Afrikaners pawns on Trump’s board

It is fascinating, given the current news, to look at the reasons for the original “Great Trek” of Afrikaners – then known as Boers – from the British-controlled Cape Colony between 1835 and 1840.

Many of the complaints and sentiments among those trekkers are similar to what Afrikaners are now saying as they line up to accept Donald Trump’s refugee green card.

In the 19th century, the Boers felt they were oppressed by the government; they wanted to preserve their culture and they desired new horizons and frontiers.

Fleeing ‘persecution’

When the 50-odd former South Africans – for that is what they are – step off the plane in Washington, DC, today, they will feel they have fled persecution at the hands of the ANC, which, they claim, wants to take away their land and their culture.

None of that has happened, mind you, but it makes a great story for our right-wing Afrikaner nationalists to tell their like-minded redneck friends in the States.

Sadly for the immigrants, the culture shock will be huge, and it will take all of their famed grit to make new lives for themselves.

Again, sadly, many will not realise that they are pawns or “useful idiots” in the American president’s plan to pander to his reactionary fanbase.

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Myth of isolation

He has shown that already by fast-tracking them, on flimsy evidence, over asylum seekers who are genuinely facing death and persecution in several countries.

How Americans, already miffed at immigration in general, will react to them arriving in their communities and potentially taking away jobs from them, or receiving government benefits to help set themselves up, remains to be seen.

The United States is a melting pot of peoples and cultures and it didn’t get that way by people insisting on creating an island for their own.

So, watch that space…

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