SPEECH GIVEN BY A.D.HARVEY TO THE BECKENHAM YOUNG CONSERVATIVES
Ladies and gentlemen, fellow
patriots,
Let me first of all place on record what a great
privilege I consider it to be to address you this evening, and to thank you for
the respect that you have shown to me and the cause which I represent by
inviting me to speak here tonight. I was originally asked to speak in general
about the present deteriorating situation in South Africa, but with your
permission I would like to talk more specifically about one section of the
South African population - an oft-forgotten "suppressed" minority in
the world today, but one which can even so still play a vital role in saving
civilisation in Southern Africa from total collapse - the English-speakers of
Natal.
Firstly, however, I feel that I had better say a
few words about myself. I first visited Southern Africa in 1974, when I
followed Willie John McBride's British Lions round the sub-continent. I fell in
love with the country on that occasion, most particularly when I reached the
coast and such cities as Port Elizabeth, East London and especially Durban.
Prior to setting foot in South Africa I had always believed that the Afrikaner
culture was the dominant factor in White society there. The reality, however,
proved to be completely different. In all the cities which I visited (with the
possible exception of Bloemfontein) it was the English-language which
predominated, and in the coastal areas - the Eastern Cape and Natal - this
predominance was almost total.
I was not only the matter of language itself which
demonstrated that it was the British historic roots of White South Africa, not
the Dutch, which had the biggest influence on the major cities of the country
however. South Africans drive on the "correct" side of the road;
their favourite sports are the same as in Britain, with rugby and cricket the
most popular; the architecture of the country is much the same as in any
British coastal resort, and in everyday life it is again the
"Englishness" of the country's ancestry which is the most obvious. In
fact, certainly whilst I was in the
It was Tommy Bedford, the Natal and South Africa
rugby captain, who first coined the phrase "The Last Outpost of the
British Empire" to describe Natal during the course of this tour, a description
which has lasted with increasing usage to this day. For a while the
After I returned to the
It was actually in 1976 that I eventually managed
to emigrate, and from that date until I was forced to leave the country in 1990
I never failed to be amazed at the "Britishness" of so many facets of
society. In spite of officially being a Republic, the British Royal Family is
probably held in greater admiration in
If there is one facet of British life which White
South Africans take even more interest in than the Royal Family, however, it is
British football. The full British soccer results are broadcast on
The City of Durban itself can easily be mistaken
for anywhere on the British coast - a cross between Brighton and Southampton
perhaps (one of the city's beaches is even called Brighton Beach). The Durban
City Hall is built to exactly the same design as the Belfast City Hall, and
regularly flies the Union Flag a number of days each year, such as on the Queen's
birthday. The local yatch club is the Royal Natal Yatch Club, and again
their club flag features the Union Flag in the top left-hand corner. Perhaps
the most intriguing institution in the city is a restaurant called - I kid you
not - "The British Middle East Indian Sporting and Dining Club"; a
curry-house in the best traditions of the Raj, they still display a large
portrait of Queen Victoria in the main dining room!
If anything Pietermaritzburg, the capital of Natal,
is even more British in architecture and atmosphere than Durban, with a
distinct feel of Cheltenham about it, and with the archetypal
"English" public schools of Hilton and Michaelhouse nearby. Elsewhere
the Province bristles with British placenames; Margate and Ramsgate on the South
Coast (where the term "Thanet" is jokingly used in many business
titles), Maidstone and Sevenoaks in the Midlands, and of course Newcastle and
Dundee, the biggest towns in the North. It is not for nothing that these towns
possess these names, for if it was not for the greater preponderance of
non-Whites and the warmer climate they could easily be mistaken for their
namesakes back in Britain.
There are two Natal-based organisations which I
would also like to mention to emphasise the Britishness of the Province. The
first is the Durban Parliament, a debating society that I was proud to belong
to which is run strictly along British Parliamentary lines, and which is
presided over by a charismatic gentleman named Ken Sutler-Gore who might have
been plucked straight from the English shires. It was at a sitting of the
Durban Parliament where I came into contact with the other organisation which I
want to mention, alas towards the end of my stay in the Province, and therefore
before I had the chance to join. This is a body called "The Sons of
England", and as the name suggests it is an organisation for those who
take an active pride and interest in their English ancestry. Their speaker who
addressed the Durban Parliament, Mr. Don Gilliat, furthermore informed me that
they enjoyed very strong and fraternal relations with the local Caledonian
Society, the Cambrian Society, and even a small Ulster Association.
Many of the hotels in Durban take a pride in
resembling traditional English country inns, and none of them more so than the
Bell Inn in Durban North. This establishment served the most sumptuous Sunday
roast dinners in the traditional British style, which I often used to patronise
in the company of a number of British expatriates, most notably Mr.Paul Roper,
originally from Bournemouth, who was the life and soul of any gathering, and
whose fancy-dress birthday parties were the talk of Durban society!
As I said earlier, the phrase "The Last
Outpost of the British Empire" is increasingly used to describe the
Province of Natal. Nowhere is this more obvious than with the teeming car
bumper-stickers of various designs, all of which proudly proclaim "Natal, The
Last Outpost", complete with Union Flag and Natal coat-of-arms. Sales of
the original Natal colonial flag (basically the "Red Ensign" with the
Natal coat-of-arms in a white roundel in the bottom right-hand corner) -
something never seen during my earlier years in the Province - are also
escalating throughout the souvenir outlets of the Province, and these flags are
now prominently flown by supporters at Natal's cricket and rugby matches etc..
Even before I was forced to leave the country in 1990 it seemed as if
sub-consciously Natal was already slating to secede from the rest of South
Africa.
It is against this background that the present
plight of the English-speakers of South Africa, and of Natal in particular,
must be viewed. The Afrikaners have never taken such great pride in their
ancestry, or in their Dutch, French or German origins. There is no fanaticism
amongst them for the Dutch Royal Family; they do not demand that French soccer
results are given out on
I believe that the Afrikaner people have made a
great mistake by this, a great, great mistake. But it is not the Afrikaners who
I am most concerned about in this context, but the people who are probably
suffering even more by the imposition of Black terrorist rule - my own kith and
kin, the English-speakers of Natal. The English-speakers of South Africa have
historically made one big mistake concerning their own well-being, and this is
that they have never become actively involved in the politics of the country.
If they did, however - as in the case of Tommy Bedford himself - it was weirdly
by supporting some of the more obnoxious Left-wing parties. I can remember once
canvassing for the HNP in Durban when I called at a house festooned with
pictures of the Queen and the Royal Family. I naturally assumed that the
occupants would be supporting the Right-wing candidate - only to be informed
that they were members of the ultra-Leftist Progressive Federal Party! It was
unreal, and something akin to somebody in this country belonging both to the
Monarchist League and to Militant Tendancy!
The reason for this strange ambiguity was
historical rather than political, for the parties of the Right, the National
Party and the
The total White population of South Africa is
approximately 5 and a half million. In spite of official statistics to the
contrary English-speakers make up well over half of this figure (official
figures say the opposite only because people listed as bi-lingual are
automatically classified as Afrikaans-speakers). Thus there are probably well
over three million Whites in South Africa of full or partial British descent,
with about 800,000 of them being in Natal.
It is not only amongst the Whites where one
particular group predominates in Natal, for approximately 88% of the Black
population of the Province are Zulu. The Zulus, of course, are the traditional
enemy of the Xhosa, so there will thus be no more place for the Zulus in the
"New South Africa" of the ANC/NP axis than there will be for
English-speaking Whites. There has always been a curious mutual respect between
the Zulus and the English-speakers in Southern Africa, dating back to the Zulu
Wars of the 1870s. At the present moment, moreover, it is only the Zulu Inkatha
movement which is being prepared militantly to oppose the ANC terrorist
takeover of the country, and the vast majority of Whites in Natal admire them
for this.
There have been many barmy - and I repeat, barmy -
plans for an Afrikaner "homeland" secession in South Africa, but
these are merely lines drawn on a map and therefore stand absolutely no chance
of being allowed by the ANC/NP axis, or of being internationally accepted. The
boundaries of Natal, on the other hand, are both long-established and legally
recognised. The prospect of a Natal/KwaZulu breakaway from the rest of South
Africa is therefore a possibility - particularly as Chief Buthelezi, the leader
of Inkatha, is fully in favour of a federal structure. Buthelezi, unlike the
ANC leaders, is a wily-enough old fox to realise the necessity for a continued
White presence in the country in order to maintain an advanced and prosperous
Western state. The prospect of a federal Natal/KwaZulu being established under
the leadership of Buthelezi and someone like Carl Werth (a former leader of the
Conservative Party in Natal) is therefore not outside the bounds of
possibility.
The people of the UK must not turn their backs on
their kith and kin in Natal therefore, and indeed must give them every support
and encouragement to go their own way. With the collapse of the ERM and the
probable eventual disintegration of the EU Britain must start to look for new,
and perhaps more traditional friends and trading partners. A newly-established
federal Natal/KwaZulu could prove to be the first such ally in this new
direction.