Stop being entitled and bake koeksisters, says Ernst Roets

AfriForum deputy CEO Ernst Roets recently took to Twitter to slam what he saw as “entitlement” among South Africans, which he believed “increases poverty”.

He used the example of the Afrikaner people after the Anglo Boer War, saying that they “didn’t blame the past for all their troubles” two decades later but rather “baked and sold koeksisters”, “started companies”, and “organised fundraisers to build schools and universities”.

The tweet earned Roets mockery from satirical puppet Chester Missing on Twitter, and a blend of outrage and ridicule from others on the platform.

AfriForum has been criticised for their views on apartheid, particularly after CEO Kallie Kriel said it was not, in his view, a crime against humanity.

This view appears to be echoed in an article Roets wrote on AfriForum’s website, where he said “we must admit that people’s dignity has been violated during apartheid”, but also questioned the United Nations General Assembly’s defining apartheid as a crime against humanity in 1973, calling it a “controversial decision”.

Roets argued that the US and other “leading” Western countries refused to ratify the resolution, because those who supported the resolution were mainly from the Soviet Union and had, in Roets’ view, “human rights records that are significantly worse than that of the South African white minority government”.

Roets wrote a column on Politicsweb last year clarifying the organisation’s position on apartheid and accusing their “opponents” of perpetuating “distortions and untruths” about AfriForum “in our absence or on platforms where we have scant opportunity to reply and defend ourselves”.

The Citizen sent questions to Roets asking him to clarify his tweet but had not received a response at the time of publication. We will update the story with his response if we receive it.

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