The Heroism of White Men

Andries Wilhelmus Jacobus Pretorius (b. November 27, 1798 – d. July 23, 1853)

The story of South Africa is that of two fine European peoples, as alike as two races can be, who have established their civilisation at great cost and with courage upon the tip of Africa. In spite of their unhappy schism they have managed to exert their sway over, and to accept responsibility for, a greater number of servants than any nation has been blessed or cursed with since the slave empires of antiquity. – In Search of South Africa by H. V. Morton

A new movie about Nelson Mandela, the murdering black thug who became a liberal saint, is coming out just in time for Christmas. All good white people will see the movie with their two quality children, or, if unmarried, with their significant other. Such movies are the life blood of the white liberal. Nothing delights them more than to further defile the corpse of Christian Europe. The movie will emphasize the goodness of the black South Africans and the evil of the white South Africans, thus completely distorting the reality of South Africa’s history.

The white South Africans can justly claim that no race of people, with the possible exception of the pre-Civil War southern whites of North America, has ever done more for another race of people than the white South African has done for the black South African. What took place in South Africa prior to black rule was a miracle of God’s grace, and the white Europeans were the conduits. It would be an unconscionable oversight if the story of South Africa was told without properly applauding the achievements of the white South Africans. But of course the story is told without lauding the white South Africans. They are not just ignored – that would be bad enough – they are made out to be the villains in the story. And this is what we should expect since Satan is the guiding light of white liberals. The South African story is now told from Satan’s perspective.

As late as the 1960’s, writers such as Anthony Jacob were praising South Africa for holding the line against American democratic egalitarianism and Russian Communism. But by 1994 the white South Africans had succumbed. Why? It was not because they were defeated in battle, and it was not because of any trade embargo by the democracies of the West. They were simply tired of being excluded from Western sporting events and being told they were the ‘bad guys.’ But they had been the bad guys for many years prior to 1994, and they didn’t capitulate. Then what was different in 1994? The difference was Faith. The white South Africans suffered from the same malaise as their fellow Europeans: they no longer believed, with sufficient fervor, in the Christian faith. Having lost their faith, they lost two essential qualities that are necessary to maintain a minority government against a hostile majority.

1) The fortitude to stand against the world and be unpopular. The Christian expects, because His God told him it would always be so, to be hated by the world. But his faith in Christ sustains him when the jackals of the world attack him for his fidelity to the cross. When the South Africans felt themselves to be fighting for a Christian civilization in the darkest region of the earth, they were strong, and no force or earth could defeat them. When they lost that faith they crumbled.

2) The ability to see reality. A Christian can see reality, but a liberal cannot. When the white South Africans were Christian, they could see that they were the only force that could prevent South Africa from descending into a hellish black nation dedicated to murder, torture, and demonism. But when they ceased to look at existence with the eyes of Christians, they saw reality as the Western liberals do. “Why can’t we have a Babylonian, mixed race paradise right here in South Africa? All that stands in our way is apartheid.”

If a European is not a Christian, he will be susceptible to utopian thinking – Communism, racial egalitarianism, neo-paganism, whatever ideology that looks to a future without God and without real human beings of flesh and blood.

The weakness of a white man without faith was brought home to me recently when I saw the neo-pagan Nick Griffith try to debate a group of anti-white British liberals. He tried to conciliate them and use the democratic jargon with which they were familiar, but it was to no avail. They believed in their godless faith more than Nick Griffith believed in his ‘equal rights for whites’ advocacy, and they had no interest in conciliating Nick Griffith.

We can’t ignore the one great similarity between the neo-pagan, the democratic egalitarian, and the communist-socialist. All three look to a Godless future where the traditional faith of the European is held in contempt. And we should not ignore the striking contrast between the successes of white Christian South Africans, in dealing with barbarians, and the lack of success of the Nick Griffiths and the post 1994 white South Africans. What is missing? The real Christianity.

H. V. Morton, in his book In Search of South Africa, tells of a typical Zulu massacre of whites.

Before the Boers realised what was happening, the Zulus had flung themselves upon them. Thomas Halstead cried, “We are finished!” “Treason!” “Help, O lord!” were other cries, as the seized men fought savagely with knives. Several Zulus were killed and others, maddened by knife-wounds, broke the command that no blood must be shed in the kraal as they clubbed some of the Boers to death on the spot. The rest, fighting and stabbing were over-powered and dragged away to the Hill of Execution. Above the screams, the howls, the chanting, and the rattle of spears against shields, was heard the great voice of Dingaan ordering the murder.

Just before this happened a Zulu knocked at the door of Owen’s mission station with a message from Dingaan. He bade Owen not to be frightened, but he was going to kill the Boers. Owen, who had been afraid for days, was wondering how he might risk death by warning the Boers, when someone in the room shouted, “They are killing the Boers now!”

“I turned my eyes and behold! an immense multitude on the hill,” he wrote in his Diary that evening. “About 9 or 10 Zulus to each Boer were dragging their helpless unarmed victim to the fatal spot, where those eyes which awaked this morning was to see the cheerful light of day for the last time, are now closed in death. I lay myself down on the ground. Mrs. and Miss Owen were not more thunderstruck than myself. We each comforted the other. Presently the deed of blood being accomplished the whole multitude returned to the town to meet their sovereign, and as they drew near to him set up a shout which reached the station and continued for some some time... At this crisis I called all my family in and read the 91st Psalm, so singularly and literally applicable to our present situation, that I could with difficulty proceed with it!”

The Boers died fighting hopelessly to the last. Retief was made to witness the death of his son and his followers. The young boys were killed with the others. The bodies were piled upon the hill of death, and over them were the bodies of the grooms and
attendants. The heart and liver of Retief were removed and taken to Dingaan so that he might look upon them. Over sixty Boers, one Englishman, and numerous attendants lay dead in the sunlight of that morning in February, and the vultures of Hlomo Amabuta came down from the sky.

And then he writes about the European response:

Under the leadership of a great Afrikaner, Andries Pretorious, who subsequently gave his name to the Transvaal capital, they formed a Commando of four hundred and sixty four men and set off to face an enemy who was numbered by tens of thousands. They took with them sixty-four ox-wagons. On the way they begged God to help them and vowed that if they were granted victory they would build a church and for ever keep the day of their triumph as a Holy Sabbath. Professor Uys tells me that while this vow was made, the laager was guarded by Englishmen.

The commando made contact with the enemy near the Zulu capital and formed a laager with a river at their back. In the morning the Zulus attacked and the Boers held their fire until the enemy was ten yards off, then a hail of elephant ball and buck-shot poured from the wagons. The battle lasted three hours and the Boer guns were smoking hot.

Then came the moment in the plan of a Boer battle which above all others rouses admiration. Bart Pretorious, the brother of the General, put himself at the head of a small body of horsemen and galloped out, the men levelling their hot gun-barrels and firing from the saddle. In the last of three charges the Boers managed to split the Zulu army. Seeing this, Andries Pretorious took command of three hundred horsemen and came galloping out of the laager. He rode straight into the gap between the Zulus, and then one section wheeled left, and the other right, and each began to press back and drive the now demoralised enemy in front of them. The rout became a headlong flight.

When the Boers rallied and assembled, and came back to the laager with their hot guns and their spent ponies, they saw that the river was red with Zulu blood; and its name on the map to-day is Blood River. If one sometimes suspects upon reading of these Homeric contests, that the casualties must have been estimated on a classical basis, there is at least firm authority for the statement that the Zulu dead at Blood River, which were carefully counted, numbered some three thousand.

H. V. Morton describes the battles as Homeric. But Homer in his wildest imagination could not have conceived of the heroism displayed by the Afrikaners, and the South South African English. And they kept their vow:

At Pietermaritzburg, which became the capital of the republic in Natal, they built a church; and to this day December 16, Dingaan’s Day, is a solem day of remembrance throughout the Union.

The reason the neo-pagans keep attempting to win whites over to neo-paganism is because they think they must have the strength of numbers in order to win battles. Since they don’t believe in the Christian God, they are unable to see that numbers do not ultimately determine the victor in battle. The great victories of Christian Europeans always came against a multitudinous majority. It is the singleness of purpose that comes from a common faith, and not numbers, that the Europeans need. They do not need “one man more” to fight their modern battle of Agincourt.

I know in my own life the only times I’ve ever approached the heroic mode was when I invoked my God. And if we look at the incredible history of the European people, we see that it was their God, the Christ, who inspired them to a level of heroism that the post-Christian man has never and will never come close to reaching.

The liberals have buried the cross of Christ fathoms deep in the ocean. They now sleep quite content in the knowledge that no European is capable of, or willing to, resurrect that cross. But the God who made the deaf hear and the blind see can also make heroes of ordinary men who still seek Him in their hearts. The faithful European will plunge the depths and bring His Cross to the surface again. And then? The European Phoenix will rise from the ashes of neo-pagan despair and suicidal liberalism and bear witness to the world that it is only through His Cross that a people can overcome the world. +