IN THE Anglo Boer war, from which their nation sprang, the Afrikaners of the Transvaal and Orange Free State learned to offer fierce resistance and then melt away just as the British were about to charge.
So it was in the northern Transvaal town of Potgietersrus yesterday when, having threatened to physically resist attempts to bring black children into an all white school, right wing Afrikaner parents decided not to brave the massive police presence around the school. Their only protest was to keep their children away from school.
Among the first black faces to arrive were Mr Alson Matukane and his three children, whose barring from the school three weeks ago had galvanised the Northern Province government into a successful legal action against it. Were his children happy to becoming to their new school?
"No They are not," he said, grimly picking his way through to the seven foot gate topped with razor wire.
In fact, none of the black children appeared in the least intimidated, not even by the mass of event. Ten year old Thaba Chule stopped and gave a self assured solo performance for a heaving semi circle of lenses and microphones. She and her younger sister, Kjanjela (7), lived only three streets away, she explained, but until now they had to be bussed several kilometres every morning to a school in the poor black township of Mahwelereng.
I feel happy because I am going to another school," she said. I want to do sports, mathematics, English, all the subjects."
How did she feel knowing that some white children in the school did not want her to come and join them? "They will want me to come when they know me," she said confidently.
As the black parents arrived in small groups to register their children, other white parents came to take theirs away. Some gave no reason, others said lessons had been cancelled. Most didn't send their children at all. By 10 a.m. the remaining white children were almost matched in number by the 16 black children, who could be seen happily exploring their empty new school.
Outside on the street one white mother, Mrs Sue Skelton, said she thought it was "absurd" and "blatantly racist" to try and keep black children out White English speaking children were also discriminated against at the mainly Afrikaner school, she claimed.
An Afrikaner couple, Kir and Stella Engelbrecht, said they had come to the school in support of a black employee in their estate agency and furniture business who was one of the parents. As they spoke a middle aged white woman detached herself from a group standing quietly near the gate and began berating them in Afrikaans.
"She said they had no business here because they weren't parents at the school," explained a South African reporter. "She says he is only here on behalf of his pocket to sell to more black customers. She said they would mark [remember] him.
A large white man leaning on the fence said the Afrikaner parents were not racists, they merely wanted to protect their culture. The country's new rulers were arrogant and did not care about minority rights, he said. The exception was President Nelson Mandela, who was the only thing holding the country together.
The morning ended with a press conference by the Northern Province premier, Mr Ngoako Ramatlhodi, in an assembly hall full of journalists and black faces. Above hung the glassy eyed head of a wildebeest and the school motto in, two languages "Voorwarts" "Forward". On either side of him, unnoticed by most, lay two carefully furled flags, the orange white and blue emblems of the old South Africa.
A local journalist said the premier's security guards had taken the flags down from the walls before the conference began. Afterwards a young black man picked up one of the flags and began waving it slowly over his head, beaming at anyone who caught his eye.