Roelf Meyer (Photo: Wikus de Wet / AFP)
Roelf Meyer, former negotiator and newly appointed South African ambassador to the USA, said in an interview with eNCA’s Checkpoint Podcast that was broadcast on Wednesday evening, that the approximately 30% of people who voted no during the 1992 referendum essentially voted “for apartheid to remain”.
According to him, this group is also still in South Africa and is “represented by AfriForum and those who think so”.
“The 30% of white people who voted against change essentially wanted apartheid to remain. That was its foundation, its ideological basis. When you compare it to contemporary thinking, it amounts to white supremacy (white supremacy). And there is some of that in the US right now. We all know that,” he said.
“I am a regular visitor to the United States. I do work there at one of the universities and every time I am there, I experience it. I hear the noise and if this is what is now spilling over into the policy and the executive orders of Mr. Trump, then it is very unfortunate, I would say.
“But this is the connection that occurs.”
This was Meyer’s answer to the question about what Pres. Donald Trump tried to do with his executive orders dealing with Afrikaners and refugees.
“The point I want to make is: Be careful if you go down that route, because what you’re basically saying, especially as far as South Africa is concerned, is that we need to go back to apartheid. That’s the bottom line of what (Trump) is doing through his executive orders.”
Presenter Nkepile Mabuse put it to Meyer that South Africans should be aware of the small group of people who want apartheid and who never wanted it to be abolished.
“I think so, unfortunately. It may be a small minority in terms of the whole. You can ask yourself today what that 30% is in the total composition of the country. Whether it is 10 or a hundred or a few thousand, the reality is that those noises are still being made and we have to look at how we (can) change it.”
During the interview on eNCA, Meyer made the allegation of “white genocide”, which, among others, was made by pres. Donald Trump was raised, condemned. He said his first reaction when he heard the news about this was that it was “insane” and must be “untrue”.
The Solidarity Movement’s delegation to the USA in Washington DC. (Vlnr Jaco Kleynhans, Flip Buys, Dirk Hermann and Kallie Kriel (Photo: Provided)
Although AfriForum and the Solidarity Movement have tried to garner support for Afrikaners internationally, he doubts that they have allowed the so-called white genocide narrative to take hold with Trump, Meyer said.
Meyer believes that the idea of a so-called white genocide was probably nurtured from other sources, among others by Americans who were in contact with Afrikaners locally.
In the interview, he also criticized what he described as AfriForum’s “exclusive approach” and said that AfriForum and similar organizations do not act in South Africa’s long-term interests. Although there are “certain examples that can be followed” from AfriForum’s work, his core objection remains that the organization “does it on an exclusive basis”.
“I myself am an African in my heart, but I am first and foremost a South African,” he said. “They (AfriForum) are exclusively Afrikaans in their approach.”
According to Meyer, the difference lies in the fact that he follows an inclusive approach in order to create a better South Africa for all South Africans, while AfriForum prioritizes “exclusivity”.
Meyer was named South Africa’s ambassador to the US on Tuesday. Watch the full interview here.