Trade union Solidarity says it aims to invest up to R3.5 billion over the next five years in a safer more prosperous South Africa for Afrikaners.

The ‘Helpmekaar Plan’ includes the building of a private university for Afrikaans students and will include millions allocated for scholarships; a language centre; plans for community safety; poverty alleviation; technical training; heritage conservation and history projects; and many other projects to safeguard the Afrikaans culture.

Flip Buys, chairman of the Solidarity Movement, said that the investment of R3.5 billion is probably the largest-ever investment in the Afrikaans cultural community.

“The purpose of the plan is to create a future in which we and our children can be free, safe and prosper at the Southern tip of Africa. The strength of the plan is that we will do what we say. It is not a dream, but a plan.”

“The central idea of our plan is self-reliance. We have long realized that we do not trust the state to create a future for us. We must take the responsibility for it,” Buys said.

The Solidarity Movement consists of 18 institutions which include the trade union Solidarity, AfriForum, Solidarity Helping Hand, the FAK, Akademia, Marula Media, Sol-Tech and several financial institutions.

The group says its plan will not be financed by large state funds or empowerment transactions, but by small contributions from ordinary people.

It said that there are already contributions each month by approximately 320,000 members of Solidarity, AfriForum, Solidarity Helping Hand and the FAK. It added that it hopes to grow that contribution fund to more than 500,000 by 2020.

The bulk of the trade union Solidarity’s budget will be spent on new methods to ensure people get the correct training for skilled jobs.

The Solidarity Financial Services Company and the Trust Virseker already contributes R13 million per year to the plan’s budget to and that is planned to double over the next five years.

Solidarity Helping Hand has already assisted 4,500 students at a cost of R73 million. It aims to expand its scholarship fund by 2020 to R160 million.

Solidarity noted that it has also just bought a new campus to construct an Afrikaans university, where various tertiary institutions will be housed and ‘radically expanded’.

The technical college, Sol-Tech, will also be developed to train up to 1,500 artisans annually.

AfriForum intends to invest at least R735 million in security structures, ‘municipal services’, and schools by 2020.

The plan will also include the creation of a digital museum for Afrikaans history, with lessons planned for the study thereof.

The plan also provides for the promotion of Afrikaans in all sectors of society.

Additional sources of the budget of the Solidarity Movement’s plan will be financed by donations, bequests, trusts and existing business transactions.

Photo credit David Cohen @Flickr