By Brendan Boyle
White Afrikaners have been quick to repudiate the bombings blamed on white extremists last week, but they say South Africa's former rulers are an increasingly unhappy minority.
President Thabo Mbeki fingered the white right within hours of the 10 explosions that killed one woman, damaged a mosque and a Buddhist temple and ripped up railway lines in the huge Soweto township near Johannesburg on Wednesday.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks. Afrikaner leaders have not denied the possibility that they were mounted by disaffected members of their once powerful group.
Police have detained 17 white rightists on charges of plotting against the state before the bombings and said on Sunday they had identified two white suspects in the new attacks.
Ferdi Hartzenberg, leader of the hardline Conservative Party, said the murders of at least two white farmers a week since 1994, the declining status of the Afrikaans language and affirmative action had made his people angry and afraid, but not militant.
"I have not had any indication that there is a violent thing going on in Afrikaner society. I have never detected that," he told Reuters.
Cassie Aucamp, the single parliamentary representative of the Afrikaner Eenheidsbeweging (AEB, Afrikaner Unity Movement) said he would be disappointed if the bombings were proved to be the work of rightwing extremists.
"It would be a surprise in the sense that I am not aware of any such thing. What I hear are the complaints and dissatisfaction of the Afrikaners, but I have never heard any talk about militant action," he said in an interview.
The Afrikaners - Dutch and French descendants united mainly by their Dutch-based language and their Calvinist religions - ruled South Africa with an iron fist for nearly half a century under a racial discrimination system known as apartheid. They make up about 60 percent of the 4,4 million whites in a country of about 43 million people.
The relatively peaceful transfer of power to former president's Nelson Mandela's African National Congress (ANC) in 1994 was hailed as a miracle. Now the glow is wearing off and Afrikaner leaders say their people are increasingly afraid and disappointed.
"It has nothing to do with race, but with ideology, values, religion - that ethos that makes Afrikaners who they are," said Aucamp.
His fear now was that the possible resort to violence by a tiny minority could spoil the chances of the rest to negotiate about their concerns and secure a safe future.
Max du Preez, a popular progressive Afrikaner columnist, said many of the young Afrikaners who cheered the end of apartheid oppression were now questioning their place in the new South Africa.
"There has been a significant shift of opinion in the past year, maybe two years," he told Reuters.
"Afrikaners - even the conservative ones N got quite into living with the new South Africa. There was almost a new patriotism. There was quite a bit of excitement that they could make something of this," he said.
While Mandela made reconciliation the mantra of his presidency, Mbeki has focused on transformation. He is using legislation, persuasion and economic pressure to dismantle the white monopoly on wealth and influence.
Major industries are being set targets for black investment, boardrooms are being opened to blacks and to women. And the nine ethnic languages ignored under apartheid are now equal to Afrikaans.
"The reality of black empowerment, of affirmative action, of white people being laid off to make way for blacks is starting to seep in. Many of those who were progressive after 1994 are returning to the heart of the volk (nation)," said Du Preez.