'You do not speak for us'

'NOT IN OUR NAME': AFRIKANERS REJECT FAR-RIGHT NARRATIVES IN STATEMENT BACKED BY ANC

- Faizel Patel

Ride Joburg participants head over Nelson Mandela Bridge in Joburg yesterday during the world's second-largest timed cycle race, after the Cape Argus Cycle Race.

(Michel Bega)

Afrikaners are essential to building a “nonracial, nonsexist, democratic and prosperous South Africa”, says the ANC.

This is its reply to Afrikaans-speaking South Africans who authored and cosigned an article, Not in our Name: Afrikaners Respond to the Misuse of Their Story in US Politics, published on Saturday.

The letter was signed by nearly 50 Afrikaans academics, church leaders and other professionals who said they are “not pawns in America’s culture wars”.

In it, they said: “What concerns us most is the hijacking of our identity by ethnic fringe groups both in South Africa and abroad.”

It said they “reject the US narrative that casts Afrikaners as victims of racial persecution in post-apartheid South Africa”.

“This framing, now being used to support the far-right Great Replacement theory in the United States, is not only misleading, but is also dangerous.