mandela had so intentionally built for the group to be fully considered as part of South Africa’s future.
When Mandela said: “If you talk to a man in a language he understands it goes to his head, when you talk to him in his language it goes to his heart”, it was Afrikaans he was promoting.
His work seems to have been in vain.
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