South African history is often viewed through the prism of South African exceptionalism, with little or no understanding of how events fitted into the world at large. Thus, the Boer War is (farcically) portrayed as a dastardly British attempt to...
I was watching a documentary series on Netflix the other day called ‘Wild, Wild Country’, and heard a phrase for the first time: ‘Mayflower Mentality’. A bit of Googling about this resulted in the following definition:The belief in the “First...
https://www.theequianoproject.com/articles/imperialism-its-complex-thankfully
It is often difficult to understand the world view of today’s Defenders of they Myth, but perhaps this quote might help: Like those who today sympathise with both Kruger’s regime and the war of conquest he started, Olive Schreiner was...
In June 1887, John Fraser[i] headed a delegation from the Orange Free State Volksraad which had been invited to talks with Kruger’s government in Pretoria. Fraser included extensive minutes of these conferences in his autobiography, including...
A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to...
When it comes to the Boer War, Defenders of the Myth™ use words exactly like Humpty Dumpty did: just like that obtuse old egg-on-legs, their words mean whatever they want them to mean. There are several examples of this: we are often told that...
Over the years I have found that the view many South Africans take of the Boer War is driven entirely by a xenophobic hatred of Great Britain, rather than by anything such as historical reality, facts, references or, basically, anything that...
Thar she blows: The Defenders of the Myth have frantically tried to ‘cancel’ me on Facebook, but the Atlas will hit the shelves soon nonetheless!
For 120-years a memorial to the relief of Mafeking has stood in Melba Park, in Victoria’s Lilydale. An oak tree was planted commemorate the lifting of the siege and this brass plaque placed on the fence around it: Alas, some idiots have...
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