What is the Great White Tribe of Africa?

What is the Great White Tribe? 

Great White Tribe  is a title which is partly tongue in cheek.  It aims to celebrate the humanity, art, resourcefulness, inventiveness & humour that can only be fully appreciated by people who lived through this peculiar era in recent history.

Today,  it’s hard to imagine a time when teenagers fought wars, censorship & propaganda were seldom questioned & songs/books/plays & people could be banned, burned or detained. Road block delays were factored into road trips as naturally as loo breaks.  Sportsmen couldn’t compete abroad, international bands stopped touring, banks & factories left the high streets.

This was also a time of great innovation, art, culture & camaraderie. Society was coming of age, with all the angst, passion, confusion & energy that goes with it.  Food imports stopped, so  recipes got better.  The country started making its own music, cars & even fuel.

Each country followed its own route to freedom.  In South Africa, the white voters finally had their say on 17 March 1992.   The question was:

Do you support continuation of the reform process which the State President began on 2 February 1990 and which is aimed at a new Constitution through negotiation?

1,924,186 or 68.73%  white voters said YES, thus ending the old regime & reuniting the country with the rest of the world & with each other.

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Saffer, SAFA, Rhodie, Zimbo ..

I took my husband to meet my Aunt Bette up in Scotland.  She was 92 at the time, & we had a wonderful afternoon chatting, laughing, & sipping on the local water of life.  Hubby got up to refill the glasses, & while he was out of earshot, my aunt leaned in closer to me & asked,  “So where does he belong?”

I avoided the question because I had no short answer for her.  We had a delightful visit that day in Fife, listening to old family tales told in a house in an area where my family had lived from at least the 1500’s.  We parted, & went back to our lives, but I have often thought some questions do need answering.  Maybe this website will help me do that.

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14 thoughts on “What is the Great White Tribe of Africa?

      1. PRESS RELEASE

        CLOUDS IN THE WIND.. Published by St. Michael’s Press, ISBN 978-0-9964726-0-9, Available in paperback and eBook.

        This book is set predominantly in the mid to late ‘70s when the Rhodesian bush war was at its height, before the Lancaster House agreement and the birth of Zimbabwe.
        It is the story of Andy Mason, a decorated and respected Special Forces combatant in the Rhodesian SAS. His journey takes the reader back in time from the horror of war with the stench of burnt cordite and sudden death to Andy as a schoolboy discovering the beauty and dangers of Africa for the first time on a trip to Northern Rhodesia in the ‘60s. We follow Mason’s rise as an ambitious young financial executive and the sequence of uncanny events, amid high-flying fraud and corruption in the concrete jungle of Johannesburg, that lead him to an existence surrounded by blood, fear, and death in the African bush. This is powerful and authentic story-telling. The author captivates you in a compelling theatre of the mind, revealing in dramatic detail, the sights, the sounds, the smells, and the fear.
        Andy falls for laughing, beautiful Alyson Carstens, the spoilt and protected darling of wealthy parents, but even there the war takes its toll. This is yet another gripping piece of story-telling and the author succeeds remarkably well in getting into the skin of this anguished young girl as dreams turn to nightmares and the consequences of betrayal and guilt materialize in tragedy.
        The contrast is startling – the stark reality of war, mutilation and death and the lavish lifestyle of the Salisbury elite; elegant dancing and dining with a rifle always at the ready; luxurious living on the prosperous farms that have been in families for generations and armed convoys anywhere outside the city. But the writing is on the wall; the superbly trained Rhodesian army never lost a battle, yet they are fighting a war they cannot win.
        This is a fast moving, action packed novel that will take your breath away
        http://www.amazon.com/Clouds-Wind-Ian-Mackenzie/dp/0996472606/ref=sr_1_1_twi_har_2_twi_pap_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1440019318&sr=8-1&keywords=clouds+in+the+wind+ian+mackenzie

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