Painful thoughts
Like a lightning
striking from a azure blue sky
and hitting where nobody expects it,
is the pain
when a Afrikaner hand
hits another Afrikaner down.
The bullet that bursts through Jopie Fourie
nobody can stop
and still that shot rings out
and are deafening.
How is a great Commandant General honoured
who for a day was President
of the Orange Free State
and taught the British a thing or two
about warfare?
How many women had to suffer anguish
and chained themselves
to free Christiaan De Wet
out of a nation’s
own prison
and his people
that buys his freedom
will forever stay with me.
By himself Jan Smuts changed
from a Boer hero,
to somebody
that lifts his hand against his own
to get worldly fame
and for his own benefit.
Today I wonder
where you and I
stand in these things?
How easy it has become with affirmative action
and BEE
to destroy the careers
of innocent Afrikaner men
and to push their life’s
on the rubbish dump
and I wonder how many Afrikaner women,
sit in the front chairs
while Afrikaner men
are praying to find a job?
It cuts like an unknown pain through me
and I wonder when merit
will again find a place
as a measure of fairness
and I see that my people are torn apart
and own benefit
is leading before integrity
and I wonder what are my people becoming?
[Reference: Jopie by: Jan F.E. Celliers. BEE=> Black Economic Empowerment.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Fusillade
The heaven is bright blue
where Afrikaner guards look at the victim
while they lead him to the abattoir
an Afrikaner man that fiercely keeps direction.
The look in his eye is sturdy while he accepts his lot,
his eyes penetrates them that stare at him,
as if he knows that he has to pay a price
proclaimed by a British official
that has betrayed his Afrikaner soul,
who is turning his own sails to the best wind
and the eyes of Jopie Fourie close for himself,
his country and his brothers who are slaughtering him.
Blindfolded he sees darkness
but knows that his life is set right
before the creator God
and that moment gets new meaning
draws out for a eternity,
somewhere a shrill whistle blows,
rifles are lifted surely
and when the shots rang out
a Boer boy falls
and the smoke of gunpowder hangs heavy in the air.
[References: The firing squad of Jopie Fourie on command of Jan Smuts. Fusillade by Ernst van Heerden.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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In the early morning
When a god in the early morning
descended from the east
he wanted to find
a farm girl
and to get a Afrikaner girl
as a mate,
but no Afrikaner farm girl
liked him.
He got really angry
and went to the old Orange Free State
and there he scorched the earth open
with lightning bolts
and blasted every thing flat
to be able to see miles far
when an Afrikaner farm girl passes.
He farmed as well as he could
and fetched his sheep
from the fields
and one day
when he was standing in the field
between the blue bushes,
he saw an Afrikaner farm girl going past
and on his horse
he rode as fast as the wind
with dust hanging
twisting behind him
to get his girl.
l’Envoi
With time a nation
emerged like giants
out of that dry earth
and they work
before the sun rises
farming in that arid region
and here and there
a boy
watches a girl...
[Reference: The Orange Free State is province in South Africa, which is very arid with a flat landscape.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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The British descended
The British descended
on the Transvaal and Orange Free State
from their island
on the other side of the sea
and in thousands
they came to ruin the land.
The British descended
on the Transvaal and Orange Free State
and from the sea they came
and an entire empire
send its soldiers to destroy,
to pillage and scorch the earth,
to rape, and imprison
the women and children
of the Afrikaner nation.
My great grandfathers rode on horseback to war,
with Christiaan De Wet, Cronje
and De La Rey
and they fought hard pressed,
to drive the British
and soldiers from all her colonies away.
My great grandfathers rode on horseback to war
and landed in prisoner of war camps in St. Helena
and although the second Anglo-Boer war was lost
and the Afrikaner nation paid the highest cost
in the destruction of the land,
the death of men
and the murder of innocent women and children,
a time came
that once more we were free.
My great grandfathers rode on horseback to war,
but one was from and with the enemy
and a highlander was he
and a more decent man
is still hard to find
and one that hated the English
for the dreadfull things that they did,
at times I see the restored Martini Henri rifles
taken from the British
during that bitter war
and the legacy and great spirit,
of my great grandfathers
still stays with me.
poem by Gert Strydom
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In front of a firing squad
Japie almost burns himself
when he mess some coffee
and it’s still dark,
when at four o’clock one morning
British soldiers arrive
at the Greyling’s farm.
There’s an Afrikaner farm boy
standing against the wall
of a farm house
and English Captain Jack Seeley,
wants to know to where
his father’s Boer commando is going?
Japie Greyling refuses
to say anything about it
and Jack Seeley
order his men,
to aim at an Afrikaner boy.
Six British Martini Henri rifles
are pointed at a ten year old child
and he hears gunlock after gunlock
closing behind a bullet.
I ask you a last time
says the relentless Englishman
and a Boer boy
looks into death,
but still there’s nothing
that he lets out about his people
The British Captain keeps
walking nervously up and down
and the blue eyes
of a Boer boy,
cuts right through him
and the child says
let death then come,
but talk I wont.
All the British soldiers
are astounded by the courage
that comes from an Afrikaner child
and on command,
the rifles are lowered
before they ride away
and Japie Greyling
is left alive.
[References: Historic heroic story of Japie (Jacobus Johannes Cornelis) Greyling during the second Anglo-Boer war. The poem “Japie Greyling” by J.F.E Celliers. The book “Fear and Be Slain” by Jack Seeley.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Many voices sing a song (in answer to HA Fagan)
Many voices sing a song
that asks the blessing of God
over the whole territory,
the continent of Africa
and there are millions standing there
everyone settled in one continent
Zulu, Xhosa and every Shangane
as if planted by Your own hand,
but where is the place of the Afrikaner,
where the Afrikaner can also flower?
Of the white woman and man
that comes from this earth?
We are down trodden, everyone expelled,
Boers, that You Yourself cause to sprout here.
[Reference: ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ i-Afrika by HA Fagan.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Freedom (in answer to A.G. Visser)
Lord, You have formed our nation,
out of various nations You have built the Afrikaner nation
and led them miraculously to here.
The command comes from You
to get a own freedom,
that urge resides in You
and then our people trekked north
with some up to the equator,
defying barbarian, beast and every other danger
and at the onslaught at Blood River You became involved,
even when the British tried to force us into a kingdom
we later got our freedom, but now:
we are trampled; some of our people are scattered worldwide
and the urge to be free comes out of Your hand, almighty Lord.
[Reference: Vry! (Free!) by A.G. Visser.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Now that time flies past
Now that time flies past
this will be seen
as Afrikaner history
and people will say
that it is past
but we know
he was jailed
like a criminal,
was later Prime Minister
and then President
(and it’s not Nelson Mandela
that I am talking about)
this man was a true Afrikaner
and seen by some
as a patriot
Maybe planted bombs
to blow up railway lines
and held a gun in his hand,
seen at a time
by white people
as a terrorist
and was jailed for it
but wasn’t a killer
like the terrorists of today
and later
he could take
the Big Black Book
in his hand
and on it make a solemn oath
before the Lord
and try to keep his promise,
until the big crocodile
snapped him in two
and walked into his shoes
and the total onslaught came
and eland armoured cars, later ratels,
artillery and rocket launching lorries
stood in Angola
to hit the communists
into pieces.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Dad, you were a true Afrikaner in your heart
Dad, you were a true Afrikaner in your heart
and when your church trampled on the Afrikaner
you would probably have walked out
with those that they were sending to hell
not because you did not care for God
as before everything you served God,
but you knew that not only religion
or a church
takes a person to heaven,
but the relationship
that you cultivate,
that a person has with God
is the actual thing
that really matters.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Memory to Eugène Terreblancé at Rooigrond prison
This government slammed a jail door behind you,
caged you in like a animal, locked you behind bars
in the prison at Rooigrond;
when this government took your freedom
a potted plant was your biggest treasure
and the grace that you found on your knees
from the almighty Lord God
and between the prisoners with tin plates,
who were continuously making a ruckus,
they tried to devour your humanity.
In the mornings they gave you porridge,
before prison doors slammed behind you,
in the afternoons again porridge and for dinner pale soup;
but still you are walking through my thoughts,
your splendid poems turn and whirl in my mind
as if they are still keeping you alive
and this government
does not hear the cock crowing three times,
the Son of God was also betrayed and sold.
The barbarians that slaughtered you with pangas
already got bail,
(the one as a child is free from prosecution)
and in a few days your killers
(from Mozambique who brought disorder here)
will probably walk free as heroes into the streets.
By some of your own people despised
you were actually right, your own blood that flowed;
on the hands of black people,
stays proof of it eternally
l’Envoi
and somehow the blacks in our country
has totally lost their senses,
where they rob and decimate
the Afrikaner people and Afrikaner farmers.
[Reference: Rooigrondtronk (Rooigrond prison) by Eugène Terreblancé.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Jakobus Le Grange Marais (a reply to Christopher Hope)
One early evening while waiting for a train
I walked into an old station bar,
to buy a cold cider to kill a thirst
in the sweltering
thirty degree Celsius summer heat
and saw a very old cripple man
who nursed a glass of white wine
and he was talking to himself
and sometimes stuttered over his words.
When he looked up at me
there was fire in his eyes
and it was almost as if
he recognized me, from a dream
or a prophecy of something
and suddenly his face was calm
while he called me over for a chat
and I ordered a bottle of brandy for him
and another Hunters Gold for me.
He complained that the times were cruel
with one hand motioning to his missing legs
that he had lost in a train crash
and complained about Afrikaners
ignoring each other
and only living for themselves
while the nation is being led astray
and then suddenly said but my boy,
you know this,
have experienced it yourself
as a learned man without a job
but let me tell you something
about days long gone
even before the Boer war
(where the British killed
women and children in concentration camps) ,
many Afrikaner farmers
were executed at Slagtersnek
and it had been a terrible, terrible time
and then that holy Englishman John Phillip
meddled in our affairs
and now he haunts us again
peering in at the window panes
and I shook my head, did not understanding
exactly what the old man said
and heard something about
English people being in cahoots
with the current government
and ladies ruling as bosses
while educated Afrikaner men are jobless
and he swayed on his stool
and I rose to steady him
when he said to pour more brandy with ice
and complained that now nobody
is keeping the impis at bay
and pointed a finger at me
and I thought that he said
but you will do, or maybe
you haven’t got a clue
and leaning forward
strangely his breath was clear
and I heard him stuttering something
sounding like even uncle Paul
in church square knows
that soon all Afrikaner men
will be poor
and I said to him:
“My man we already are
with the new black regime,
but most Afrikaners
just do not realise it yet.”
He smiled at me then
and steadily held his glass, in a final salute
brought it to his lips
and faded into the naught
de-materializing in front of me.
[Reference: Kobus Le Grange Marais by Christopher Hope.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Let South Africa be our country again
Let South Africa be our country again
and South Africans from all over the world
stream back,
to dream here like before,
to hope, to wish
of a place
not bordered of by burglar bars
where people can stay free
before God and man.
Let merit and respect be present
and people receive what they deserve
rather than expecting affirmative-action
and mercy from others
and the whole world
and like in the past
let us successfully do our own thing.
Let opportunities really exist
to be free in work,
living and association,
to study in your own language,
let us pull the teeth of the dogs
that rips others apart to rule,
of might that shatters the weak.
Let the animal inside us die
and we really become people
that does not burn each other,
crush and vituperate
and in groups jeering urge the killing on
and do not rob, but work
for the life that we have got.
Let we break the chains
of people ruling
with profit, might
and work people into the ground
and misuse others to gain prosperity.
I am the white Afrikaner that had to fight in war
and now are unemployed and hungry,
while I have a university degree.
I am the black man that without education
have to dig holes and man garbage trucks
and conclude my life in a shack.
I am the coloured that always stand between all groups
and do not know where I belong
and rather gather in gangs.
I am the South African that life
drives down the whole time
and have to pray all the time,
to know how to carry on.
l’Envoi
Still, I am the one that dream
of a country free from crime,
where everybody have equal opportunity,
where rape, corruption
and lawlessness ends
and where South Africa is our country again.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Yom HaShoa
There are things
which people never discuss,
like wickedness and destruction
and loss of humanity
that comes with hate.
It’s funny how people
loose sight of God
and declare wars in His name
and kill the innocent in office towers
and lose all humanness.
I could never understand
why like animals,
people have been kept in camps.
Even my great grandmother
died in a British concentration camp
and the names of the predecessors
of many Afrikaners,
stays written on their harts.
I see terrible photographs
of people lying like broken shop dolls,
where they are famished, molested,
embarrassed, degraded, broken and killed
and Yom HaShoa
hits mighty blows
into my soul.
Having been a soldier myself,
I wonder how warriors
could lose all humanity,
or were they only
sociopathic animals
without any honour and fame;
when they demonstrated their cruelty
in Auschwitz–Birkenau,
Buchenwald, Treblinka
and at other places.
I am a Afrikaner boer
and from Scottish decent
and my forefathers fought as boers
and rebels, against the British
and my Scottish great grandpa
stood against them.
We can go back
and trace and know our families
and somehow every body;
might be a Jew.
I sometimes wonder
from where my father’s names,
Jacob and Solomon comes
and if it is only from
the sacred book.
Still identity, integrity
and freedom
and being humane,
goes much further
than race and nationality.
In the end
everybody stands
at the feet
of the Judge and Creator;
where words and deeds
carry their own power.
[Yom HaShoa=>Holocaust Remembrance Day. With thanks to Mahdokt, for the pictures and message in her email that inspired this verse.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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The Patriot
I am standing for a return
to the mighty Bible
which our forefathers tried to obey,
for every Afrikaner to pray
to the almighty God
who had protected us before,
but the modern generation
is without discipline falling apart,
following the foreign American culture,
believe that only the fittest will survive
and living as if they have no conscience
are responsible to no one but themselves
and violence, robbery, murder and rape
is at the order of the day
with foreigners streaming in
from all over Africa
and day by day
we play a deadly game
with criminals and crooked politicians
and my patience is running thin
and the situation I am in
cries out for war and much more,
but still the words of Nicolaas van Rensburg
has power to them
while the Afrikaner remains
subjected to unfair laws,
leaderless and weak,
our power still comes
from the almighty Lord
who sets kings to rule, rulers in their place,
who destroys nations and whole armies
at the time that suits Him
and at a time freedom will again come.
poem by Gert Strydom
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I am from Pretoria
Notwithstanding the way
that the country and world goes,
I still want to stand for many years
in the streets with purple-blue
Jacaranda trees.
Let my friends go and live
in London, New York,
Amsterdam and Sydney
but in Pretoria I earn my keep
and no other city
calls me away from my fatherland
since only Pretoria
is right for me.
I am from Pretoria,
a place where princes stay
and if you go to Pretoria
you will find many Afrikaner princes there.
In Pretoria noble Afrikaners are everywhere
and they build their lives
in the right way
and like their ancestors,
still cling to the hand
of the Almighty God.
poem by Gert Strydom
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My friend you talk about my people and me
My friend you talk
about my people and me
being equal
to Hitler and the Germans
of the Second World War,
but do not know
that I and most of us Afrikaners
treated black people
like human beings,
never lifted a hand
against one,
that I knew from being
a toddler that they were
Christians as well
when my mother
gave the money that was left
from my father’s funeral fund
for a church to be constructed
in their own community.
How I saw the effect
of the Church Street bomb
killing innocent civilians
on the street
men, women and children
from any race.
How I was forced
to go to the army
and to war
and patriotic did my duty there
to stop communists killing,
raping and robbing the future
like they did in East Germany,
Hungary in sixty-eight
and with the Portuguese
still living in Mozambique
and in Angola
when that countries
got their independence.
How in Soweto with the army
I had to stop black people
killing black people,
burning their fellow man alive
while their women were
cheering them on
and I saw man more being animals
than human beings
without having any mercy
for each other
having lost all conscience
for their cruel deeds.
You do not know
that I will not quarter
for a country
full of pirates
and not the Orlando
soccer playing type
but people who rob,
kill, maim and rape
that there’s no other escape
for Afrikaner people like me
and nowhere else to go
that I love this land
maybe more than
my forefathers did
who sacrificed
their lives for it
that my great grandfather Japie Strydom
lost his farm in the Cape colony
when as a Cape rebel
he joined the war
against the British,
was almost executed
when the war ended
was imprisoned on St. Helena,
that his wife
died in a British concentration camp
where she was fed finely grinded glass
in the flour given to her
that I want to get rid
of oppression against me
and my fellow Afrikaners
and want to have a life
like any one else.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Not with a machinegun, but with a pen (in answer to Breyten Breytenbach)
Not with a machinegun, but with a pen
I write this prayer
since Your might is greater than any weapon:
What am I able to tell You, Jesus Christ,
almighty Creator, God and upper Lord,
I who are only an Afrikaner in my forties,
since You know every thing, even before it happens
and there’s nothing that I can teach You.
How my country was taken away
by people who pray to ancestral spirits
(who probably are demons) ,
that a man with more than one wife
sit in the highest chair,
that I still pay taxes
when and where I have a job
and that it is difficult times
and work is very scarce
for a white man.
Would I have to tell about a government
that sings give me my machinegun
and a bullet for a Boer
and kill the farmer,
kill the white
as You know every thing.
That my people were disarmed
by the government
and by barbarians
are hacked into pieces
with panga-blades and axes
like you were sacrificed
and even in death
they are humiliated
by pulling their pants down
like You had to hang naked on the cross,
that women are raped
as if every white woman
is a sex slave
belonging to the hordes
that they still throw knucklebones
and think that it brings them invincibility
and freedom from blame.
l’Envoi
All that I am really asking
is that all of these deeds
and the things that they do, say and sing
go into the cup of Your wrath
and please help
my people and me
to serve You better
that the wide world
(like with our ancestors)
can see Your might and salvation.
[References: nie met die pen nie maar met die masjiengeweer by Breyten Breytenbach. Murder on Eugene Terreblance. Murder and violence on white people.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Where and when does freedom really come?
I am just a normal guy
who wants to make a living
and I went to university to study
but what is the value of it now?
My country has been given away
and Afrikaner businessmen go along pliable,
with suppressing laws
as if they are not in the highest positions.
Still I have got to pay tax
and my people are brutally murdered
on farmsteads and in the cities,
and even from before Dingaan
it is the story of this country.
of striking at, plundering and robbing
and of piercing, cleaving people open
as if taking, robbing and murder
has been generally adopted by some
from ages past
as if corruption and misdeeds are permitted
and I wonder how to stay in a country
where you work yourself to a standstill
for what belongs to you
which others later want to claim as their own
and where and when does freedom really come?
poem by Gert Strydom
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For too long I am waiting (in answer to Koos A. Kombuis)
For too long I am waiting
caught in a anthill,
that people call an apartment,
where everyone lives for himself
as if the others do not exist
and music bleats right through the night,
people of another race shamelessly
cavort, whore and drink.
For too long criminals stare at me on the street,
Zimbabweans, Tanzanians and people
from right across Africa sniggers
as if my music system, DVD player and TV
in the lounge belongs to them
and hit with lashing tongues
in French and Portuguese
which here is totally foreign
and I have got to look if an AK-47
is pointing at me
when I drive with my car from the garage.
For too long I receive foolish electronic mails
and SMS’s on my computer and cellular phone
from a certain political party,
as if these people in a way
have an interest in my jobless situation
while in parliament
they do not oppose affirmative action
and my last cents left my purse.
I despise the rubbish
on the front papers of newspapers
and do not want to know
how the president’s seventh wife looks like
while my whole country
is falling to pieces bit by bit
and the Afrikaner is systematically mauled
with poverty waiting
and like a total idiot
is totally unaware of it
until catastrophe hits him.
Knights swear at others on the road
and have relationships with each other’s wives
while they live only for the here and now
and Philistines from right across Africa
surge in millions
and overnight become citizens
with greater and better rights
and to nowhere else
they are going to drive me out
even if they write abusive names
and who now what
in graffiti writing
while every morning, afternoon and night
I lift my eyes to the almighty God.
[Reference: Psalm 150 (b) by Koos A. Kombuis.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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I will resist this injustice
Never will I like C.L. Leipoldt say:
“My country is not mine anymore;
my nation is dead from the struggle,
my courage is not heroic anymore -
God, please forgive me! ”
and although my people
now stay right over the world
and my country has been taken away
the struggle continues forever
as long as prayers go up
to God in heaven
who is almighty in control
and even during times of impossibility
practises His will.
as long as a Afrikaner
stand on his right
to lead a life
I will get a ray of hope
from somewhere
and as long as I am alive
I will resist
this unfairness.
[This is my translation of C.L. Leipoldt’s Afrikaans verse.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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From pools of blood
From pools of blood bushes, trees
and aloes grow in the veldt
where British soldiers
fired on my countrymen
and some bayoneted them.
Concentration camps where twenty thousand
women and children died without dignity
at the hand of foreigners,
who claimed to be fellow Christians
are now covered with grass
and that past are being blotted out
as if the misery, the indignity,
the mass murder
never happened
and great Queen Victoria
is still dignified
and still I hold Great Britain responsible
for the murder of my great grand mother,
for the destruction
of my great grand father’s farm,
for the seizure
of my other great grand father’s property,
for sending him to St. Helena
as a prisoner of war,
for invading my country
for making profit from the minerals
and the quarter Scotsman in me
together with my three quarters Afrikaner parts
forever wants to be free
from the enslavement
which that foreign nation brought.
[Note: My own great grandmother died in a British concentration camp and my great grandfather was sent by the British to St. Helena as a prisoner of war and as a result of this, my grandfather(Gert Strydom) grew up in a orphanage.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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