The following is what Mike posted concerning this topic.
Ron is that you? We have been down this road before and I am not going down it again.No it was not I who posted on his blog.
I see you still peddle that bullshit that Afrikaners and Boers are different people.
I see you are still on about Boers being of German decent and Afrikaners from French and Dutch decent.
Listen pal, Jan Smuts comes from Malmesbury in the Cape, but he was a Boer General on the side of the ZAR.
How about General De la Rey who had not a drop of German blood, rather Spanish, French and Dutch. Was he not a Boer?
By your definition the other Boer hero General Louis Botha must be an Englishman seeing that he came from the Natal Colony. But his first and last names are French? Both Smuts and Botha sided with the British against the Germans. In your definition “traitors”, right?
General Piet Cronje came from Colesberg in the Cape. So he was an Afrikaner and not a Boer?
How about General Piet Joubert…more French than “Joubert” you do not get…he was from Prince Albert in the Cape Colony. In your narrow mind and by your thick skulled definition he was not a “Boer”.
And what about General Hertzog? German surname, but born in Wellington in the Cape Colony. Afrikaner? …Or Boer?
How about General Ben Viljoen who was also born in the Cape Colony…also not a Boer right? Seeing that he has a French surname and was born in the Cape, he was definitely and “Afrikaner”.
How about General Piet Kritzinger, German surname but he was born in Port Elizabeth, Cape Colony. Was he an Afrikaner or a Boer?
And then there is General Christiaan Beyers, Boer general and Bittereinder Rebel against the Botha government…born in Stellenbosch, Cape Colony.
WOW!!! Is that not amazing? Just about ALL the Boer Generals and heroes were from the Cape Colony and therefore Afrikaners. Now who would have thought that? [ End of Mike's quote. ]
But since I was implicated while he posted even more severe distortions - I will have to respond.
The following is a rebuttal to his erroneous assertions & distortions once again.
I never said that the Boers & Afrikaners were altogether different people. I in fact pointed out that the term Afrikaner was a political / generic & arbitrary term which marginalized the Boers as the Boers are rendered a minority under the Afrikaner designation. I have noted however that the Boers are a different people from the Cape Dutch of the Western Cape as Professor Wallace Mills [ 1 ] & Journalist Adriana Stuijt [ 2 ] & Professor Tobias Louw [ 3 ] & Professor Irving Hexham [ 4 ] among others have noted & as the history shows as well. [ 5 ] I never claimed that the Boers are only of German descent as the Boers are descended from other groups as well. Furthermore German roots are part of both the Cape Dutch & the Boer populations. Mike's lie is easily refuted as I have a long history of pointing out the French Huguenot [ & other ] origins of the Boer [ & Cape Dutch ] peoples. One again all he does is throw up discredited straw man arguments & distortions without addressing the fact that the Boers are from the second colony founded on the Cape frontier during the 17th cent. by the Trekboers while the Cape Dutch are from the first colony founded in & around Cape Town.
1. Quote: [ Trekboers certainly recognized the differences in language, religion, etc. between themselves and the British. They had certainly developed a way-of-life and a set of values that were distinctive, but they were also significantly different from people of Dutch descent in the western province areas of the Cape. The latter regarded the Trekboers as rather wild, semi-barbarous frontiersmen and the sense of common identity was limited and incomplete. The westerners followed the Trek with interest and probably with a good deal of sympathy, but they certainly did not see the trekkers as the saviours of some mystical Afrikaner ‘nation’. ] From: Professor Wallace Mills. The Great Trek. [ stmarys.ca/~wmills/course322/6Great_Trek.html ]
2. Quote: [ There has always been a vast difference between the "trek-Boers", "Voortrekkers", "grensboere" and the so called Afrikaners - who were the elitist collaborators with the British at the Cape, and who also collaborated on the British side to help defeat the independent Boer Republics. After the defeat of the Boer Republics, its voters - who had always been known as Boers everywhere in the world - suddenly lost their identity because the elitist Afrikaners who started running things on behalf of the British, insisted that everybody be called "Afrikaner" and that everybody should be "reconciled." ] From: Journalist Adriana Stuijt post at Stop Boer Genocide frm 2004. [ http://www.stopboergenocide.com/10836266301.html?cc=0.5061473071974908&i=25271082#start ]
3. Quote: [ Another point of grotesque confusion that we need to clear up, is that Boers are not "Afrikaners". None of your co-workers seem to have any understanding of this. All Boers are aware of the systematic subterfuge and distortion of "identity" that has been the result of the makings of the Broederbond and the National Party, based upon the then image of the British imperialist gentleman. This artificial identity was meant to wean away the Boers from their strong identify, from their history, from their nationalism, and thus weaken them. ] From: Professor Tobias Louw. From an open letter he wrote to the ISS dated September 2003. [ web.archive.org/web/20031001202018/rebellie.org/Raaktief/rk_openletter_ISS.htm ]
4. Quote: [ The majority of the original white settlers, known as Cape Dutch, or in frontier regions Boers, maintained a nominal loyalty to the Dutch Reformed Church. ] From: Professor Irving Hexham. Christianty in Central Southern Africa Prior to 1910. [ people.ucalgary.ca/~nurelweb/papers/irving/ELPHINK.htm#_ftnref41 ]
5. The Boers Documented as Distinct Nation.
Now it makes no difference whether Smuts was "on the side of" the ZAR Boers during the second Anglo-Boer War as he was not from the Boer ethnic group since he was from the Cape Dutch group. Mike's erroneous assertion that he was a Boer for simply fighting with the Boers is classic faulty logic as many different nationalities fought on the side of the Boers but that did not make them biological or ethnic Boers. One does not become a biological or ethnic Boer simply by joining their side of the war. Mike's assertion that De la Rey was not a Boer due to not having German roots is another total straw man argument & of course a total lie as he was born in Winburg Orange Free State. Furthermore just about all Boers have at least some German roots [ as well as French / Frisian / Dutch / Danish roots ] so his assertion that De la Rey allegedly had none is nonsense & pure conjecture & no doubt a rhetorical device aimed at creating confusion. His assertion that Louis Botha must have been an Englishman because he was born in northern Natal is laughably absurd because a lot of Boers had settled in Natal ever since the Great Trek.
As a matter of fact Louis Botha was one of the founders of the Vryheid Republic - also known as the New Republic: a full fledged Boer Republic - which was established within northern Natal on land granted to the local & Transvaal Boers by Zulu King Dinuzulu in 1884. This Boer Republic even adopted a Vierkleur designed flag with the blue & green colours switched from the Transvaal Vierkleur layout. No. Louis Botha was descended from a German named Bode. Now I have never denied that there were Boer traitors but Mike likes to hide the fact that there were far more Cape Dutch on the side of the British then there were ever Boers who sided with them during the second Anglo-Boer War. I rarely ever go around calling anyone a traitor. The only person who EVER throws the word "traitor" around is Mike! All I ever see from him is how the Boers are "a nation of traitors" while rarely ever defining his use of the term traitor. The truth is that he defines traitor as anyone who would get in the way of imperial control of South Africa. No wonder he views the Boers as "traitors" because their historical attempts at restoring their conquered Boer Republics is viewed as treachery towards the British created macro State of South Africa. Further: one would think that authentic Boer traitors [ ie: traitors against the actual Boer people & or Boer independence ] would be a boon for Mike's pan Afrikaans Afrikaner ideology since in order for the political ideology of Afrikaner Collectivism to work: the Boers must surrender their political sovereignty & cede their power to Afrikaner domination. Though strictly speaking, the Cape Dutch cannot be "traitors" since they are not even from the Boers BUT due to the larger numbers of the Cape Dutch: they OUTVOTE the Boers thus their numbers work against Boer self determination.
The town of Colesberg in the NORTHEASTERN Cape is part of the heartland of the Cape Boer people so Mike's ridiculous & erroneous assertion that this makes Piet Cronje "an Afrikaner & not a Boer" is a total joke! This is yet another example of his shameful straw man tactics of which I called him out on before, but to no avail as he stubbornly sticks to promoting straw man arguments & outright LIES & distortions about what I assert. But since he cannot debate according to the facts, he resorts to distortion & straw man tactics. One again his pathetic attempts fall apart because I never claimed that the Cape Boers were Afrikaners or were not Boers! General Piet Joubert was from the Cape frontier / the NORTHEASTERN Cape where ALL Boers were originally from! Mike is espousing a false dichotomy by claiming that all Caucasian Afrikaans speakers from the Cape are not Boers or are all part of the Cape Dutch Afrikaners. The Cape frontier was always home to the Boer people. Most of the Cape Rebels were from the Cape Boers of the frontier. I thought I settled this point years ago on the ILSA blog as well as within my information packed article of 2011:
The Cape Rebels Were Not Cape Dutch.
I pointed out long ago that JBM Hertzog was from the Cape Dutch population. [ I had to do this because Mike was asserting that "Boer Generals" ran South Africa until the 1940s to the point where it seemed as though he was cackling in his pathetic attempts at reversing the reality that the actual Boers were facing. ] His pathetic rhetorical device of asserting that Hertzog's German surname makes him a Boer is pure obfuscation because the Cape Dutch & Boer people are not determined by surnames but rather by line of descent & shared history. The Cape Dutch & Boers share very little history as they are from different colonies with the Trekboers putting even more space between the two then the later Voortrekkers putting even more space between the two. Just as the Quebecois & the Acadians share a lot of surnames but are two anthropologically different peoples with their own distinct identities. His snarky: "I ask you, who won the Anglo-Boer War?" [ which he used to exclaim in older posts & blogs ] was a transparent attempt at accusing the Boers for political actions which were not enacted by the actual Boer population.
General Ben Viljoen was a Boer but he persists with his straw man argument that anyone born in the Cape [ even when they are born in the Boer populated region of the Cape ] or has a French surname [ despite the numerous Boers with French surnames! ] is somehow not a Boer. Folks with discernment & any knowledge of the history of the region can see through his pathetic attempts at confusing the issue as he is clearly implying that the Cape Boers were somehow not part of the Boers of the republics or were just part of the Cape Dutch.
Few are buying his ridiculous argument & slight of hand trick that all of the Cape Boers were / are part of the Cape Dutch Afrikaners. Anyone with discernment can see that Mike's agenda is to get the Boers to forget about their true identity in order to allow themselves to be usurped & derailed by the larger Cape Dutch descendents under the dispossessing Afrikaner designation. He does this in order to dilute the strength of the Boer people, because if every Boer were to stand for independence: he could still OVERRULE them & nullify their position no matter how unanimous their decisions are by claiming that they are all just part of the larger Cape Dutch population as Afrikaners. That is why the Afrikaner designation is so dangerous to the Boer people as it marginalizes their just aspirations by forcing them to accept decisions made by the Cape Dutch population.
The Boer people will never acquire self determination under the Afrikaner designation & HE KNOWS THIS FULL WELL because the Boers are a minority under this arbitrary & dispossessing designation. He wants to convince the Boers that they are all part of the Cape Dutch dominated Afrikaners whose leadership works against any form of authentic Boer self determination.
No one has to "adopt the Boer name"... [ as he asserted ] as the Boers were simply submerged into the Afrikaner designation at a political level - while never at a cultural level - therefore the assertion of Boer identity does not "adopt" anything new but rather reasserts their authentic ethnic identity. He is well aware that his trick of asserting that the Boers are just part of the Afrikaners DILUTES the natural strength that the Boers would have if they were to disentangle themselves from Afrikaner suzerainty / decisions & political / financial domination. That has been his plan all along... coupled with tarring them & White people in general with the Apartheid stigma & defamation.
The assertion of Boer identity does not cause division in the least simply because all Boers can unite under their authentic ethnic identity but... it is in fact the assertion of the Afrikaner designation which causes division as it forces two different ethnic groups under the same umbrella leading to instant friction. The Cape Dutch will always outvote the Boers & he damn well knows this! That is why he propagates the lie that the Boers are part of the Afrikaners so he can STOP the Boers from acquiring any form of self determination.
One must remember that the folks who struggled for & obtained self determination during the 19th cent were Boers [ originally from the Cape frontier ] - not the Cape Dutch. The Great Trek was a movement of the Boer people of the Cape frontier. It was not something that interested the vast majority of the Cape Dutch who could not understand why anyone would want to separate themselves from the Colonial power.
There is no difference between the Cape Boers & the Republican Boers north of the Orange River but any historian will note that there are huge differences between the Boers & the Cape Dutch. Something that Mike tries to taper over as part of his anti-Boer self determination agenda. Although he himself has on occasion de facto admitted in some of his rants this distinction when he gets riled up over "liberals" whom he never refers to under their actual historic ethnic designation [ though he himself is a confessed "former liberal" & current neo conservative ie: not a true conservative ] while then living in the heartland of the Cape Dutch in Cape Town. He is well known for signing articles as coming from Cape Town.
Mike knows the truth & he also knows my TRUE position [ ie: that I know that the Cape Boers are part of the Republican Boers ] because I have posted it on my own blog numerous times & addressed him directly here & on his own blog as well. Therefore there is unfortunately only one logical conclusion to draw from this latest act of distortion & deception. During the debate on Part 30 of the Opening of Pandora's Apartheid Box he deliberately asserted the Trekboers of the 1600s & 1700s were really the Voortrekkers of the mid 19th century in a futile & very lame attempt at sidelining & obscuring the birth of the Boer people which occurred just a few decades after the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck & not during the Great Trek as Mike & some other Afrikaner Collectivist apologists like to claim. Read more at: The Purposeful Omission of a Distinct Nation.
Mike ludicrously & demagogically accuses me [ behind my back as I was not the Anon poster who kicked off the debate of late ] of divide & conquer when the assertion of Boer identity divides no one because divide & conquer only works when two peoples are forced together. The use of the Afrikaner designation is divide & conquer as it forces two ethnic groups under the same umbrella leading to friction. That is why Lord Alfred Milner promoted the Afrikaner designation as he knew it would destroy Boer identity & divide & conquer the whole Afrikaans language group.
Quote: [ The prime representative of the British Empire in South Africa, Sir Alfred Milner, put it this way: "The new tactic (to subjugate the Boers) must be to consolidate the different areas of British South Africa into one nation. Although unification will initially put the Boers into political control of the entire South Africa, it will, ironically, eventually lead to their final downfall."
This was of course precisely what happened - but not until a new name had been developed for the new "nation" which Milner spoke about. They could not continue to call the new nation a "Boer" state, because the Boers had been subjugated. They could not call it a "Cape Dutch" state, as the Dutch colonialists were now British colonialists, and they could not call it a British state, for obvious reasons. The answer then was to give a general term to all White inhabitants of the new union - "Afrikaners".
Although the word originally meant "African" it was politicized by a group of Cape Dutch propagandists under one SJ du Toit in 1880 (the same year the Boers took up arms to fight the British colonialists) in literature of the time. It was then decided to try and blend the Boers into the Cape Dutch and English speaking White populations but calling them all Afrikaners instead of referring to their real ethnic bases. ] [ http://www.arthurkemp.com/whoaretheboers.htm ] From: The Boers of Southern Africa. By Arthur Kemp.
I have never promoted the notion that one group of Boers are better than another group. We know that Mike's former bosses at the Broederbond [ which he admitted on the ILSA blog to handing our books for ] do divide & conquer the Boers along contrived political & even religious lines. I publicly disavow any attempt at dividing the Boer people. But one thing is clear: Calling the Boers Afrikaners dilutes the natural strength of the Boer Nation.
I have never claimed that the Republican Boers were different from the Cape Boers as his recent hit-piece rant post openly asserted. I am well aware that many Boer Generals were born in the Cape. Note that they were born in the EASTERN Cape: the region where all the Boers are originally from & where many remained. As to those fewer Cape Dutch from the Western Cape who joined the Boers struggle for independence: I have absolutely no problem with that at all. If all of the Cape Dutch were like the Boers then this debate would barely even be necessary but his pointing out of the few examples of pro-Boer individuals from the Cape Dutch does not change or negate the fact that most of the Cape Dutch have no interest in Boer self determination & are often opposed to it outright. He conflates [ deftly ] the Cape Boers with the Cape Dutch in the vain hope that you will not notice his deception.
This tactic of his is tantamount to pointing out the few Americans who supported the Boers struggle for independence as indicative of ALL Americans when that was clearly not the case. The problem with Smuts was not just that he was a Cape Dutch but that he was a British agent. There were two Colonies established at the Cape in the 17th cent. The colony in the west led to the eventual existence of the Cape Dutch while the colony established in the north & east led to the existence of the Boer population. All of the Boers are from the second colony while the Cape Dutch are from the first colony. The Cape Dutch were pro Colonial & pro British while the Boers were anti-Colonial & anti-British. The Cape Dutch had strong ties to Europe [ Cecil Rhodes and The Cape Afrikaners. Mordechai Tamarkin ] while the Boers had cut all ties to Europe. [ The Great Trek. Oliver Ransford. & The Devil's Annexe. Sidney Robbins page 59. ] This is not "division" [ try to have more than one thought in your head at the same time ] just a geo-political reality that must be taken into account & navigated around [ with no ill-intent towards the Cape Dutch & recognition & acceptance of those comparative few who do support the Boers ] if the Boers hope to reacquire self determination.
I have pointed out that the Cape frontier consisted of everything from Swellandam right up to Colesberg. [ & even beyond ] Read more at: The Cape Frontier: Birthplace of the Boer Nation. Hence my own words vindicate my points in this rebuttal & show Mike up for the liar that he is as I pointed out that the Boers are native to the northeastern Cape region. Thus his constant erroneous assertions that I ever said that the Cape Boers were not Boers is a provable lie. His incorrigible behaviour exposes himself as having an agenda. Mike is playing a mind game with his followers using the psy-op that the Cape Boers are somehow not part of the Republican Boers of the Boer Republics. I pointed out myself [ using Michael Barthorp as a source ] right on the ILSA blog years ago that there was a lot Cape Rebel activity at Colesberg.
Further irony is that Mike called White Nationalism White Communism when he himself promotes Afrikaner Communism / Collectivism with his forced political association of Cape Dutch & Boer under the Socialist based dispossessing Afrikaner rubric. The term Afrikaner refers to a specific REGIME that was built around a forced political coalition of Cape Dutch & Boer for the specific purpose of gaining control over the South African region. This idea was first pursued in the late 19th cent so there are a few notable Boers like F W Reitz who got on board this dispossessing Afrikaner agenda & called himself an Afrikaner in this pan political context. The Cape based Afrikaners of the 19th cent - mainly through the Afrikaner Bond - were floating the notion of creating a confederation for the specific purpose of controlling the South African region. This idea finally came about with the Afrikaner Broederbond of the 20th cent.
The term Afrikaner does not refer to an enthnicity as there are at least two involved within the designation. Those who use the notion that some 19th cent Boers called themselves Afrikaners are totally missing some key points. The Boers called themselves such in the context that they saw themselves as Africans part of the African continent. They did not use the term to imply that that saw themselves as being part of the Cape Dutch who NEVER used the term Afrikaner to describe themselves until the LATE 19th cent & only did so in order to promote a dispossessing pan Afrikaans identity in the wake of the gold & diamonds that were discovered in the Boer Republics. People must get street smart about this. The Cape Dutch historically used to look down upon the Boers to the point of ridiculing them for going on the Great Trek but then suddenly & out nowhere just a few years after gold was discovered in the ZAR / Transvaal Republic they suddenly start calling themselves Afrikaners for the first time in their nebulous & obscure history & start referring to the Boers as their "brothers" when prior they wanted nothing to do with them. It is a plain as day that the term Afrikaner was being promoted to DISPOSSESS the Boers out of ownership of their own republics & especially out of the resources found therein. This was not even really a Cape Dutch program because author C H Thomas asserted that the Afrikaner Bond was being controlled from Holland. Remember also that two members of the Society of True Afrikaners [ which was founded in 1875 ] were from Holland. The main political reason why some Boers of the 19th cent were calling themselves Afrikaners was due to the successful but limited effect of the Afrikaner Bond of the Cape whose political ideology was starting to get spread into the Boer Republics. Furthermore remember that the Afrikaner Bond began to promote war against Britain at a time when notable Boers such as President Marthinus Steyn of the OVS / Orange Free State & General de la Rey were still strongly against war.
The notion that Boer self determination "divides" Afrikaners is as absurd as suggesting that Dixie self determination "divides" Capitalists or that Estonian self determination "divides" Soviets or that Croatian or Serbian or Slovenian self determination "divides" Yugoslavians / Communists because the terms Afrikaner / Capitalist / Soviet / Communist & Yugoslavian are political concepts / constructs which were often used to divide & conquer the various peoples who were subjected & subjugated under the prospective terms. It is not possible to divide an amorphous political concept which is enforced in a top down manner. But these political concepts are used to create friction by lumping different people together.
Therefore:
The assertion of Boer identity aims to get out of this dialectical process of Afrikaner domination.
