Reconciliation Day speech by FF Plus leader Pieter Groenewald, Bothaville, Free State, 16 December 2018

Reconciliation Day: Do not make Afrikaners the scapegoat

South Africa's Constitution affords Afrikaners the right to commemorate and express their heritage and culture. Most Afrikaners view the 16th of December as an opportunity to commemorate the Day of the Vow within the context of a covenant that was made in 1838.

The vow or covenant at Blood River was not made by a government, but by the ancestors of the Afrikaner nation. Thus, it is every Afrikaner's right to choose to commemorate the Day of the Vow.

Reconciliation Day and the annual commemoration of the 1838 covenant are not polar opposites. It would be a mistake to try and force Afrikaners to choose between the two.

What the majority of the people in South Africa really want is peace and a safe future for their children. They also want to have the right to be themselves, e.g. Afrikaners, in a country with so many languages and cultures.

The fact that the Afrikaner's history is currently being presented in a biased and negative way for the sake of populism is a great cause for concern. Afrikaners are being made the scapegoat for everything that goes wrong in South Africa.

Other concerning matters include the land issue and campaigns that portray Afrikaners and white people as criminals in their own country, as if they stole all the land in South Africa.

South Africa belongs to all who live in it and over the centuries, Afrikaners have played an important role in building up the country for the benefit of all South Africans. Afrikaners can and must be proud of the contribution they made to building up South Africa and they do not need to apologise for it.

Others must not make Afrikaners the scapegoat for their own failures and inability to achieve success. Reconciliation and nation building will only work if no minority groups or individuals feel insulted, threatened, oppressed or marginalised in our country, if we express mutual respect for one another and if we acknowledge our differences.

If reconciliation in South Africa means that certain nations and cultural groups must destroy, sacrifice or apologise for that which is their own, then it is not true reconciliation but rather polarisation and a recipe for conflict.

Issued by the Freedom Front Plus, 16 December 2018