Eugene Terre’Blanche, Mike Stofile and the year of being ugly

From the country that brought you the ANC two-faction in-fighting debacle, the war between the Scorpions and organised crime unit and the arms deal, comes a film so moving — and let’s face it, most of us will want to move overseas quickly after seeing it — that critics have deemed it an epiphany.

Tweeracistsenababa tells the story of two South Africans one black, who is a bad sport … bad for sport (something like that) and one white who believes that white is right — back where it started and should return to the good old days (if we can only work out when those were).

Our story opens in Vryburg where a huge crowd is gathered to hear Eugene Terre’Blanche confirm to the volk of South Africa that 1994 was a huge defeat for the Afrikaner nation and that there is a new plan to get their land back or at least Vryheid in KwaZulu-Natal, the old strongholds of Stellaland and Goosen in the far North West and sections of the Free State.

This, he will tell them, is based upon the Conventions of Sandrivier in 1852 and Bloemfontein in 1854 and that if they are not successful in these demands, as opposed to land claims — which is not where this is going — they are taking it to The Hague for adjudication.

Moreover, if this does not go the way of the AWB then there is no alternative but to take up arms.

The fact that the Afrikaners of this country have evolved (politically) fabulously, are making strong challenges based upon occupying the high moral ground in many instances and are miles away from the laager mentality of years gone by, seems irrelevant to this line of thinkers.

Their quest is not to resolve the problems of this country but rather to bring back the good old ones. I’d repeat them here but we’ve heard them ad nauseam (and let’s face it, when we see this it’ll make us pretty nauseas) during the grand old days of apartheid.

The bad news for this group is that the Afrikaners of this country have advanced and reached a level of sophistication that will marginalise this call to the past.

The AWB will achieve substantial turnouts — let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that this hankering for the past does not exist — but for most it will be a step backwards.

Which brings us to the second part of the movie: the story of a man so obsessed with race that when he loses the vote to become Saru president he blames this on being “no country for black men”. The fact that Jacob Zuma has confirmed that Hoskins is considered black for this purpose seems to have been lost on him.

The second part of the argument advanced by Stofile is that there is a third force running rugby. Perhaps he is confusing this with the Western Force from Perth. Politicians do get their sporting names wrong from time to time.

The third reason why he was not elected was because everyone betrayed him. Voters considered known knowns became known unknowns or unknown unknowns … or something like that. (See Donald Rumsfeld’s book Winning a Rugby Presidency).

The bottom line is that South African rugby is breathing a huge sigh of relief this morning. Let us hope that the Springboks can now get on with the business of playing the game.

Of course Stofile could not resist a parting shot by saying that the government should now get involved with the game.

And finally, the “baba” in the title — that’s the rest of the country reading about this garbage. We’ll be crying like babies watching Tweeracistsenababa, trust me.