“Today, I have become a symbol of resistance and freedom and self-acceptance. It’s no longer about winning a race, it’s about the struggle for universal human rights.

We are not ourselves when nature, being oppressed, commands the mind to suffer with the body - King Lear.

“For us Afrikaans was a deed of rescue. You wanted to use it as well as you could to rescue yourself and other Afrikaners from poverty and misery. Teachers saw to it that we mastered scientific and classical Afrikaans. We had to learn Afrikaans poems and Bible verses off by heart, and so pure sentence structure and vocabulary were bedded in us. Anglicisms were like cursing. You delighted in storytellers who could play with language. They were heard again and again and their stories retold so often that the unique expressions were extended to everybody.”

A victim has no stake in a future (as many Afrikaaners feel now), but a proud loser does. He wants to build. He wants to arrange a dispensation for his people. But when Afrikaners identify as victims, they become useless to society.

With the black government being so corrupt— dear Lord— the amount of shame and embarrassment that it causes black people, almost a second humiliation after apartheid— I never criticise along with white people. Never. Even though I can see they want me to.