DEBATE: BOERS IN THE AWB VERSUS A PROFESSOR: DID GOD HELP THE BOERS AT THE BATTLE OF BLOOD RIVER OR NOT?

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Coen Vermaak, who is now the leader of the BoereStaat Party, was a member of Terreblanche’s AWB in past decades and he tells this story:

The AWB tarred and feathered a professor because the professor said that it was the Boers who were so good and that it had nothing to do with God at Blood River. Then Terre’Blanche himself was beaten to death with clubs. That was an opportunity for God to intervene and prove that He means something. What about Piet Retief? Did God not take pleasure in him and his men? No, I stand by Prof. Floors van Jaarsveld and say that God cannot intervene.

I replied as follows:
Coen, you mention an interesting point. Correct me if I am wrong: But my understanding is that the main Afrikaans church, the Dutch Reformed Church, is basically Calvinist, and the main concept of God is in control of everything and everything is pre-ordained. I checked online and found this:

In Calvinism, the future is considered pre-ordained by God. This belief is rooted in the doctrine of predestination, which teaches that God has sovereignly determined everything that will happen, including the fate of individuals.

Key Calvinist Beliefs on Predestination:
God’s Sovereignty – God is in complete control of all events in history, and nothing happens outside His will.

Unconditional Election – God has chosen, from eternity, who will be saved (the "elect") and who will not (the "reprobate"), not based on human actions but on His divine will.

Theological Determinism – The course of history, including human choices, has been foreordained by God.

Irresistible Grace – Those whom God has chosen for salvation will inevitably come to faith; they cannot resist God’s grace.

However, within Calvinism, there’s also a discussion about human responsibility—even though everything is foreordained, humans are still held accountable for their actions. This creates a paradox between divine sovereignty and human free will.

The interesting thing Professor Van Jaarsveld and you raise is whether the Boers were lucky or WHETHER THE BOERS WERE SO EXCELLENT. For me, this endless belief in God really takes people away from realising their own awesomeness. So all the Boers say that it is due to GOD and the COVENANT with God that the Boers managed to win – whereas, you and I who don’t believe in God would say: The Boers had a wonderful victory because they had an excellent leader and they had an excellent team. If you believe that all this is due to GOD, you then UNDERRATE YOUR OWN ABILITIES. Now you live in a world where you are constantly worrying about whether you have angered God or not. In my studies of ancient history, ALL NORMAL HUMANS ARE SUPERSTITIOUS or RELIGIOUS. They are basically superstitious. It’s been like this for thousands of years. My own thinking is that it is because the common man is so out of touch with the way nations really work. So the common man and woman ends up BELIEVING in other things, whereas the elite/Kings know how things really work. This notion that people are being punished by God because they are not believing enough in God is something that other Whites have believed in prior times. It’s not just a Boer thing. It’s a thing that has been believed many times in many forms. Then people say: We are suffering BECAUSE WE DID NOT BELIEVE HARD ENOUGH AND WE WERE NOT TRUE TO GOD SO NOW GOD IS PUNISHING US. I think it is a dreadful way to think BECAUSE IT TAKES AWAY your own self confidence from YOURSELF and your own people. Instead of realising that we as a team/group/herd are awesome, we instead live in a world of constant paranoia about whether God is happy with us. Are we behaving properly? Will he punish us more? When will it end? It completely and utterly takes us away from a simple, straight forward discussion about us having a future as a GROUP and we live in this endless paranoia instead of simply organising, working and struggling forward to create a future for ourselves. It’s a depressing way to think, and it’s a dreadful way to live.