EFFORTPOST Land van die Swape/ Land of the Swapians - Afrikaans folklore short stories about a fictional nation state of absolute morons.

Greetings Dramatards!

I had wanted to share some stories of afrikaans literature which had little fame outside of its creator language, but which had profound impact upon the afrikaner way of writing for the Boers before my time. If you ask the modern afrikaans zoomer what a Swaap is, they will be completely in the dark, as the national curriculum has been within the complete control and overhaul of the ANC national government for the past 30 years, and part of their deliberate agenda was to strip afrikaners of their desire for nationalism and extreme self-exceptionalism.

It's only understandable, similar as to how the Allies would attempt to deNazify the krauts after victory, or the americans tried to deradicalize the Japs of Emperor-worship in the Pacific Theatre. But like all good-intentioned ideas, the ANC has corrupted this also, and what began a sincere attempt combat inter-generational racism of SA whites, basically turned into a ANC propaganda mechanism, and a complete cultural erasure of all afrikaans related writings, poems, history and scripture.

WHat is ostensibly an attempt to give the previously suppressed black-culture and languages an equal degree of exposure in the education system of south africa, has inevitably turned into an anti-afrikaans campaign to snuff out all afrikaans-schools, all afrikaan-language tertiary education systems, and a supreme and total elimination of all afrikaans/boer history from the face of South African libraries.

I know what I am writing comes across as the deranged ramblings of yet another disgruntled racist white South African having to face up to the very negative consequences of Apartheid, and being averse to havinng to face the very real cruelty of my parents, and the effects that their domination over SA blacks have had over their home languages and culture over time. It is extremely difficult to transcribe my experience of reality of living in SA without sounding like a schizo fool, but I hope the past year of my doing the best within my power to bring nuance and some minimum form of neutrality to describe complicated dramatic events within Soutth Africa, at least buys me some credit of sincerity for dramatards.

It is important to understand that there is no centralized mandate from the ANC national or provincial government about fricking over the afrikaans language or afrikaner people, in terms of pushing out policies to negatively affect them exclusively, but rather that there is a grassroots form of thinking and behaviour of absolute resentment and hatred of black government officials who now find themselves in power, and now that the shoe is on the other foot, wishes to exact petty vengeance upon afrikaners for their role of cruelty, of upholding the Apartheid regime for as long as they had.

And although these pretty mean-spirited and cruel policies are the usual level of ANC incompetence and ineffectiveness, the sheer volume of spite over 30 years have I believe ultimately succeeded in culturally destroying the afrikaans race culturally. I have previously spoken about how the extreme ultra-discipline of the Apartheid era intensity of Afrikaners was of a magnitude similar to the cultural intensity of the Japanese and Germans in their everyday labours and organization, and how the entire population was so culturally self-motivated to bring the welfare of the group above that of the individual, that almost like they were a group of insane supermen, they had to be to dominate 40 million black people, with just a group of 4 millions, whites, 1.5 million of them being english. Any slack or disruption within the NP regime would result in total collapse or even supposedly genocide, which the NP regime believed.

This is not a boat about our supposed greatness, but a reflection on how low be have fallen culturally, and how low the ANC have brought us to our knees in terms of literature assassination. The modern afrikaans zoomer is but a shadow of our forebears, and have no notion about our history which have been completely sandblasted away in a curriculum mandated by a government who hates our guts, and worse, perhaps deservingly hates our guts. The particulars of these stories are themselves worth about 15 longposts to describe in clarity, but today instead I wish to desperately focus on a series of short stories famous in Afrikaans literature and folklore.

Die Swape or the Swapians.

Even if the afrikaans language and race disappears from the face of the earth, I believe that retelling these stupid stories about really stupid fictional people is worth platinum, for one last time.

WHAT IS A "SWAAP":

In common afrikaans language, or at least in old-timey language, a swaap is an idiot, an extremely stupid person. Even people of my grandparent's generation who had never read or retold the Swape stories would use the descriptor or idiom of describing an ESPECIALLY moronic individual in their everyday language, but this has fallen out of favour in modern times, as English with its cultural global media dominance has overwritten itself as the primary language of expression for all SA whites, even the most rural of hicks in Boerland, and thus afrikaans idioms and older descriptors had completely fallen out circulation in modern times.

https://maroelamedia.co.za/afrikaans/idiome-en-uitdrukkings/swaap

The exact history or origin of where the folktales of the Swape (or Swapians or Swabians) came from is not exact. Some believe it to originate from Finland in its earliest incarnation, others believe that the Germans who had mixed themselves with the proto-boers.

In some retellings the Swape/swapians had their fictional nation state located in South-West Germany, in others it bordered Finland.

The chronicles of the misadventures of the idiots of Swaapland would serve as entertainment for many of the earliest Afrikaans Laerskole/Primary-Schools.

PIETER W. GROBELAAR:

In the same way in which the Disney incarnations are the most famous versions of their Grimm's fairytale progenitors, so too has there been various versions of the retellings of Swaaplanders. The most famous in recent modernity are of the writer Pieter Grobelaar, who lived (25 Desember 1930, Bloemfontein –† 19 Januarie 2013, Worcester). He was a South African writer of children's tales, but also wrote some literature for adults.

https://af.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_W._Grobbelaar

I'm completely brainless when it comes to researching from libraries but as far as I can piece together, he wrote at least two Novels which serialized the most famous stories of the mythical fictional Swaaplanders in the form of

Die Swaaplanders (The Swapians/Swabians)

, Die avonture van die Sewe Swape (The adventures of the 7 swapians)

, as well as many short stories published in Afrikaans magazines like the "Huisgenoot" in his lifetime.

https://storiewerf.co.za/2019/07/06/pieter-w-grobbelaar

Here is an even earlier author's book from fricking 1939 you can buy on afrikaans-Amazon

Point is there is no absolute definitive series of short stories by one singular author in the short history of Afrikaans, in the way there was a discrete and finite number of short stories in the Sherlock Holmes universe, as written by Conan Doyle.

Here is some boomers on facebook discussing their favorite childhood Swaap short stories and misadventures

https://web.facebook.com/groups/2550041835/posts/10155262662456836?_rdr

STORT STORY OF THE DAY!!!

There once existed a nation of scholars and engineers and inventors of such prestige and fame, that all their neighbours would call upon them to help solve their national debts and dilemmas, to help construct their national bridges or darns, and aid them in farming effectively. This was the nation of Swaapland.

For many decades this meritocratic nation of peerless intelligence and accomplishment would prosper, and their neighbours would prosper alongside them. But like the mythical garden of Eden, this Utopia would not last. Because their menfolk would so continiously be in demand for their aid in intellectual matters, in their neighbouring countries, the womenfolk would be left to run the country and their collective households in their absence.

This put great strain upon the nation state of Swaapland, as the men of Swaapland would make excursions so continuously outside of their homeland, that internal domestic affairs were beginning to fall apart!

The council of Elders convened as soon as possible, the menfolk and womenfolk sitting on opposite sides of the council chambers, all shouting to be heard. Finally after much deliberation, the elders of Swaapland had come to a solution for this problem where their menfolk were so continuously in demand outside of their borders: They must no longer be wise!!

They must no longer be wisemen to whom their neighbours looked up to, and demanded their aid in running engineering and mathematical affairs! They must become stupid! In this way, there will no longer be demand upon their nation's menfolk, and the swaaplanders could finally manage their own nation state's affairs in peace!

In just 2 generations the plan worked: the swaaplanders would stop teaching their children all their wisdom, and burned down their libraries. Their offspring would become known from the region's most prestigious wisemen, to the greatest collection of illiterate morons the world had ever seen....

The Swape pas beeste op / The swape look after cattle: (translated to English very very very roughly)

There existed a small town within the nation state of Swaapland. Even among the Swapians, they were especially slow, and were known to be very afraid of acting to fast (they firmly believed a hasty dog burned its mouth!) , thus they thought matters through very thoroughly, even if that action took hours.....

One day an old Swaap woman was busy looking after the cattle of the town. In the bush, the old lady was busy having her lunch.

As she was sitting with her meagre daily meal, one of the cows came close to her, chewing with its jaw, up and down rhythmically, in the manner in which cows do.

https://web.facebook.com/watch?v=234123418264062

After this action had gone on for a while, the old lady believed that this pompous abrasive cow was deliberately mimicking her! Mocking her!

She shouted: "What are you standing like that and replicating me you stupid Ape!" she raged.

The cow ignored her rage and rant, completely oblivious to all troubles in the world, still chewing in the manner in which cows do.

"If you do not immediately cease with mocking me, I will hit you!" She raged. The cow remained death to he anger, still chewing and chewing.

The old Swaap lady became so angery that she picked up a large stick and began literally beating the cow to fricking death lmoa. Upon retuning to her home that evening, she stated that the cow had become raving mad in the bush, driving her into madness and violence with its sinful mockery.

In their stupidity the town council concluded that it was the bush and wild driving their domesticated cows into madness and sin and mockery to their owners, they could not bring their cattle herd back out there again!!

But there is a snag, there's very little grass and pasture amongst the village homes. One smartass Swaap exclaims that they've missed to most obvious source of pasture for their cattle - the grass on their roofs!!! That's a genius plan, the rest exclaimed!

We must immediately get a cow above the homes, so that they may graze upon the grass roofs. Everybody thinks this is a wonderful plan.....

Our group of lovable morons go and get the healthiest and biggest cow amongst their herd, and bind a long strong rope around her neck. To get the cow upon the grass-roofed house, a group of the strongest swaap men go to the opposite side of the house with the rope, and begin pulling with all their might to get the cow upon the roof!

The cow is slowly, slowlllllllyyyy raised to the height of the roof, but when her horns were finally higher than that of the house roof, the cow began choking to death, her eye bulging and her tongue lolling for air. When our band of morons saw this, they began to become very excited, and misinterpreted this cow choking to death as her being fancying the grass roof with her lolling tongue; they began to cheer the men pulling on the opposite side of the house, to pull even harder. "Look at how the cow is licking its lips in anticipation of the well-preserved roof-grass! Pull harder! She wants to eat, she just can't reach the grass! Pull harder!"

By the time the cow was pulled atop the grass-roof, she was completely deceased. The band of imbeciles interpreted this cow as being lazy, and would repeat the exercise of cow-lynching two more times before they realize they've killed 3 cows lol.

Eventually, by breaking all of their ropes, the Swapians decide it was a better idea to just let the cows graze on the outskirts of their hovels.

Anyways, that's all I got, GOOD NIGHT.

Aevann plz pin