The ugly face of the English in SA

Somewhere in 2000 Régis Débray, the French essayist and philosopher and one-time chronicler of Ché Guevara visited South Africa. We immediately hit it off and he was absolutely fascinated by some of my theories on Africanism, the return to the origin, as well as a short introduction to Afrikaner thinking. I remember the local French Institute getting irritated as he was falling behind schedule as a result of our lengthy discussion.

One of the things he said I remember to this day: that no “Anglo-Saxon society” had ever succumbed to totalitarian ideas. Unlike Germany, Italy, Russia and much of Eastern Europe of course. He ascribed it to something that Orwell also wrote about: the common sense of the Englishman, his disdain for complex philosophical or ideological systems. In Orwell’s words:

Here are a couple of generalizations about England that would be accepted by almost all observers. One is that the English are not gifted artistically. They are not as musical as the Germans or Italians, painting and sculpture have never flourished in England as they have in France. Another is that, as Europeans go, the English are not intellectual. They have a horror of abstract thought, they feel no need for any philosophy or systematic ‘world-view’. Nor is this because they are ‘practical’, as they are so fond of claiming for themselves. One has only to look at their methods of town planning and water supply, their obstinate clinging to everything that is out of date and a nuisance, a spelling system that defies analysis, and a system of weights and measures that is intelligible only to the compilers of arithmetic books, to see how little they care about mere efficiency. But they have a certain power of acting without taking thought. Their world-famed hypocrisy – their double-faced attitude towards the Empire, for instance – is bound up with this.

However, I think I must write to Débray that he and Orwell were wrong, at least in some respects. The Jekyll-and-Hyde nature of the local English-speaking population divides into both a good-natured, polite, hospitable, outdoorsy type (like Afrikaners) and a more sinister, scheming, obsessive, greedy bunch oozing bad faith and hatred. I have experience of both kinds. Suffice it to say that the Mr. Hyde-style English person has caused us untold suffering; he or she is usually in the forefront of inciting hatreds of all kinds, advocating war or terrorism, social engineering on a vast scale, collective punishment and, last but not least, Boerehaat.