Thursday, 14 July 2016

From Johannesburg: August 1981

Johannesburg
8.8.81
Dear Mum,

Over here the rugby tour is dominating the papers. If the tour finishes the Afrikanners will see it as a political victory. The whole team is full of Afrikanners with a couple of English and a token colored. The English feel they were discriminated against in the choice of team @they were probably right.
I don’t know if demonstrators make any difference back here. I have been told that all the changes in the last ten years are due to external forces. Adverse world opinion manifesting as sporting boycotts. Most English are embarrassed with the politicians and are very sensitive about their country. Trade continues and some sports are affected but rugby is more than a sport to the Afrikanner. The blacks don’t play rugby. They play soccer.

I have been told that boycotts etc. make no difference or even make the Afrikanners more truculent and more resistant to changes. i.e. There have been great changes in the last ten years in sport and it’s all or nothing as everybody still hates them so why try.

A lot of literature is pre-occupied with the K factor (K for kaffir). These expatriates don’t write about SA with any objectivity. It’s these white liberals who have been wrecking this country for years by deserting it and leaving it to the right-wingers.

Anyway there are probably 2 million whites from which all the English artists come so I shouldn’t expect much.  Andre Brink is an Afrikaaner whose books have been published in Australia. Very political books and the Afrikaaner feels he is a traitor but his writing is not good enough to worry most people. Very easy to dismiss @ ignore.

I should shorty be going to Sun City in Bophuthatswana one of the “homelands.” Some of the blacks talk about Australia as being my homeland.  One asked me if Australia was one of those multi-racial countries.
                Regards Alan


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