Word: tonders
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Marxism and Christianity--Glenn Tonder, U.Mass-Boston, 66 Winthrop...
Like many Boer Afrikaners (Boer is the name taken by the Voortrekkers and their descendants), Van Tonder is troubled by the stigma that has become attached to their history. "We were people who did not want to enslave a black tribe," he says. "We are being accused by every country on earth of being Nazis and oppressors. We came here alone. We never conquered any other nation. We have no blood on our hands...
...proof, Van Tonder refers proudly ; to "Danger" Mahlangu, his farmhand, who is paid $120 a month. Van Tonder also supplies a house for Mahlangu and his family, plus board, fuel and medical care. Mahlangu's grandfather, who was also born in this area, belonged to the small Ndebele tribe which came under the "protection" of the Boers when they were threatened by the warlike Zulus. Says Van Tonder: "My people saved the Ndebele from extermination." Last weekend there was a three-day feast and tribal dancing in honor of Mahlangu's 13-year-old daughter, who was welcomed...
...modern world has changed relationships like those between Danger and ourselves," says Van Tonder. "Although this is a lovely friendship, it can't last always, and it would be unfair for it to last. Danger's children will become educated and Westernized. They will want their country. My descendants would also like to have their country...
Proud Afrikaner though he is, Van Tonder is scornful of South African policies. "It's a police state," he says. "It's putting my culture into a straitjacket." Van Tonder, who has now joined the right-wing Herstigle Nasionale Partie and is standing as one of their candidates, has had issues of his own personal newsletter, Die Stem (The Call), banned. He believes, perhaps unrealistically, that the old Boer republics-the Transvaal and the Orange Free State-should be left on their own, allowed to preserve their language and culture in the midst of a predominantly black Africa...