I'm white - Thought Leader

By Emil Pohl

I’m white. I’m a young white Afrikaans man living in South Africa. Now apparently according to some, I have to feel like a victim for this fact. According to some, I’m being discriminated against permanently, the government is constantly out to get me, and I have to be careful of war from the black population, because their eventual plan is to suppress all Afrikaans-speaking South Africans and to take away all of our human rights.

Apparently I don’t have a good job. Apparently my safety is constantly under threat. Apparently I need to be scared, get a gun, and defend myself against the “swart gevaar” that was prophesised by some person called Siener van Rensburg. Apparently. I can’t help but feel that all of the above just does not ring true.

All except that I’m a young white Afrikaans-speaking South African. I came across a group on Facebook recently that has made me sick to my stomach. That has made me question whether Afrikaans people have even the minimum requirement of intelligence to make this country a success. Luckily though, I’m not even a little bit like the people that belong to this group.

I am not afraid, because I can see forward into a good future. I’m not paranoid, because I’ve learnt to trust people regardless of the colour of their skin. I’m not a victim, because I refuse to be one. And luckily, I have the intelligence to realise that not all Afrikaans people believe what these people believe in.

They are not representatives of the real Afrikaans culture that I know. It’s so much easier to sit in your lounges and sob about the things that are wrong and lay the fault on somebody else instead of going out and doing something. It’s so easy to create a threat from the outside, to mask your own inadequacies and your inability to adapt to a new situation.

A message to “ek is WIT en FOKKEN trots daarop“: You are an embarrassment to all white people. You are an embarrassment to your country, and I hope that you find the guts to actually go buy a farm, cut off all technology and remove yourselves from a society that does not need you. We don’t need your negativity. We do not need your paranoia. We do not need the fear that you spread, nor the mistrust among people that you sow. We do not need the prophecies from some hack that lived a hundred years ago who was obviously a paranoid schizophrenic with a small band of people following his every word.

I fail to see the discrimination against white South Africans.

For what the previous government did to the black people of this country, I would say we got off very lightly, because they were willing to give the country a chance and a future. The outcome could so easily have been a civil war. And guess what, I’ve never had to say sorry for my being somewhere, because I’ve never felt sorry for myself. I’ve never been threatened because of the colour of my skin or the language that I speak. There’s no reason to be proud of your skin colour, or the language that you speak. That’s stupid.

It’s like being proud that you have blond hair, or that you’re tall, or that you have blue eyes. What you can be proud of is your actions and the positive changes that you can make in your country. I agree that BEE and AA have been “unfair”, but the problem is, that it was necessary.

The time has come for it to go, and I strongly believe that the Zuma camp will have a look into it. Now if you reply that I’ve never been affected by crime or that I’ve been lucky, I will happily rebut that I have been affected by crime. I have been held at gunpoint in my own house, by two men. I have been mugged several times, there has been an attempt to hijack me and I’ve gone through the very shit situation of my house being broken into. The difference is that even though the people that have tried to harm me were black, I had the brain to distinguish between one black person and another. I am white, Afrikaans, young and I have a good job. I am white, Afrikaans, young and I don’t believe that the black people that live with me are out to get me. I don’t believe that the black people that work with me are hiding knives under their desks to kill me the next opportunity they have. I don’t believe that there is a war coming.

The war is over. Move on. I’m proud of being a colourless South African, and I am not under threat.