Donald Trump has managed to create the biggest split among Afrikaners since the Voortrekkers abandoned the Cape Colony, leaving behind their more refined Dutch compatriots who had grown to enjoy their walks on Table Mountain and the civilised ways of the British.

“Sure, a road trip in wagons could be fun, but have you tried scones with clotted cream and Earl Grey tea?”

The Cape Dutch community who stayed and the Boers who left continued to regard one another with deep suspicion, much like Parisians regard those who live beyond the périphérique. The Boers went on to create their own republics and make lifelong friends with the natives, while the Cape Dutch became wine farmers and divorce lawyers. Some went to Hermanus and are still there.

Later, the British, not knowing when to leave good enough alone, began trying to turn their Dutch friends into Englishmen. Teaching them how to talk about the weather, put the kettle on in a crisis and make kippers on toast for breakfast wasn’t enough. They persisted with their odd European ways and strange guttural tongue.

Christoffel Brand, son of a former Dutch colonial official and first Speaker of the Parliament of the Cape of Good Hope, said: “England has taken from the old colonists of the Cape everything that was dear to them: their country, their laws, their customs, their slaves, their money, even their mother tongue.”

The cry went up. “You may take my clogs, but you will never take my slaves!”

Some began wondering if they wouldn’t have been better off in one of those creaking wagons that cut their trails into the earth, over everlasting mountains where echoing crags resounded. Ironically, many years later, descendants of the Trekkers would pour back into Cape Town in Ford Rangers and Toyota Double Cabs every December.

Speaking of irony, the Cape Dutch made no real moves to resist until the British abolished the use of Dutch in schools. That was in 1865. Almost exactly 111 years later, the Boers opened fire on Soweto pupils protesting the compulsory use of Afrikaans in township schools.

The lesson? Guns don’t kill people, language kills people. When I am president, I will declare 10 years of no talking. The Great Silence will reset everything. We could even start now. I suggest the women go first.

Meanwhile, word got out that the Boers were having a lot more fun in their hastily invented Transvaal and Orange Free State.

One day, a servant rolled Governor Lord Milner a killer skunk spliff and he got so paranoid that he was convinced all his Cape Dutch mates secretly supported the Boers. His troops, although only having access to weed of a lesser quality as one might find in, say, Manenberg, suspected the same.

One soldier wrote: “The Cape Dutch and Boers are a dirty treacherous lot and as soon as the Transvaal is subdued and the beggars trek farther out of our way the better. We do hate them down here like poison.” I did not make that up. This is legitimate research, for which I am not paid extra.

Following the dismantling of the Boer republics with a number 12 spanner and a pair of sturdy pliers, many impoverished Boers moved to the cities. And every coastal town from Langebaan to Richards Bay.

With the formation of the Union of South Africa, the Cape Dutch started cheating on the British and began canoodling with the Boers, and that’s how Afrikaners were born.

My point, if I even had one, is that Trump wasn’t the first to divide these people.

The British, never quick to pull their fingers out of a free pie, finally gave up in 1961 and said South Africans were unplayable and could do whatever the hell they wanted, as long as it didn’t involve giving darkies passports or, heaven forbid, the vote.

It was an idea the Afrikaners could relate to and they circled their wagons and kept us all safe in our beds until 1994 when democracy broke out and nothing was ever the same again.

I don’t know how this turned into a history lesson. This wasn’t my intention at all.

I have to say, though, that I find the current spat between Afrikaners more entertaining than alarming. The squabble between the “white genocide” camp and the “we’re just fine, thank you” camp doesn’t appear to be heading for a particularly worrying outcome, whoever wins.

Afrikaners have a bond and that bond is their language. It unites them in a way that English doesn’t unite us soutpiels. It takes a lot for us to call each other traitors.

And yet. As this ongoing fracas proves, coming as it does at a time when the likes of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg – and Trump himself – are doing everything they can to create distractions and sew divisions to ensure their own survival, political differences might just transcend those old Dutch roots.

There was a time that Max du Preez and Prof Pierre de Vos might walk into a bar and sit at a table with Kallie Kriel and Renaldo Gouws. Granted, it would be the only table with free seats. But still. They’d talk. Find out they have more in common than they thought. Agree to disagree. Split the tab. What they wouldn’t do is stab each other in the face with steak knives.

Today, I think Max and Pierre might choose to find another bar entirely. Minds are hard to change and it’s often not worth the effort to even try, especially if it’s happy hour.

Hearing the likes of David Scott, who was in the KwaZulu-Natal Youth Choir, went to Michaelhouse (R392 000 a year) and dropped out of medicine at Wits University, whining about being a victim of racial persecution is like hearing Jeffrey Dahmer appealing on the grounds of discrimination against cannibals.

In South Africa, it doesn’t really matter what white people think. We’re the little dogs now, and have been for 30 years. I’m not saying roll over, but know when to bark and why you’re barking. Also, that stinky American brak whose leg you’re humping? He’ll piss all over you without a second thought.