Dr Dan Roodt, the Afrikaner-rights activist and provocateur, is adamant that Afrikaner rights – cultural and otherwise – have been suppressed in the past 20 years.
Roodt speaks of a South Africa where Afrikaners are subject to ethnocentrism, political isolation and violent onslaught in the form of farm attacks.
In this South Africa, Roodt would say that there is no “good story” to tell. The only success South Africa can boast of, he says sardonically, is efficient tax collection.
Roodt and other Afrikaner activists recently launched a new political platform, which aims to fight for Afrikaner self-determination. Named Front Nasionaal (National Front), this party shares a name with the growing far-right party in France, where Marine Le Pen’s National Front is now averaging support of 30% and upwards. Le Pen is anti-immigration, anti-European Union and socially conservative.
Her populism has disturbed the political landscape in France; Roodt and his colleagues in Front Nasionaal hope to do the same in South Africa. They believe that there is no future for Afrikaners if the current order doesn’t change.
“Many young South Africans say: ‘I’m gatvol [fed up] for this South Africa!'” says Francois Cloete, Youth Leader of Front Nasionaal. He’s only 25, but has a political pedigree: his great-grandparents and grandparents were National Party stalwarts, later joining the pro-apartheid Conservative Party. Cloete himself has worked as a student politician and aspirant municipal election candidate for the Freedom Front Plus (FF+) in the past.
Roodt and Cloete are engaged in a political project that aims to bring the white right out of the shadows. They want to change perspectives of who and what they are, while simultaneously pursuing a programme that aims to challenge and, ultimately, unravel the status quo in South Africa….
South Africa Today – South Africa News
