Hello and welcome to the forum,
Pooh Bear. I must say, I do like your first post
.
Thanks for the links and pointers,
Interested. The level of my Googling skills is not really at issue here because I wanted to know which information sources you yourself were using, something Google would have some trouble revealing. I have barely started the Project Gutenberg
Brandt book, and the
van Rensburg text I have yet to locate. I will comment on these and how they relate, if at all, to the topic of Uhuru in due course.
The
Protea Boekhuis reference is to a review of a book that covers a short period of
Brandt’s later life. The review makes no mention of any prophecies, Uhuru-related or otherwise. This observation is a little suspicious because prophecy is such a very rare and precious talent. At the moment, this leaves the “
Johanna Brandt Profesieë” for our consideration. The description you mentioned
here of an alleged Uhuru prediction by
Brandt supposedly involved an angel, a miniature assegai, the Roman numeral
XL and the decimation of Johannesburg’s white people.
The first problem is the loose generality and general looseness of this so-called prophecy. There is no mention of any timeframe or schedule in which these events are supposed to take place. Nor are there any specifics given in respect of the numbers involved – “thousands and thousands” (“duisende en duisende”) can mean just about whatever the reader feels like: a few thousand or a few hundred thousand, a very wide range of choices. Notice also that the name “Uhuru” doesn’t occur at all, nor does any reference appear anywhere to similar events in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa as yet-to-happen Uhuru precedents, only a biblical reference to an old testament myth “that ‘Egyptian night’” (“daardie ‘Egiptiese nag’”), where a mass slaughter allegedly took place. Further on, the report implies that the perpetrators refer to “Our Great Day,” (that should be “Night,” surely!), and the concept of “freedom” or “emancipation,” which is implicit in “Uhuru,” gets no mention either.
More technically, I am equally intrigued that
Brandt’s purported prophecy speaks quite clearly and unequivocally of “cutting off power connections in and around the city” (“hulle sny die kragverbindings binne en rondom die stad af”). Unfortunately for
Brandt, it’s no longer quite as simple and straightforward as her words indicate. The city is subdivided into grids and networks and has several redundant backup and rerouting systems, which is a longish way of saying that it is not an easy matter to deprive the city completely and suddenly of power.
Furthermore,
Brandt is clear that her prognostications of murder and mayhem in Johannesburg City are to befall only white people at the hands of black people. The incongruity in the latter avowal is that by far the majority of present Johannesburg City residents are non-white.
Elsewhere, the article claims that “owing to the frightfulness of this vision,
Johanna Brandt went completely grey in a single night,” (“Vanweë die verskrikking van hierdie gesig het Johanna Brandt ineenenkele nag heeltemal grys geword”) meaning, presumably, her hair. While this claim can be written off as artistic licence, it has no place in a factual account because it constitutes something of a medical miracle in that no known mechanism can produce the claimed effect in such a short period.
There are also “predictions” concerning a contemporaneous “famine in Europe, but especially England in which millions will die,” whereas “Germany will be the world’s breadbasket, just like Egypt was then.” These prognostications seem extremely far-fetched when viewed against the background of present socio-political and economic climates prevailing in those places, but if one accepts that they were voiced in 1916 and one remembers that this was about two years into World War I when it still looked like Germany was going to win, it makes much more sense. Moreover, the Afrikaner sentiment has usually favoured Germany over Britain because of their own conflicts with the British, so there may have been a tinge of wishful colouring to
Brandt’s pronouncements.
Brandt also asserts that South Africa “will be the land of the future” because “there are valuable minerals in our ground … that will place us at the forefront of developments in the world” and “certain other unknown riches in the ground.” South Africa has never been at the forefront mentioned, notwithstanding our country’s mineral wealth, which is not to say that it might not get there at some point in the future, only that
Brandt’s words seem more than a little wrongheaded here. In fact, not too long ago, the country dropped from its long-time first position as largest gold producer in the world.
Finally,
Brandt labels the Boers as “god’s chosen people” and predicts that “god’s blessings will once again rest on us.” Many Jews will contest the “chosen people” bit and current indications are not in favour of the idea that a god is especially concerned with the fate of the Boer (or anyone else, for that matter).
All in all, then, the connection between
Brandt’s alleged prediction and a supposed Uhuru event in South Africa is, by my reckoning, far too tenuous, given the numerous incongruities and vagueness pointed out above. I think it is more likely that
Brandt was deeply affected and influenced by the no doubt traumatic events of her time and worked through her fears and apprehensions in the best way she knew how – by giving them a religion-inspired quasi-mystical voice.
'Luthon64
