Realiteit News Commentary February 7, 2005

On the 4th of February 1939 a group of Afrikaners gathered in the Twin
Tower Church in Bloemfontein to start a movement that would promote
their freedom ideals.

The organisation was called the Ossewa Brandwag or shortly, the OB. The organisation was initially a cultural movement inspired by the symbolic Great Trek of 1938 and the subsequent laying of the corner stone at the Voortrekker Monument. These events were particularly responsible for the increase in patriotism and national unity among Afrikaners.

It grew even bigger when the Smuts government declared South Africa an ally in the war against Germany. The Afrikaner was still sore about the humiliation they suffered at the hand of England in the Anglo Boer War. England was not an ally, but the ultimate suppressor and murderer of  thousands of women and children in the concentration camps.

The OB arranged mass protests at Monument Hill in Pretoria and Bloemfontein. Women, clad in the traditional clothes of the Great Trek, held a mass protest meeting at the Union Buildings in Pretoria to demur South Africa's joining of the war. The OB followed this up with sabotage and blew up railway lines and post offices. The Smuts government, however, resisted by sending spies into the OB and a lot of the members landed in jail. They sent some to internment camps such as the notorious Koffiefontein.

In 1940 the OB had more than 300-thousand members and many of them were women. The organisation also had a youth movement and a network of sympathisers. After the Smuts government came to a fall in 1948, the OB and the then National Party reached consensus and they dissolved the Ossewa Brandwag.

Today the OB has a particular message for Afrikaners' struggling to find their true identity and clear future ideals. The freedom and Boer Republics the OB
envisaged for South Africa, has not been realised. Though the dream is still
with us, it seems as if no leader or organisation can enfold this dream
and bring it to reality. The OB, however, sent a clear message that
submissiveness and dissension would not bring freedom. The victory is in
the struggle to retain the nation's own identity on each terrain.

* The ghost of the OB is calling on today's Afrikaners to seek their own salvation and end their enslavement. - (*These views are not shared by the Editor. Only the God of the Blood River, who is the same Yesterday, Today and Forever will free the downtrodden and bring them salvation.)