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From bully boys to wimps: the decline of SA's military It is a good thing that Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe do not seem to have any territorial ambitions, because if they chose to annex a few South African provinces, the defence force would be hard-pressed to stop them, especially if Lesotho decided to get into the action. A large and long overdue review of South Africa's defence capabilities and needs, now in the phase of public consultation, paints a grim picture. The country has too few fighting men and women, often with old or useless equipment, often without the discipline...

South African farmer Piet Kemp inspecting baby corn in Sartichala, Georgia A South African court on September 12 convicted Julius Malema, president of the African National Congress Youth League, of hate speech for singing "shoot the Boer, kill the Boer" at a rally last year. But some Boers (white South African farmers) say they have had enough of violence and racial tension in South Africa and are planning to move out. VOA's James Brooke visited one Afrikaner who started farming this year in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Piet Kemp's family farmed in southern Africa for four centuries. But...

The Institute for Race Relations reports that there's hundreds of thousands of young whites missing in South Africa. Newsweek also reports on the mass exodus of white, skilled families, asking: 'why are the brightest leaving this most successful state?" The South African Institute for Race Relations says this week that the young white men -- aged 24 to 34 have mostly left the country now, and that there now are many more older white men than younger ones - when the reverse is the case in normal societies without wars. There are two main reasons for this demographic oddity: the...

Cityscape of Pretoria, the capital of South Africa in 2010. The official who oversees South Africa's capital, Pretoria, says the city will have a new name by the end of next year. The mayor of Tshwane municipality, Kgosientso Ramokgopa, says all of Pretoria will be renamed Tshwane by the end of 2012. The ruling African National Congress party has been working for years to rename the capital Tshwane, but the move has been strongly resisted, mainly by white South Africans. Ramokgopa says the issue is currently before the culture minister for approval, adding his municipality would be "resolute and stubborn"...

DISPATCH FROM SOUTH AFRICA The sellout of a nation Elite soldiers, intelligence officers speak out on Marxism, globalism Editor's note: WorldNetDaily international correspondent Anthony C. LoBaido recently interviewed four top South African anti-communists who had high-ranking positions in South Africa's former anti-communist government, military, academia and intelligence branch. One of these men ran the war in Angola against the Soviet Union and Cuba in the 1970s and 1980s. Their answers have been pooled in the interest of clarity and space. The men are Pieter du Toit, a former South African air force pilot; Col. Wakefield Manner, the head of the...

The Malema hate speech trial on Thursday heard that Afrikaans people living on farms feel the ’Dubula Ibhunu’ songs are directed at them. There were also discussions about the real meaning of the word ’boer’. AfriForum is asking the Equality Court to stop ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema from singing the songs. Speaking through a translator the Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurvereniginge (FAK) Professor Danie Goosen said Afrikaners felt threatened by the songs. “It is seen as a threat to their physical position and it is seen as a threat to their symbolic connection with South Africa,” he said. However,...

<p>White South African novelist Annelie Botes told a South African newspaper she felt 'threatened by black men'.</p> <p>An award-winning writer has provoked fierce debate in South Africa after candidly saying that she does not like black people.</p> <p>Annelie Botes, a leading Afrikaner novelist, said she would invite a white, coloured (mixed race) or an Indian man in for a drink, but would "feel threatened by a black man".</p>

Johannesburg, South Africa (CNN) -- Organizers of the 2010 World Cup hoped the soccer tournament could provide a catalyst for a "re-branding" of South Africa, and arguably there is no group within the Rainbow Nation that needs this makeover more than the Afrikaner community. The Afrikaners -- who count Oscar-winning actress Charlize Theron and former athlete Zola Budd among their number -- are descendants of European, mainly Dutch settlers, who moved to the southern tip of Africa in the 17th century. Making up just under six percent of the population -- numbering around three million from an overall population of...

JOHANNESBURG — For some South Africans, there is still a "home" team to cheer for in the World Cup final. When the Netherlands faces Spain on Sunday at Soccer City, a good part of the Afrikaner population will be watching closely, and mostly because of their Dutch roots. "I feel a strong connection to them because of my heritage," said Anja Bredell, a 25-year-old fashion design student from Pretoria. "I also have blonde hair, blue eyes and fair skin like most of the Dutch." The Dutch East India Company established its first settlement in Cape Town in 1652, creating what...

South African pizza chain Romans Pizza has been forced to apologize and retract a television advert after it was blasted as an “attack on White Afrikaner Women.� In the ad, a ditsy, buxom and blond Afrikaner woman wearing a tight tank top bearing the phrase “Wors Is Lekker� (“Sausage Is Great�) tries to enter the restaurant but can’t figure out how to open the front door. Scenes from the above Romans Pizza ad When the blond finds out about the chain’s new “Boeriezza,� which is topped with extra sausage, she ecstatically exclaims, “I love wors! Lekker!� As the blond walks...

White South Africans, concerned about racism and crime, have launched a Facebook petition to return to Holland, where their ancestors lived 300 years ago. Cape Town, South Africa Is there a statute of limitations on citizenship? Afrikaners in South Africa may soon find out. Three hundred years after their forefathers left Europe for a new life in Cape Town, some Afrikaners are lobbying the Dutch government to grant them citizenship. The descendants of the Boer settlers are looking for an exit plan. They say white people have become targets of crime with tensions rising since the murder of right-wing Afrikaner...

"Hoor, hoor [Hear, hear]!" shouted the square-jawed Afrikaner farmers and their dutiful wives, as one speaker after another referred to the guest of honor as "a gladiator," "a saint" and "a savior." Dour and unsmiling, he sat stolidly, barely nodding his acknowledgment of the eulogies. When at last he took the platform, surrounded by the orange, white and blue posters of the National Party, which has ruled South Africa for 29 years, Balthazar Johannes Vorster, 61, could almost have been stepping to a throne. After the wild applause there was sudden silence: a pause of anticipation, and die volk were...

As I drink tea in the sitting-room of Daniel and Margrieta Dreyers, it is easy to forget that apartheid ever ended. The couple, wearing the combat fatigues of the right-wing Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) movement and surrounded by nick-nacks from a lifetime's devotion to preserving the rituals and traditions of the Boers, South Africa's original white settlers, are mourning the loss of their leader. Mr and Mrs Dreyers have just returned from the funeral of Eugene Terreblanche and are filled with quiet anger over the loss of "Oom Gene" (Uncle Gene), under whose command of the AWB they had served for...

As white supremacist Eugene Terreblanche is buried, the dangerously charismatic Julius Malema threatens the country's future. We are not here to mourn the white supremacist Eugene Terreblanche, whose funeral took place yesterday, but since his name is on the world's lips, let's face the truth: the saddest thing about his murder last weekend is that it obscured an event that casts an infinitely darker shadow. The event took place in Zimbabwe, and involved, as fate would have it, Julius Malema, the ANC Youth League leader whose repeated singing of an old struggle song about shooting Boers is viewed by many...

South Africa's governing party says a leading member didn't mean it literally when he sang about killing whites. African National Congress Youth League leader Julius Malema ...led University of Johannesburg students in the song, "Shoot the boere, they are rapists." Boere is farmers in Afrikaans, the language of white South African descendants of early Dutch settlers. Afrikaners and others accuse Malema of inciting violence against whites.

IN THE first six months of this year an increasing number of South Africans considered or decided to migrate to Australia. As a result, a wide range of businesses is booming. While few firms can give exact figures, they are all sure of one thing: demand is high. One says most inquiries it gets are from Afrikaners. Immigration lawyers, airlines, travel agents, removal companies and pet-relocation companies have benefited. The Australian high commission in Pretoria said that while no figures were available yet on how many South Africans had settled in Australia so far this year, 3996 relocated there last...

Podcast Show Notes Were Washington, DC dry cleaners worried about tort reform before one frivolous lawyer destroyed their business? (Hat Tip: Outside the Beltway.) It's a reminder that no matter how boring some issues are, we need to focus on the things that matter most. Meanwhile Minority Leader Boehner is leading a fight to insure transparency in the earmarks process. Find out if your member has signed the discharge petition to force the issue onto the House Floor, if not, please call the House Switchboard at 202-225-3121. Given the choice between our nation's military and MoveOn.org, Hillary's clear whose side...

Where was the first Jewish day school in South Africa? Johannesburg? Cape Town? No, it opened its doors in 1904, in the small town of Oudtshoorn, some 470 km. east of Cape Town. Jews in great numbers once lived in Oudtshoorn, a village in this Klein Karoo region of the Cape Province, an inland plateau wedged between the Swartberg Mountains to the north and the Outeniqua Mountains in the south. The reason they came was that giant of birds, the ostrich, or more specifically, ostrich feathers. Apart from the odd Jews who found their way to the area in the...

NELSPRUIT, South Africa – Heidi Le Roux sat weeping in her spacious farmhouse on the South African veld as the leaves turned gold and saffron in the glorious autumn twilight. Blonde and pretty, boasting of three young, healthy children and a devoted, hard-working husband who runs a huge multi-million dollar sugar and macadamia farm, it would seem that Heidi's life is a page out of apartheid's "glorious" past. It is a not-too-distant past when farmers were the "lords of the manor" and the future seemed bountiful and perhaps even endless. In the "New South Africa," however, nothing is as is...

Today, I met an Afrikaner engineer from South Africa, who has been in America for a few months, and is thinking of relocating to the US. He complained that conditions in his country have deteriorated, and many whites have left the country. Israel's enemies like to compare Israel to South Africa during the apartheid years. What, exactly, is wrong with that? In the 1980s, South Africa had the highest standard of living in all of Africa. South Africa was a first world country. South Africa was also a strong ally of the United States and Israel, in the war against...

Orania, an Afrikaner enclave on the edge of a desert, is being flooded with applications from whites disillusioned with South Africa's black government. Founded in the early 1990s as white rule ended, the enclave, named after the local river, was an attempt by Afrikaner purists to preserve their culture around an independent Boer republic. The founding fathers expected thousands to join them but only 600 moved to the dusty, windswept town on the edge of the Karoo desert. Now, with a widespread fear that South Africa will follow Zimbabwe into political and racial turmoil, Orania is beginning to fill up....