New SA Homeland?

[dance]

Anyone else read the article in the YOU magazine about saffers in NZ?

It made me mad when Iread it. It seems to me to be a very negative article. A few peoepl haveasked me if I still want ot go after reading this. I tried to tell them that this is not how it is for the majority of people going over. Not everyone wants to to still live SA outside of the country. Yes we will miss certain things but I will not go to the point of only using SA products and surrounding myself with only SA friends.

I think what the article faild to point out was that fellow SA's are invaluable in asssisting you to get going on that side andthat you keep many of them as friends but essentially you want ot get on with life as it should be ........ free from fear and corruption.

I get the idea that this article was sponsored by the Homecoming Revolution

[perasmu02]

I Agree,
It p*** me off as well. It is just for sensation, they made such a big story on the "Volkstaat" and
I never heard of it until the article was published.
What is also Ironic is that SA is importing skills from overseas, because of a growing skills shortage in SA. What the F____ , If they are white or even look white they will struggle to get employment.
Why import skills if legislation works against it. Thank You Affirmative Action. 
Regards
Pieter

[tandl]

Which article was this?  The one with Jurie and Hestrie?

[Lisa09]

Tandl it is in the most recent YOU (8 May edition) .I have just read the article. I am not in NZ yet but this article will not deter me from getting there. It is very negative and I think they took the opinions of a small group of people and I dont think it accurately reflects the majority view.

[tandl]

Hmm... will have to see if someone near me has the magazine.

I have found it quite funny how certain friends of ours keep telling us bad stuff about NZ as if A) we never did any research at all and B) it would make any difference to us wanting to get the hell outa SA!!!

We do not expect Utopia.  Perhaps those are the people that struggle???

[tandl]

Ok so I subscribed to the online You magazine for a month and I have pasted the article in here for those who have not read it...

SA's newest province 
Yvonne Beyers 

THE last dance is at midnight. Soon afterwards cooler bags are filled with leftovers from the evening’s party. As the annual ­Autumn Dance draws to a close you could be in many a South African suburb on a Saturday night.

Two teens make out in the shadows, tired children wait for their mothers to say their goodbyes and a few manne arguing about the Blue Bulls’ poor performance in the Super 14 series have started to slur.

Earlier everyone sang along to Steve Hofmeyr’s hit Die Blou Bul and joined in with Karen Zoid’s Afrikaners Is Plesierig. Cheeky boys did the Leeuloop when Robbie Wessels was given a turn. Even the older generation danced a step or two when the DJ played Mandoza’s Nkalakatha.

If it weren’t for the New Zealand registration numbers on the cars outside the hall in Browns Bay in the capital, Auckland, you could be forgiven for thinking you were in Bloem­, Pretoria or Potch.

But the party­goers heading home are ­thousands of kilo­metres from their homeland.

Even though most cheer for the Springboks and almost all are Afrikaans-speaking their passports show them to be citizens of New Zealand, a land at the end of a 30-hour flight from their country of birth. It’s estimated between 45 000 and 70 000 South Africans have set up home in New Zealand, mostly after 1994.

Most live in Auckland’s peaceful out­lying suburbs. So much Afrikaans is spoken in this hilly area a local library has filled five shelves with Afrikaans books.The Afrikaans Club of New Zealand organises an annual Kiwikasie Music Festival featuring Afrikaans singers.

Local musical duo Dewald en Frikkie perform regularly and the songs Shosholoza and Sarie Marais have been mixed to create the theme tune for the South African radio show Die Protea Uur (The Protea Hour) on Sundays.

New Zealand could just as well be an honorary South African province.‘‘My kids will know about pap and boerewors. And if it’s up to us Afrikaans will never die out,’’ expat Maritza Loots says.‘‘Your language remains your own and your culture is like a second skin: you can’t just unzip it and step out. There are so many Afrikaans people here I speak the language 80 per cent of the time.’’

‘‘My doctor, lawyer, optician, electrician, dentist and orthodontist are Afrikaans,’’ says an entrepreneur who immigrated in 2002.

 

IT was very different when he arrived 15 years ago, electro-technical engineer Fanie du Toit says.

‘‘There were almost no South Africans. We wanted to place an advertisement in the paper in Afrikaans saying, ‘If you can read this please contact us’. When we found out another South African family were on their way we were so happy we went to fetch them at the airport.’’

Moving without a guaranteed job can be a gamble – without a job offer you can’t get work or residence permits.‘‘It’s relatively easy to get work if you have a degree and experience in your field but if you don’t have the skills they need here there’s not much hope,’’ says Pieter Erasmus, an immigration consultant in New Zealand.

Electro-technical engineers, mine managers, nurses and car mechanics easily find jobs and teachers don’t have much trouble either.

But the outlook is bleak for admin­istrative managers, plumbers and telecommunications technicians and doctors must first pass a difficult, expensive exam.

New immigrants often have such a tough time some can’t handle it. Breadwinners sometimes have to work four jobs to keep food on the table and everyone talks about the stress of spending your last money just to survive.

‘‘You go from hero to zero in 48 hours,’’ says ­Theunis van Loggerenberg who started his own car dealership. ‘‘The first year was hell,’’ ­Malcolm McDonald says. ‘‘We had to cut back on everything. No holidays, no eating out – nothing.’’ He manages a successful ice-cream shop, Penguinos.

‘‘We arrived with only our clothes and ran out of money while we were still looking for work,’’ Adéle le Roux says. They left Saldanha after a housebreaking left her son badly traumatised. ‘‘The church had to help us out. They dropped off groceries and paid our rent until we found jobs.’’

Jaco Bosman says he’s sad to see how many South Africans are in NZ because it makes him realise how many quality people his country has lost. He’s the owner of The South African ­Kaffee, of which there are four outlets across New Zealand.

He wears velskoene and khaki shirts adorned with the Big 5.

He and his family immigrated to New Zealand in 2002 afterhis daughter lost all her hair because she was so stressed about crime.Since 2003 his shops have sold every typically South

African product under the sun. His biggest seller is biltong – about 250 kg a week.

His son’s girlfriend, a Kiwi who learnt to speak Afrikaans in 18 months, bakes the 40 milk tarts that are sold every week.

‘‘It was hard for me to adapt,’’ the former parrot farmer from Broederstroom in North West says. ‘‘It’s my deepest wish to

go back to South Africa. Every time I visit there and have to

say goodbye again I’m afraid I’ll ­never see my people alive again.

‘‘Telephonic funerals are ­common here. The minister in South Africa puts a phone on his lectern and we listen to the service.’’

His shops are therapeutic to immigrants who miss home so much they burst into tears at the counter. ‘‘People often say they come in just to smell Africa again.’’

 

IT SEEMS the process of adapting is initially almost unbearable. ‘‘When we’d been here about three months I wrote home asking if I’d been mad or drunk to think I could make a life here as an Afrikaner,’’ oral hygienist Blanche Farmer says.

‘‘It gets worse before it gets better,’’ salesman David Hatchuel agrees. It’s certainly no picnic. ­Marriages crumble under the strain and parents complain about discipline in schools.

‘‘The Kiwis aren’t too bothered about schoolwork. They make it as easy as possible so everyone feels good about themselves,’’ says Manny Jacobs, a teacher at a boys’ school.
‘‘It’s not paradise. There are problems here too – even if South Africans are reluctant to admit it,’’ someone else adds with a sigh.

But apart from one woman who says at a braai she’d love

to get into my suitcase when I leave for home no one admits

to thinking about returning.

‘‘Why would I want to? I’m done with that country. I never want to go back, not even when I’m dead,’’ says Cyril Lotriet, who started his new life in New Zealand as a pensioner.

‘‘People rationalise their decision to emigrate from SA and will never admit they might have made a mistake. They’d rather exaggerate how bad things are there,’’ a former Gautenger says.

The gloomy picture painted on News24 and newspaper websites crops up wherever South Africans get together. People gossip about politicians whose decisions no longer affect them, complain about power failures thousands of kilometres away and lament the latest murders even though they sleep with their doors unlocked.

‘‘People over there say we’re running away but they don’t have the guts to do it themselves,’’ Jaco says. ‘‘Africa isn’t for sissies. Neither is emigration. God tells some people to flee as he told Joseph and Mary in the Bible. Others he tells to stay where they are.’’

Some of the new Kiwis believe they’re the pioneers of another Great Trek; people forced to flee a country that has become

hostile to them.Some reveal their racism. ‘‘There’s no future for whites in South Africa,’’ one says. Another says he supports the All Blacks and applauds when the Springboks lose. ‘‘They wanted to use a quota system!’’

Another claims shamelessly, ‘‘People here won’t say it out loud but we were all sick of the k*****s!’’

But Estralita Jacobs, a hairdresser from Cape Town who runs her own salon in Auckland, says not all expats are white racists who yearn for life under apartheid. ‘‘People from across the colour spectrum are emigrating. It’s individuals who make the decision, not races.’’

André Joseph, owner of the successful South African shop

Inside Africa, agrees. ‘‘The South Africans here get on well. It doesn’t matter what race they are,’’ he says.

 

ASK why people emigrated and you hear the same old refrain: crime and fear of losing their jobs or that their children won’t find work.

In New Zealand every one of the 88 murders last year was front-page news yet all those we spoke to have a longing for South Africa where more people are murdered every 48 hours.

What do the expats miss most? Answers range from

the smell just before rain to the colour of the earth, Spur’s pink sauce, the magic of the Bushveld, the Karoo, Woolworths, Kings Park Stadium in rugby ­season, the Kruger National Park, brick houses (‘‘here everyone lives in wooden ones’’), wood fires (‘‘they’re not allowed here’’), the endless blue skies and Highveld weather (‘‘because here it rains in rugby season and my son drowns in the loose scrums’’).

As the Voortrekkers did, the new immigrants set up their laagers.

‘‘We understand one another’s mourning processes and longing,’’ Adéle explains.

On Sundays people can worship in Afrikaans congre­gations. ‘‘At first we went to an English church but every time we sang I felt like crying. By the end of a week you’re sick of speaking English,’’ Blanche says.Even the most tightly knit communities are sometimes at loggerheads though.

Recently about 200 people from Dominee Danie Marais’ congregation broke away and formed their own with a minister ‘‘who doesn’t raise his hands and dance while he sings’’, as one person says.

Danie puts Afrikaans immigrants’ attachment to same-language congre­gations down to the fact ‘‘people dream and pray in their own language. Change goes against human nature and you have to give up a lot when you emigrate: your country, friends and family. You want to stay in your own frame of reference and use your own

language to express how you feel and think about God, yourself and the pain of your loss.’’

Dominee Thinus Riekert’s congregants, who meet in a school hall every week, mournfully sing hymns about lost souls and yearning that could easily be taken to refer to how far they are from family and friends who’ve stayed behind in South Africa.

‘‘It feels as though my parents are dead and I’m an adopted child even though I’m happy in my new life,’’ Fanie says.He told his sons about the

Anglo-Boer War when Bok van Blerk’s song De la Rey caused

so much controversy two years ago. ‘‘I told them their grand­father fought in that war but they seemed indifferent. They speak English.’’

‘‘Ag,’’ a mother of two children sighs. ‘‘Until recently I so wanted my daughter to marry a boere­seun.’’

Most of the New Zealanders we spoke to love biltong but find their new countrymen ­arrogant and a bit bombastic and think they exaggerate the crime in SA. Yet they see South Africans as friendly people with a strong work ethic.

‘‘They work harder than we do. They never give up,’’ a New Zealand retailer says. Many of the immigrants are prepared to sweat blood to adapt to their adopted country.

Early one morning Colin van Zyl, once a farmer in Damaraland in Namibia, shows me his sheep on a small patch of land he rents from a New Zealander.

Colin was a financial manager for years but revisited his ancestors’ skills when he was faced with surviving in a strange land.

He points to the ewes grazing on the green hills: Dorpers, ­hardy animals more at home in dry stony areas. He imported them because they yield more meat than the local sheep.

‘‘But here they get diseases I don’t know,’’ he says gloomily.

An animal trots past and it’s hooves are obviously sore. ‘‘It’s foot rot from the wet grass. She’s battling to adapt to the climate,’’ he says.

Colin is still hopeful and talks fast and excitedly. He’ll learn about the strange diseases and his sheep will breed and adapt, he says. ‘‘One day I’m going to have the largest Dorper herd in New Zealand. I’m determined.’’ And determination is ­something he and his fellow ­immigrants have by the bakkie load.

[Tel]

What a load of hogwash.

How can you choose to go to another country and then complain that you cannot adapt.

Most of the people interviewed were Afrikaans and they were complaining about speaking English and that their kids were growing up speaking mostly English, well...they did choose to move to New Zealand.

How can they expect to not speak English in an English speaking country?

[gerhard]

Seems as if they only interviewd people they could find at these "saamtrek" events, like churches etc. I am Afrikaans, and we have made the decision that when moving to a new country, you have to adapt to their culture. Being verkramp and only mixing with other Afrikaners, bitching about SA etc is a sure fire way of being very unhappy in the new country. I laughed when I read the SA Church in NZ has already split in two, it is so typical of Afrikaners... Sigh.

[ScillaGP]

Yes it is all negative. You have to have the right attitude. If you moving to NZ then that becomes your new home. They clearly only choose the people who did not really want to leave. SAD

[ANTONK]

We also read it in Huisgenoot last night and we came to a conclusion ON THE ARTICAL that they inrviewed negative people and Huisgenoot & You Magazine must interview the people on this web site and then they will get a different story - ANYBODY AGREE TO INVITE THEM BUT THEN THEY ONLY FOCUS ON NEGATIVE NOT POSITIVE - POINTLESS I WOULD SAY, SO WE'LL PROVE THEM WRONG - AGREE    

[shandy]

Must be honest...when I read that article I hit a bit of a wobble. The last thing I need in my new life are racist, closet minded individuals. Trying very hard to move far away from that! BUT...luckily this site gives one a new perspective.

[dance]

Thanks everyone. After I posted I thought that maybe I read it wrong and was overreacting but I am glad to see that others also feel the same as I do. BTW apologies for the dyslexic fingers on my original post. I was just so worked up about it my fingers were working faster than my brain.

[jafa77]

Just read it. Thanks for posting it.

Total nonsense.

The journalist cant even get her facts straights. Auckland is NOT the capital, and NZ did not have 88 murders last year. It was 45.

[SaKiwiBoer]

Hi Guys,
if I'm going to step on some peoples toes again, I'm saying before hand that I am sorry, it would be unintentional but it is the way I see things and I think everyone here has a right to his own point of view, so here goes. I think the Pieter Erasmus they spoke to is part of this forum and I and Eileen personally know Jaco Bosman from the SA Kaffee in Browns Bay. The YOU most probably took whatever were said by these people out of context and if you and I talk anybody would be able to take a, or part of a, sentence and make it sound different from what we intented. Now, I have said it before and I will say it again, immigrants will most probably tend to stay together but it takes you longer to adjust and to integrate in your new country. I know I also feel that I have the need to chat to people of my own "country/culture" but if you are going to stay on the North Shore and you can say as this guy in the artical, ‘‘My doctor, lawyer, optician, electrician, dentist and orthodontist are Afrikaans,’’ Then you could have stayed in SA because you didn't want to leave and make a new start in a new country. You want to change NZ to suite you. That is one of the reasons why I'm glad I'm out of Auckland and in Roto. I still hear Afrikaans in the shops and smile about it and know I'm not alone in Roto. I still stop and talk to the person/s and have a chuckle and thats it. I don't become "house friends" with everybody that I meet, maybe I would've like to, but we don't. It would be nice to have friends over and chat in Afrikaans but you don't want that to become your life in NZ and that is most probably one of the reasons why we don't do it. But in ACKL these people fall into that trap and I think they just can't get out and in a way that is exactly where they wanna be. To me they are staying in the past and still haven't taken the step to become Kiwi's. They might support the AB's and cheer when the Boks loose but they are not "Kiwi's" yet either. I support the AB's and
If the Boks play any other team I still support them. You'll maybe never get that out of me but that's me. Some of these NS boykies may have left cowboy style and are now in NZ and not happy with NZ and now know they can never go back for various reasons and are now making the "new" SA in NZ, I don't know, maybe.....Sorry for the bruised toes. Cheers,   , SAKB. ps. Jafa - it could also have been very old artical that we're dusted of to try and get a reaction.

[hadenough]

Agree with SAKB.  Journalistic liscence (if you get such a thing!)  They write what will sell and what will get a reaction, just like this article did.