His father, a Brussels citizen, worked as head of department at the national telegraph and telephone company (RTT) and his mother was a housewife.
[1] Elbers' involvement in politics was shaped in reaction to the attitudes of Brussels' francophone upper classes, who tended to perceive the Flemish as the equivalent of foreign workers.
In 1969, an activist of the so-called Democratic Front of Francophones (FDF) with a not very good health suffers from a heart attack during an action of the VMO.
From the eighties onwards, Jef Elbers had also been working for the Dutch broadcastings of the Belgian Radio and Television (BRT).
Under the nom de plume Dick Durver, Elbers wrote scripts for television programs for the youngsters, such as Merlina, Postbus X and Interflix.
After having been designated as their representative on the board of directors, the Vlaams Blok, stated in February 1992 that it wanted to contribute constructively to the management of the BRTN: ”an institution that has been in the past one of the sharpest opponents of the Vlaams Blok.” The party will ensure that the BRTN won't take up more misinformation, manipulation or interpretation, wishes to promote Flemish citizenship and puts the emphasis on Flemish culture.
[8] Elbers also criticized what he called 'the agency of emancipation' of the BRTN: "This service was established to please Miet Smet and handles so-called 'affirmative action' for women in the House."
(Note: BRTN) "This agency of emancipation would do better to investigate why the women of the BRTN are, on average, ill four days longer as their male colleagues, rather than studying with Paula D'Hondt how a foreigner could get a job at the BRTN.” [9] Having lived many years in Schaerbeek, Jef Elbers moved to and settled in the coastal town Knokke-Heist in 1993, and in December of that year, he became (temporarily) Chairman of the Knokke-Heist Department of the VB.
At the end of the episode, the problems are solved: the heroes are the winners and possible culprits bow their head in remorse.” ”If in Merlina, it was still a real detective agency and in Postbus X the office of a newspaper, Interflix is the story of an agency that is organized in a somewhat chaotic way and which attracts a lot of trouble in different ways.”[10] Elbers, when taking the decision to refocus his activities on making television programs, left the board, since this would not have been compatible with a mandate in the board of the BRTN.
[11] In 1996, the Vlaams Blok replaces him as party representative on the board of directors by Inge Vanpaeschen, photographer and City Councilor in Knokke, who had missed her cooptation, as a Senator.
During the 2000 municipal elections, Jef Elbers, being ineligible candidate on the list of VB said: ”Knokke-Heist is a tourist town.
Hospitality and courtesy are not identical to commercial servility ..."[13] The same year, Jef Elbers is summoned before the criminal court because of his song ‘Mohammed Ambras’, which had immediately been declared to be of a racist tendency by the Flemish newspaper De Morgen (The Morning).
It began with the words: ”I recently saw, in Anderlecht, the reality of the intifada; a bunch of brown hooligans engaged in the worst excess".
The Prosecutor, Kathleen Desaegher, claimed the Internet was accessible to everyone and the song could be read and heard on the website of the Vlaams Blok Youth (VBJ) in 1997.
The prosecutor believed that writer Elbers and editor Claeys violated the legislation on racism using phrases such as "a bunch of brown scum demolished everything."
A lawyer who pleaded Claeys's cause, alleged that the criminal court was not competent for a "violation of press laws" dating from 1997.
Elbers belongs to the generation of protest singers such as Boudewijn de Groot, Mikis Theodorakis and Jacques Brel.
The court followed the reasoning of the singer who had argued that the protest song was criticizing the failure of the migration policy of Paula D'Hondt.
[19] On the occasion of the installation in 2001 of the Board of the Public Center for Social Well-being in Knokke-Heist, the Vlaams Blok expresses its discontent through its representative, Councillor Jef Elbers, for the fact that the largest opposition party was excluded from all committees.
Elbers’ parents were both survivors of the Nazi concentration camps; his father, a Belgian citizen, had been a prisoner of war, while his mother, a Ukrainian Slav, had been classified as Untermensch.
A complete discography (more singles) is available on the website "Muziekarchief"[21] (music archive) A video featuring an Elbers song: Eer Vlaanderen vergaat (Before Flanders vanishes) on YouTube