Trekking Across The Transvaal, North of the Limpopo, Way North

White South Africans continue to leave. It's a good thing and a bad thing. For them, it's mostly a good thing.

There's a lot of White South Africans here in SoCal. Many dating back to the fall of apartheid. I've worked and socialized with some of them, over the years. They know they aren't ever going home. They can get pretty maudlin about it late at night after a little too much to drink.

I know one little group, tough old boys with scarred and leathery skin, from the Cape, who went for years as mercenaries to Rhodesia, in their youth. They mostly have their own little businesses, construction, carpentry, mechanics. Nice guys. Good surfers. They go to church. They aren't racists, at least not here. They knew they couldn't stay in South Africa. They don't always have a gun on them but usually some kind of weapon and always a firearm in the car. If you're one of those that thinks the end of the World is coming soon, you should move into their neighborhood. They can help you through it. They've already been there.

Whole extended families, even communities of Whites, have left the countries of Southern and Eastern Africa. They weren't stupid. The writings been on the wall over there so long it's faded and been painted over. Doesn't make it less true.

Their kids are grown now. They don't even remember South Africa. The blood stained sjambok is just an old piece of brittle, bug eaten, elephant hide in the closet. The songs of the Voortrekker are just what grampa and his friends sing, when they have too much to drink, late at night, before they start crying. The image of ox-wagons, laagered at dusk, smoke rising from the cook fire at the center, is not a cultural icon for them. None of them will be going back to the Transvaal or the Orange Free State, ever.