“Because you have said, ‘We have made a covenant with death, And with Sheol we are in agreement … For we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood we have hidden ourselves.’” (Isa. 28:15, NKJV)
Before we examine the few practices that allow the familiar spirit to gain access to people, we will discuss a very specific example of how this spirit is often packaged in religious and cultural terms to deceive people and nations.
The spirit of fear amongst Afrikaners about a new dispensation under a black majority government was visible even before 1994. This was to a large extent soothed by the reconciliatory leadership of former president Mandela, and also later under the intellectual leadership of his successor, former president Thabo Mbeki. Yet since president Zuma has taken over, in the midst of violent remarks made by the party’s former youth leader, Julius Malema, the country has again been flooded with fears where the Afrikaner is no longer sure that his property, his belongings or even his life is safe. This has brought two very clearly observable tendencies to the fore – a major blossoming in Afrikaner identity and an unsettling manifestation of long-brooding Afrikaner fears.
A very interesting example of synchronicity is seen around 2009 at the height of Bok van Blerk’s song De La Rey’s popularity. With Van Blerk’s arrival on the scene the song was played day and night and became a refrain you heard everywhere you went – on the radio, at assemblies, during athletics meetings, at parties, in boardrooms, on MK89, everywhere you went Afrikaners were clenching their fists and singing the song with tears in their eyes.
And when the (false) reports came in that Madiba is lying in a coma, some noting that he had already been dead for three days while the army desperately try to position themselves in countering the “Night of the Long Knives”, the old song of the new South Africa suddenly, overnight, created a national paranoia. After a few sms texts and alarmist emails we were afraid to our very core.
One could look at this from many angles, but perhaps a spiritually discerning perspective on these events is of critical importance and worth. The Bride has a God-given responsibility concerning that which happens on a national level, and needs to be the prophetic voice of God explaining God’s perspective to a quivering world.
Because the church often remains silent about the state of society, and is not relevant enough in the battle for community transformation, we lose a very important voice in the interpretation of contemporary history. We are very often too heavenly minded to be any earthly good.
We need to realise that the two historical figures around whom these controversies are centred were very closely linked. General De La Rey was to a great extent led by the dreams and visions of Siener van Rensburg. With both of them having popular reputations as God-fearing and noble Boers who would give their lives for the ideal of Afrikaner-Nationalism, one could easily argue that they be presented as good icons of nationalist worth in today’s South Africa. Almost every De La Rey apologist has, in the last few months, linked his reputation to the fact that he was a reconciliatory figure who loyally fought till the bitter end.
Alas these two figures, and their questionable relationship, is much more complex than their hagiographers would like to admit.
The country has for a long time been feeding off Adriaan Snyman’s subjective and alarmist right-wing interpretation of Siener’s visions, along with his lectures and publications on the matter. The pinnacle of the Night of the Long Knives, a profound synchronised ‘prophetic’ experience of Siener and the ‘prophet’ Johanna Brand, has since become the impetus of good-natured far-right mobilisation.
The Night of the Long Knives predict that a world-famous black leader (assumed to be Mandela) dies, and that this will be the sign to all black people that Uhuru, the Night of the Long Knives, has come – whites will then be killed during the night by panga-wielding black people. The emails that drop into inboxes every day are blood-dripping statistics that allege that panga sales are at an all-time high, that statements made by die ANC spells certain death for the Afrikaner, etc. This has developed into a national psychosis.
Along with this – the experience that white South Africans are the specific targets of an orgy of violence, without much protection and sympathy from the government, the alleged conspiracy of farm murders in a violent spiral which renders brutality an anxiety-inducing everyday reality, has had Afrikaners collectively seeking someone who, like the Boer general of old, will collect them from their trenches of fear. From this we find the passionate cry for De La Rey. The Afrikaner is tired of choking on its fear.
We have reason to believe that the Boeremag to a large extent works from a direct interpretation of Siener’s prophecies, and on the predicted day near Lichteburg (as the prophecy states) will bring about that which was ordered by the man in the brown jacket (also literally interpreted as the inmate uniform of a person sitting in the Rooigrond penitentiary for high treason) who will lead the nation to freedom, according to Siener.
We however know what happened to the Boeremag, and where they are now to be found. Based purely on this all the followers of Siener should have chucked their moth-eaten dreams of the old fortune teller. Christians still do not understand that prophecy is not predicting the future and fortune telling – it provides direction with regards to God’s blueprint.
And perhaps the time has come to confront the volk with the fact that Siener still operates in the service of the kingdom of darkness today, and that his ‘prophecies’ are aimed at destroying the Afrikaner, not at saving him. It is very interesting that Siener’s last words were – “Darkness is descending.”
A few facts about Siener that few Christian followers are aware of (quotation marks indicate that it has been taken from sources):
- Based on his strange behaviour Siener was often described by believers as seeming “as if he was suffering from an attack of madness”, and he was said to look like a “wreck”. He often seemed fearful, and it seemed as if he was “scared by nature”. His “deep sense of unrest and foreboding” filled people with suspicion, but also fear. (Read 2 Tim. 1:7 – “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”)
- In his book, Commando: A Boer Journal of the Boer War, Denys Reitz notes that Siener “pretended to be possessed of occult powers”.
- Siener predicted that his son Johannes Cornelius will be his successor; but this son died shortly after the death of Siener and his wife. (Deut. 18:22 – “when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it”).
- “His enemies accused (Siener) that he was the evil spirit of Oom Koos – his Raspoetin …”
- In Die Boodskapper of July 1991 J Maree rightly asks: “who provides the fore-knowledge – God or Satan?”
But of general De La Rey a different image is also created, a romanticised version that we cherish while singing along:
- Denys Reitz says about him: “I had met him only a few days before his death and I saw that his mind was affected, for his talk was of Christian Science, spiritualism, and the dreams of Van Rensburg, his fame prophet; and once, when he had gazed at me in a strange manner, I asked him why, and he said that he was testing our souls to bring them en rapport, a phrase he must have picked up at a séance.”
- In his The biography of Jan Smuts, HC Armstrong writes about De La Rey, noting “(that he) talked with spiritualists and attended séances; and he was under the influence of Van Rensburg”.
- In J Meintjies’ De La Rey – Lion of the West, General Botha states that “He gave me the impression that he had gone wrong somehow – not in his sober senses but in a sort of mental wandering.”
When the Word states in 1 Cor. 2:15 that the spiritual person should discern all things, it is of the utmost importance that we realise that the Afrikaner is being led by false prophetic prototypes in walking on false paths of revolution, and thus get caught up in the snares of fear. And Job 3:25 then becomes true – “For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, And what I dreaded has happened to me.”
God clearly has a blueprint for the Afrikaner in Africa (Acts 17:26); as a nation we were specifically brought here “to fulfil the purposes of God for His generation” (Acts 13:36, KJV). The moral bankruptcy of almost all our Afrikaner leaders has resulted in a longing for a romanticised figure to show us the way.
The old anthem “We will live, we will die, for you South Africa” brought a self-fulfilling prophecy of death over patriotic Afrikaners and their descendants, and I suspect that a lot of the violence today could be attributed to it. We cannot afford to replace this with a “new” anthem that secures a similar “covenant of death” (Isa. 28:15).
On 15-16 December 2006 white, brown and black Afrikaners met in Roodepoort to come before God in repentance, and to deal with all Afrikaner-nationalist roots, idolatrous sacrifices, curses, false oaths and covenants, all spiritual roots that prevent the Afrikaner from standing in its God-given calling in Africa. A cloud moved over the Voortrekker monument and prevented the sun from renewing the Afrikaner’s covenant of death on the cenotaph. (Denise Woods’ terrifying book Reap the Whirlwind of national idolatry, which is concerned with this issue, should be required reading for all Afrikaners.) During this event the Night of the Long Knives was dealt with in the spirit and its legal right on the Afrikaner was rendered moot.
If the Afrikaner understands his role and position here in Africa, if he understands God’s purpose and plan for them as a nation “on this continent on which we farm”, and we start walking within that redemptive purpose, we will no longer be prepared to “fall” with someone we are so desperate trying to resurrect from his grave. We may also no longer be led by a spirit of fortune telling and historic sentimentality that is built on the occult – the kingdom of God in South Africa is at stake.
- Selah: Repent of your part in the spirit of fortune telling through the singing of cultural songs.
- Read: Today we start reading the Bible from a specific chronological perspective: Gen. 1-11.
- Memorise: Gen. 1:1; 3:15.
- Read the book Reap the Whirlwind of national idolatry by Denise Woods.
