January
1995
South Africa today - Ulster tomorrow?
THE PROVOS, the SDLP and their numerous supporters in the media have taken great cheer from the recent 'transfer of power' in South Africa. They sec this as an encouragement to their grand scheme to incorporate Ulster's territory in an All-Ireland republic. There can be no doubt that the Provos and their allies wish to believe that all resistance to their political aims will prove to be AW B-style blunter. They view the unionist parties as equivalents of the DeKlerk-led SA National Parry and the loyalist paramilitary groups as similar to the AWB.
The President of Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams is doing his best to cast himself as Ireland's answer to Nelson Mandela, the Xhosa 'hero and statesman'. He is currently looking for an Ulster Protestant equivalent of a DeKlerk who will take the `brave step' of rolling over and surrendering all to his carefully constructed pan-Irish nationalist front.
Of course there arc real similarities between Mandela and Adams. Both are leaders of political organisations whose military wings, MK and the IRA have not hesitated to shed innocent White and Protestant blood. Both purport to be open and 'multi-cultural'. the ANC; or `pluralist', Sinn Fein, not racist or sectarian.
The ANC has denied the right of the Afrikaner people, the Zulus and the other nations in the territory of the former Republic to determine their own political destinies. They must bow the knee to Mandela's new order or suffer the consequences. At present the Afrikaners are s spent and broken force, largely caused by the failure of the 'Bop incursion' last Marsh in which the ludicrous AWB played such as ignominious part. Sadly, the promised Afrikaner resistance failed to materialise when their leaders threw in the towel and left their Zulu allies with little option but to capitulate to ANC demands.
However, the struggle to maintain a Volkstaat in South Africa goes on. It will be essential for the present to maintain their culture and identity under the impact of an alien and hostile government which will be a worse tyranny than ever British rule was a century ago. As the new South Africa plunges further into the chaos of the rest of Africa the opportunity to wrest a restored Boer state from the smoking ruins of an ANC-led shambles may present itself in the coming years.