Youths taught to hate 'black enemy'

2012-02-24 11:41

Johannesburg - A rightwing Afrikaner camp in Mpumalanga is teaching boys as young as 13 that the black population in South Africa is the enemy, according to a report on Friday.

The Kommandokorps's instructors taught the teenagers how to become soldiers and to realise that there was a race war in the country, The Mail & Guardian reported.

According to the newspaper, camp leader Franz Jooste, 57, told them they were going to be real men and that blacks were inferior to whites and were unable to govern.

He also reportedly said that aside from the aborigines in Australia, the African black was the "most under-developed, barbaric member of the human race".

"Who is my enemy in South Africa? Who murders, robs and rapes? Who are these creatures? The blacks," the Mail & Guardian quoted him as saying.

Rainbow nation

While Jooste claimed it would take him an hour to eradicate any ideas the boys might have about being part of a rainbow nation, he also said he did intend forcing them in any particular direction.

"All we want to do is channel the feeling they already carry within them. We don't want them to hate."

One of the boys told the newspaper before the camp that he thought people got along "pretty well" in South Africa and that racism had to be fought.

Afterwards he said there was a war going on between blacks and whites and that a lot of blood would flow.

Another said at the start he was excited about getting to play with his paintball gun, that he did not like racism and had two black friends.

At the end of the nine day camp, he said he had been taught to hate black people, that they killed everyone who crossed their path, and he rejected his friends.

- SAPA