Ernst Roets
speaker
479 appearances
3 recordings
3 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard May 2025
Ernst Roets’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Yeah, the Khoi and the San, as they are also called. Thank you.
So just, can I tell you a story from our history? I hope you will. Yes. Some people call it the origin story of the Afrikaner people. And it explains a lot about who we are today. So we were settled in the Cape, the Proto-Africaners, who were still the Dutch, the French, and the Germans. We were then colonized the Cape in, I think, 1810 by the British. It was during the Napoleonic Wars.
1652. Yeah, that's 150 years before the Declaration of Independence or something like that. Wow. A long time ago. Yeah, so my great-great-great-grandfather, Nikolaus Roots, who was the first Roots who came to South Africa, came more or less the time when George Washington was a teenager. So he was eight years older than George Washington.
So my family has been in Africa since, you could say, since George Washington, since the time of George Washington. Since before the United States was a country. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
No. No, no. I don't really want one. And do most Afrikaners have other passports? No, most don't. But this goes to the story I want to tell you. So we were colonized by the British. And you can call them the proto-Afrikaners then said, you know, we don't want to be governed by anyone else. We want to govern ourselves. And so they opted to move into the interior of South Africa.
which was called the Great Track. And they didn't know what they would expect. They said they reject slavery. They want to foster good relations with local tribes, which they did. There were many treaties signed and agreements and so forth. And they did not hold slaves. There was slavery in the Cape Colony before that. But when the Great Track, that was around the time of the abolition of slavery.
And they also rejected slavery. They explicitly said so. Yes. So they then went into the interior, and the leader of the Great Track was a guy called Pitratif, who went to negotiate with the Zulu king, Dangan. And so he said, what can we do to buy land from you for our people to live? The agreement was they had to return cattle that was stolen by another tribe with a king called Sikonjela.
So they went, they retrieved the cattle, they brought it to the Zulu King. The Zulu King Dungan, King Dungan said to them that we have to celebrate, so leave your weapons outside the lager, come inside and we'll have a celebration. During the celebration, at one stage, he chanted , which means kill the wizards.
So they took Retief and his commando, his group, to a nearby hill, and they slaughtered him. They slaughtered him last because they wanted him to see, they wanted to make sure that he sees his people and his son murdered. A few months later, before, so after that, they went on an extermination mission. They killed women and children in the lagers and so forth. A few months later.
Yes, correct, yes. And so a few months later, his body was found with the treaty on which the Zulu king signed, giving them some land. So they then initiated a punishment commando, a group of 300 to 400 men. to counterattack the Zulus, which eventually led to the Battle of Blood River, one of the most significant battles in our history, where they found themselves completely surrounded.
They were about, let's say, 400. But 400 Boers. Yes. Surrounded by 12,000 Zulus. And so they had this wagon. And my great-great-great-great-grandfather was in that lager, and he was the religious leader. His name is Sarel Saliha. So Saros Elias- And what was their religion? Christian. Dutch Reformed? Dutch Reformed, yes. So he said to them, listen, we need to make a vow to God.
And so he wrote a vow, which they all made. And the vow said that we're standing here in front of the God in heaven and earth, to make a vow to him that if he protects us in the battle that lies ahead, we will commemorate this day in the years to come as a day of thanksgiving and a Sabbath.
And we will also tell our children this story and we will build a church and we will make sure that the honor of the victory goes to God and not to us. So they made this vow and the battle took place. And the result was that not one of the Afrikaners were killed. 3,000 Zulus died in that battle. Not one was killed? Yes. Yeah.
And so the reason why I'm telling this story is not to point to the Zulu people. We have good relations with the Zulu and we've worked with them. This was, of course, the one major battle, but we've had good relations with them over the years. But it says something about, firstly, why the Afrikaner people are so patriotic.
It says something about why we are so attached to African soil and why we are still religious. We're a very religious community. We have some problems in terms of belief and so forth. But broadly speaking, the Afrikaners are, compared to Europe and compared to some parts of America, still a very religious people.
And it also says something about why we are so attached to the country and why we don't want to leave. We want to stay there because our ancestors have been there for hundreds of years. And we fought and died for our space there. And we've gotten used to it to a certain extent. What's the only country that you have, isn't it? Exactly. We don't have any other country.
We can't go back to England anymore. We're not Dutch anymore. There's a slogan in South Africa that says, go back to Holland. But, I mean, I've been to Holland. I've been to Amsterdam. It's a beautiful city, but I don't feel like I'm at home when I go there. It's a beautiful foreign city that I'm attending. We became a people in Africa, which is why we are called the Afrikaners.
We named ourselves after the continent, and our language, Afrikaans, is named after the continent.
Yeah, well, who came from the north of Africa, yes, from where Cameroon is and so forth, who came down firstly towards the east of Africa and then along the Great Lakes, eventually ending in South Africa, yes.
Well, absolutely. So on my mother's side, I descend from the British. My great-grandfather fought in the First World War for the British. And so in many ways, culturally, we've become very close to the British because of the influence over the years. And I don't think there's friction today between the Afrikaners and the British, but it certainly is the case.
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