The Homeland for the Afrikaner People
In
1992, 35-40% of the white electorate wanted partition so that they could
have their own homeland (Slabbert 1992: 108). Though the National
Party droped its Afrikaner base to be a part of the transition to a new
South Africa, the right-wing whites could not unite and agree on a physical
place for a homeland. Some wanted a big part of the nation, others
would have settle for a smaller part by the Orange River. Slabbert
believed in 1992 that the right would divide between the ones who thought
they could achieve their goals within the transitional framework and the
ones who thought they could not (1994). This is what happened as
the Conservative Party refused to participate in the1994 election, while
the new Freedom Front did. Even now some Afrikaners want a homeland
for their own just as other nations that are in control of their destiny
do, and several Afrikaner groups have made suggestions as to where their
homeland should be or not be. The true Afrikaner political parties
are advocates for establishing a homeland for their people.
The Freedom
Front (FF) is the only Afrikaner party in the South African Parliament.
The FF
supports Afrikaner self-determination
and a Volkstaat
(a people state). Their leader is General
Constand Viljoen, a former Chief of the South
African Army, and a former leader of the Afrikaner Volksfront (AVF).
The FF's has short,
medium, and long term strategies to achieve their goals
for an independent homeland. The first things they would do in their
right of self-determination
will be to form cultural councils and find areas for settlement.
The second part will be a six-step process in internal
self-determination with Afrikaner councils and regional automony near
Pretoria and in the Bushveld. The third and final happening, external
self-determination, will be a volkstaat
in North Western Cape.
The Conservative
Party (CP) is a political party not in the government because it chose
not to enter into the 1994 election. The CP's
plan for self-determination,
is in a place chosen by the Afrikaner nation, in accordance to the charter
of people's rights, and the plan has three interval time plans-"short,
medium,
and long
range plans" because to them there is no sharing of "power in South Africa"
with the ANC (Hartenzenberg
1997).
With only about 7% of the
South African population and dropping, the Afrikaners need a new
state so as not to be Africanized into a culture not its own (Why...).
Most of the groups
that support a homeland seem to believe that the place to start the Afrikaner
state is in Orania in the North
West Cape. Orania
is the town
that will start the volkstaat
for the Afrikaner people. The new state would have a viable economy
and education system for its people. It would have farms
modeled after the moshavs that exist in Israel.
The Van Der Kloof
Dam on the Orange River, the biggest source of water
in the region, supplies electricity for the town and could supply electricity
for an even bigger city. Even though the town now is small it still
has sufficient development
to set up a program
for the Afrikaner youth. The vision
of the future is a new
nation for the Afrikaner people by 2015 A.D. that has peacefully became
a separate nation from South Africa. The state will have 450,000
people of whom 65% will be Afrikaners (Volkstaat).
The Volkstaat University and the Afrikaans Technical College will provide
training and academics (Orania).
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Last Updated December 2, 1998