Protests in Pretoria: Afrikaners call for recognition like Israel.
Image: X (Twitter)
Afrikaners demonstrated at the US embassy in Pretoria on Saturday, February 15 to support and thank Donald Trump for opening up refugee statuses for white South Africans over the country's Expropriation Act.
Amid this demonstration, the crowd broke out singing Die Stem, the national anthem under apartheid. Additionally, one placard read that the 'white nation' should be recognised like Israel was.
As Palestine is still reeling from an ongoing genocide, many South Africans online argue that those advocating for this want black people to be brutalised like those in Gaza.
"South Africans should take this as a very serious threat. These white people want to do to you what Israel has done and continues to do to Palestinians," an X user posted.
In the same vein, another individual on the platform added: "And there it is! The real truth of 'white genocide' victims! F*** them."
"See what happens when you try to be kind to colonisers who happily watched you be subjugated for ages? Yuck! They don't understand how lucky they are that black South Africans chose coexistence over revenge. I hope they show them peppeh. Racist in Africa? The f*cking audacity."
Pieter Kriel, a young TikToker claimed the singing of Die Stem at the gathering is an example of cognitive dissonance, mental discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs and the result of bad education.
He went to explain the 'visions and prophecies' of Siener van Rensburg who purportedly predicted the assassination of Hendrik Verwoerd in 1966 and other significant historical moments.
"Listening to a lot of these right-winged, conservative and nationalist Afrikaners, to me it seems that these people believed that Van Rensburg prophesised this, that the US would come and help the Afrikaners here and reinstate segregation and white people will rule SA again.
"The cognitive dissonance plays in a lot. These people believe these things and it's dangerous, misleading and it really comes down to bad education."
IOL
Get your news on the go, join the IOL News WhatsApp channel. Here's the link: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Vb1W9gJ6xCSOTq9fup08