Slovo and bashing the Afrikaner

Buck Jones: I refer to Pallo Jordan's drivel on the role of the Afrikaners over the past century.

Joe Slovo, a prominent communist who fought the National Party with his heart and soul, said in his Unfinished Biography, "Bashing the Afrikaner is a popular pastime among certain English liberals ... It stems from a combination of English jingoism and an attempt to evade collective white guilt for our racist inheritance ... by piling it all onto the Afrikaners. It also creates a smoke-screen over the real roots of racism by giving pride of place to the ethnic factor rather than to economic exploitation. If any group is to blame for the modern foundation of apartheid it is the non-Afrikaner upper strata which dominated the seat of power for more than 75 years before 1948.''

Slovo, of course, was right. -