Afrikaners rushing to get back their Dutch roots

 

More than 1,000 new citizenship applications lodged at Dutch embassy in South Africa thus far this year; double from last year’s …

March 28 2009 – Voorburg, The Hague. Afrikaners with Dutch forebears are rushing to apply for Dutch passports, reports the daily Algemeen Dagblad today. More than a thousand applications for Dutch citizenship are waiting for approval at the Dutch embassy in South Africa – and last year they had granted some 500 work-permits for Afrikaners with Dutch roots.

Journalist Caspar Nabel interviewed one couple, Hendrik and Lynette de Vries, who now live with their little baby in the The Hague suburb of Voorburg.

The De Vries couple said they were mainly driven from South Africa because of the crime: “Hendrik’s dad was murdered, and I feared for my life,’ she said.

Thanks to Hendrik’s forefather, who left for South Africa from The Hague during the 18th century, the couple now have been granted a Dutch passport. They don’t have to choose which nationality they prefer as yet: “We have permission to keep our South African nationality and to adopt the Dutch nationality,’ said Lynette. She was in The Netherlands before – as an au pair fifteen years ago. She now has a job as design manager and her husband is a systems manager. And they don’t ever want to go back to South Africa, both said.

“We went through a lot of trouble to get used to the weather and the cultural differences, but we live ‘baie lekker in Holland,’ both said.

An embassy spokesman in Pretoria told the journalist that while the economic crisis in South Africa ‘is playing an important role,’ the flood of citizenship-applications from Afrikaners is mainly due to recent changes in the Dutch laws, which makes emigration for people for Dutch forebears – which applies to the majority of Afrikaners – much more attractive.

Visum applications, Pretoria Embassy:

http://www.dutchembassy.co.za/consulaire_zaken/visum