Persecution mania

A distant relative of mine fled Europe during a period of particular turbulence and settled in South Africa, where due to her racist proclivities, she assimilated comfortably, feeling at home in a similar system of oppression that had persecuted her.

She and her staid and dour husband, who always wore the same trim black blazer with gold-embroidered coat-of-arms, frequently traveled first-class by luxury ocean liner always sitting at the captain's table, first from Durban to Southampton, England, and then to visit us in New York.

Although I was hardly old enough to cross the street by myself, I sensed she was odious, when she'd shiver with revulsion when referring to "ze bleck vuns.” It was no accident that on the eve of her return departure to South Africa, I sat on her glasses, for which she had no backup, crushing them long after business hours after they could have been replaced.

Another time, I borrowed and covered my whole face with patches of a sulfur-based anti-acne white cream that stank like rotten eggs, which infuriated her. She pleaded with my parents, "Can't you do something about him?" and called me the "black sheep of the family."

Being called a "sheep" was no big deal, but being a black specimen, made me her ruminant non grata.

She's long gone now, and so is the South Africa of which she was so grossly enamored. The white Afrikaners, mostly descendants of 17th century Dutch and English settlers, no longer rule the land, although they freely participate in democratic elections. 

Recently, around five dozen of them were welcomed into the United States by President Trump and offered an expedited path to citizenship on the grounds they were refugees from racial genocide. Much was made of their lack of tattoos and their waving of American flags.

Whatever injustices may exist in South Africa, it is gratuitous and specious to call it genocide. They should fine-tune their frames of reference and language. This is no time for myths and misnomers.

The Afrikaners are skilled, efficient and productive farmers who have staved off mass hunger for all people of their entire country for many generations. They have also made other notable and varied contributions to their nation's prosperity and prestige, including the first human-to-human heart transplant in 1969. 

They had a good run being in charge, but the run was not good, because it was at the expense of the subjugated Black majority. After the nonviolent revolution led by Nelson Mandela, more than 90 percent of South Africans were no longer second-class citizens.

The minuscule number of Afrikaners (also called "Boers") who were repatriated and feted here may be inadvertently lending themselves to exploitation by American right-wingers, who pine for the pre-Mandela era and paint an extremely unflattering picture of liberated South Africa. Any implication that the alleged chaos and corruption is due to majority Black rule would be invalid even if it didn't spring from suspect motives.

South Africa, like all other nations, is susceptible to hard times, which may be due to a combination of factors at least partially not under their control. In measuring the quality of life and standard of living, these include areas like the economy, public safety, job opportunities, social mobility and services, access and quality of education, industrial output and competitiveness, infrastructure and human rights.

South Africa, among the community of nations, should not be exempted from coequal scrutiny and should be spared neither acclamation nor condemnation as deserved.

The 59 recently arrived Afrikaners should not be characterized as bearers of the torch for civilization. Neither should they be mocked and caricatured as cowardly supremacists who are carping and mewling about their stolen privilege and smearing the present estimable South African government with retributive slander.

The Afrikaners are making allegations that should neither be accepted at face value nor dismissed out of hand. Perhaps there should be an international investigation in addition to the South African government's internal probe.

The Afrikaners feel that the South African government is overcompensating for the inequities of the former apartheid government, by disenfranchising the white farmers, even to the point of countenancing their slaughter. They claim that the toll would be even higher, were it not for their proud tradition of firearms ownership and proficiency.

South Africa has an astronomically escalating homicide problem. It's more than 700 percent above the rate in the United States. Whether the Afrikaners are being targeted or victimized at random, their body count is not indisputably above their representation within the general population.

When the Afrikaners grieve that they are victims of persecution, the burden is theirs. They have some gripping evidence.

To the echo of tens of thousands of frenzied partisans screaming and making gestures suggestive of guns, the leader of a major political party, chanted "Kill the Boer!" and allegedly the government took no action for incitement to riot, and declined to call it hate speech.

The Afrikaners also, not incomprehensibly, resent the government's legalized confiscation and repossession of the ancestral lands of white farmers, offering them no compensation whatsoever, and ceding that property solely to Black South Africans. 

Theft is theft by any other name, although the complications of this case would stump ethicists, whoever they are. 

Is this a matter of restorative justice? Should a small minority of whites be allowed to own an overwhelming preponderance of the land indefinitely, especially since it may originally have been dishonorably deeded?

Surely other options exist. Perhaps some form of eminent domain?

The African National Congress (ANC), which has been the sole party in power since the transition to democracy in April 1994, accuses the Afrikaners of "fabrication and a cowardly political construct to delegitimize our democracy and insult the sacrifices made by generations who fought for freedom." It further denounces the Afrikaners for being "instigators" who are bolting from "accountability for historic privilege" and says their "misuse of refugee protection … is a violation of the spirit and letter of international law."

If all our recently arrived Afrikaners were of high school age and enrolled in the New York City system, there wouldn't be enough of them to fill two contractually-compliant classrooms. Yet at a press conference, media reporters badgered a government spokesperson about why these white Afrikaners got special treatment as long as there are many non-whites under siege around the world.

The veiled charge of racism is inane against the backdrop of statistics showing immigration and asylum patterns into this country over more than the last half-century. 

But I'm not jubilant about the Afrikaners; greeting either, if for no other reason than my long defunct family member would be.