Die Lydenburgse Vastrappers - Platina Polka

Platina Polka - echo of a broken generation. It was in the aftermath of the Anglo-Boer War. The children of the Boers who had survived the most violent war since the Mfecane genocide of Shaka the Zulu, were for the most part impoverished. After the pyritic ore crisis of the early 90’s, the ensuing worldwide economic semi-depression, the utterly devastating runderpest of 1896 with its accompanying drought, the war in which over 27,000 women and children were exterminated in the concentration camps and over 30,000 farms were burnt down, the drought that followed immediately when the war ended, the ravages of the First World War, and the death angel’s even deadlier sweep during the Spanish flu of 1918, many of the Boer families were precariously balanced on one leg. And then followed the Great Depression of the 1930’s with the greatest drought in living memory. And that wiped out many Afrikaner families and after decades of constant misfortune, drove them to final pauperdom. Some lost hope and faded away int