Pages

20090731

Half Afrikaner nation in self-exile

 

1,5-m of 3-million Afrikaners have now fled abroad:

July 31 2009 – PRETORIA. South Africa’s 1,5-million Afrikaner exiles now have a bew ‘home in Afrikaans’, with the internet radio service Solidarity Radio. The programme focusses specifically on exiled Afrikaners. It is presented by one of Afrikanerdom’s most popular radio presenters, Tossie Lochner, who was the foreign correspondent for Radio Without Borders for 30 years. Her weekly programme is broadcast every Wednesday. http://www.solidariteitradio.co.za

Solidarity Radio Tossie Lochner and Dirk Hermann July 29 2009 for 1,5m Afrikaners abroad Dirk Hermann of the trade union Solidarity in South Africa, with popular Afrikaans radio presenter Tossie Lochner  during her first weekly broadcast on July 29. Picture: Reint Dykema, Solidarity Radio.

Solidarity trade union’s deputy director Dirk Hermann said the new programme ‘is the proverbial cultural umbilical cord which ties the 1,5-million exiles to their homeland and their language.”

This statement from the country’s top trade union for Afrikaner artisans also shows that at least half of the country’s 3-million Afrikaners have already left the country of their birth.

This is mainly due to the out-of-control violent crime, which is worse than in any war-zone in the rest of the world.

And Afrikaner families are also leaving because of the ANC’s black-economic-empowerment laws, which bar most ‘white’ males from the labour market. 

“White poverty” is the result – homelessness and desperate poverty are devastating the Afrikaner community, as a result of the ANC’s black-economic-empowerment laws – as this video interview in Afrikaans shows: http://www.stube.co.za/view_video.php?viewkey=0db309e056e3d2dcd7d6

And even president Jacob Zuma – during his election campaign – paid attention to the growing poverty of the Afrikaners. View his visit to the Bethlehem Afrikaner community for the poor: http://www.stube.co.za/view_video.php?viewkey=c13838ff95ccfa94cebd

 

The country’s unemployment levels are also soaring, with the country haemorrhaging some 475,000 jobs thus far this year…

Said Hermann this week: “Those 1,5-million compatriots who have left the country over the past decade and now live in the far corners of the world, can still contribute to our culture – and act as ambassadors for our country.” 

Solidariteit Radio has already signed up listeners far afield through its daily newsletter, which people can sign up to. They are also in contact with some 30 Afrikaans congregations abroad, which are cooperating with the project.

Listen to Radio Solidarity on : http://www.solidariteitradio.co.za 

(Note: save this link on your favourites: you won’t find a link for it on the trade union’s regular website http://www.solidariteit.co.za)

----------------------------------------------

SA haemorrhaged 475,000 jobs thus far this year:

Meanwhile, Jan de Lange, financial expert at the Afrikaner-artisan dominated trade union, warns that South Africa has been haemorrhaging 90,000 jobs a month since January: a total of 475,000 jobs have already disappeared because businesses are collapsing. The number of unemployed workers is expected to rise to 700,000 by the end of 2009, and South Africa only pays unemployment benefits for six months.

This is very bad news indeed -- as the current wave of violence-driven strikes and protests countrywide, is expected to increase as joblessness starts hitting communities.

Statistics South Africa also published details on 29 July 2009 indicating that the recession has hit the country much harder than the SA government officials have been claiming.

De Lange, citing Mike Schüssler, a top economist of http://www.Economists.co.za, writes that South Africa is facing job losses of 700,000 this year. In other words, the government is going to have to fork out unemployment benefits for all these people – who also will no longer be paying any taxes… http://www.newgate.co.za/afleggings/retrenchments.htm

“No more free water and free electricity for millions of ANC-voters”:

TrashngStreetsDemandingWageIncreaseWillCostR41billionExtraWagesJuly292009SowetanFP This represents a serious drain of the country’s 5-million-strong taxpayer-base  – and obviously already has had a negative knock-on effect on the “service-delivery” budgets of municipal, provincial and national government agencies.

Warnings have already been sounded by government officials in statements to the Sowetan newspaper (front page left).

Over the past 4 months, ANC-officials have been faced with hundreds of thousands of protesting strikers of a startling variety --  ranging from public hospital doctors to sanitation workers, bus drivers, nurses and construction workers building the FIFA WC2010 stadia.

And there are many other riots too: by hundreds of thousands of increasingly desperate and hungry township dwellers, who are growing very irate about the lack of the ANC’s promised ‘service delivery’ and healthier housing.

This week, government officials started warning that if all these demands by the sanitation workers alone were met, they would no longer be able to pay for the free water and free electricity services which is still laid on for millions of poor black township residents under the ruling ANC’s election manifesto

Sowetan, the country’s largest daily newspaper for black readers, warned that it would cost R41-billion to adhere to all the demands by striking municipal workers -- who were trashing the country’s streets this week.

Sowetan warned that ‘the poor may lose free water and electricity’ if the government gave in to the sanitation workers’ demands for a R5,000 basic wage, a retroactive increase of 15% over last year’s and a housing allowance of R3,000 a month. The government is only willing to pay them 13% more over last year’s wages  – the same offer they made to striking public-service doctors last month.

  • That’s all they can afford because of their rapidly-shrinking taxpayer base.

Horrifying unemployment picture

Schüssler told Solidarity trade union journalist Jan de Lange that the official unemployment levels – “calculated very conservatively under a very tight definition of unemployment” – were said to have risen from 0,1% to 23,6% this year.

  • Schüssler says however that ‘a horrifying picture emerges when one also includes those unemployed people no longer on official benefits – and who have ‘lost all hope of still trying to find a job and have given up searching for one.’ 

Unemployment benefits only last six months – in other words, the SA government at the moment is paying benefits to at least 475,000 newly-unemployed people thus far this year – and this number is expected to rise to 700,000, according to Schüssler’s estimates.  http://www.solidaritysa.co.za/Tuis/wmview.php?ArtID=2613

other sources:

Retrenchment crisis: http://www.newgate.co.za/afleggings/retrenchments.htm

ANC in denial about township violence causes: http://allafrica.com/stories/200907090291.html