We are not victims, there is no genocide. This rhetoric shows that the US administration doesn’t understand my thriving country
I am a blue-blood Afrikaner, at least in terms of ancestry: both my grandfathers were young Boer soldiers in the Anglo-Boer war and I am directly related to the president of the old Transvaal Republic, Paul Kruger. I am a descendant of Dutch, French and German settlers who were brought to the southern tip of Africa in the 17th century. Unlike other colonial societies in Africa, my ancestors never left.
They occupied the whole country, displacing and oppressing the Indigenous inhabitants. Eventually, their concept of white supremacy developed into a formal state policy, apartheid. The UN classified this as a crime against humanity. Miraculously, my country has been a thriving democracy and open society ever since the formal end of apartheid in 1994.
Max du Preez was the founding editor of Vrye Weekblad, an anti-apartheid, Afrikaans weekly newspaper
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
