The Last Trek: A New Beginning

This month I read a book by F.W. DeKlerk, the last Afrikaner president of South Africa. We was succeeded by Nelson Mandela in 1994.

I thought I was world-aware, but have never, never heard about the Afrikaner side of the Apartheid business. Apartheid (and it's adherents) was always this screwy, slimy devil.

Did you know that the Afrikaners were religious refugees from Europe who--like Anabaptists--sought freedom to live without being slaughtered in the "new world" of their time. Many of them were French Huguenots, who had first gone to Holland, and finally moved to South Africa. They were tough and diligent. These guys were farmers, not aristocrats (like the British who settled in parts of Kenya and the southern United States.)

In 1904, they lost the Boer War against the British, which had been particularly gruesome.
After being harassed and slaughtered, they were particular about having a homeland of their own, similar to Jews wanting a geographical nation. And so, in 1984 when an Afrikaner won the South African election, he set to establishing a system that would safe guard the right to self-determination of his ethnic nation. "Apartheid" means separateness.

Apartheid wasn't so much focused on African subjugation as it was on Afrikaner self-determination. The Boers developed excellent school systems, vineyards, good farms, an economy for themselves. And it was successful.

The Africans didn't have systems that systematically promoted their ethnic nations. It seems that the desparity just got too great between the Boers' wealth and the African's lifestyles.

After 40 years of Apartheid, there was too much unrest in South Africa, and it seemed they were headed for a Boer-African civil war. F. W. De Klerk was elected president 1990, and immediately began to dismantle Apartheid. For an African to dismantle Apartheid would have seemed natural. But for a pure Boer to take on the task, I think, makes him extraordinary.

He re-wrote the constitution, set up a fair election system, and let himself be defeated by Mandela. The election was clearly rigged and manipulated, but in the immediate aftermath, even while some of this peer were demanding a re-vote, he voluntarily delivered a Concession speech.

Many of the Africans were astonished when he actually stepped down. They had expected hanky-panky. Instead, De Klerk passed the presidency peacefully to his opponent, and continued working under the new government for some time.

I couldn't read the last chapter because our dog ate it. But that was the gist of the book.