Sunday, November 6, 2011
By Mike Smith6th of November 2011
The Viljoen Brothers
Viljoen grew up in Standerton where his family supported liberal Jan Smuts.(SO,p302).
What is not so well known is that Constand Viljoen has an identical twin brother called Professor Abraham (Braam) Viljoen, a liberal dominee and theology professor at UNISA, turned farmer and he is well known in leftist circles.
Constand and Braam Viljoen look so much alike that people have difficulty distinguishing amongst them. Often they greet the wrong brother.
Braam Viljoen, a member of Van Zyl Slabbert’s IDASA and one of the first to go talk to the exiled ANC in Dakar amongst other places, also maintained close relations with the conservative farmers unions such as TLU and VLU. Through them he tried to arrange informal talks between the white right and the ANC.
And so another round of secret talks was started.
The four Volksfront generals, through the manipulation of Tienie Groenewald decided to hold secret talks with the ANC. Constand Viljoen asked his twin brother, Braam to arrange and facilitate the meetings. With them looking so much alike, it would be almost impossible to tell who was playing what role at the time.
The meetings had to be secret for two reasons. Firstly the Volksfront supporters would be enraged if they discovered that the generals who were suppose to lead them into war, were fraternising with the enemy.
And secondly, the ANC supporters would be enraged if they found out that their leaders were negotiating with the white right a few days after one of their greatest leaders, Chris Hani was killed.
Because Braam Viljoen looked so much like Constand, he could not be seen with the ANC, so he had to drive into the parking basement of Shell House, their headquarters, and meet the ANC delegation there in his car.
The first meeting between the AVF and the ANC took place at Nelson Mandela’s yellow stucco house in the affluent Johannesburg suburb of Houghton. Representing the AVF were three generals, Viljoen, Groenewald and Visser. The ANC contingent was made up of Nelson Mandela, Joe Modise and Joe Nhlanhla. At subsequent meetings Douw Steyyn was also there.
Of these meetings they are all euphoric today. Nelson Mandela poured the men tea and surprised General Viljoen by addressing him in the general’s own mother tongue, Afrikaans. (Unspoken Alliance, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, pg 226 ).
They could not resist the Mandela charm that was working in overdrive. The ANC smooth talked them, flattered them, roped them in, befriended them...and the AVF fell for it. They have learned nothing from history...of how Piet Retief and his men were also conned into entering Dingaan’s kraal without their weapons. Just this time the Boers left their best weapons, their brains, outside the gate of Mandela’s house.
Allister Sparks gives an account of this first meeting on page 204 of his book Tomorrow is another country;
Mandela’s appraisal of the situation they both faced was frank. “If you want to go to war,” he told the generals, “I must be honest and admit that we cannot stand up to you on the battlefield. We don’t have the resources. It will be a long and bitter struggle, many people will die and the country may be reduced to ashes. But you must remember two things. You cannot win because of our numbers: You cannot kill us all. And you cannot win because of the international community. They will rally to our support and they will stand with us.”
General Viljoen was forced to agree.
More than twenty meetings followed. Braam Viljoen was joined by two co-facilitators, Ivor Jenkins and Jurgen Kögl. Mandela did not come again, but Thabo Mbeki with his experience of allaying white fears was there. He even assured them that their claim to a Volkstaat would be addressed after a feasibility study was done. He proposed that a Volkstaat Council be established after the elections. The AVF accepted this.
But then negotiations stalled and the white right started new calls for a military intervention. Then suddenly the opportunity arose.
The Bop Massacre
During the negotiations between the NP and the ANC at the World Trade Centre at Kempton Park, they reached a Record of Understanding. In protest to this, Prime Minister Buthelezi (IFP) of Kwazulu established an alternative to Codesa called Cosag (Concerned South Africans Group).
It was an alliance between the four independent homelands and the right wing Afrikaner Volksfront (AVF). If one was attacked the others would come and help.
When the Negotiation Council at Kempton Park decided that the TBVC homelands would be reincorporated into South Africa and all citizens have their South African citizenship restored on the 1st of January 1994, the dictator of Bophuthatswana, Lukas Mangope resisted. In February 1994, two months before the first general and fully democratic election he decided that Bophuthatswana would remain independent as it was granted to them 17 years before.
22,000 Civil servants fearing they would lose their salaries and pensions went on strike, supported by ANC agents who started an insurrection.
The civil servants went on a looting spree and rampage in the capital Mmabatho. Later on the Bop police joined them. By the 10th of March Mangope lost control and chaos reigned in the capital.
He appealed to General Constand Viljoen for help to restore order, because the AVF was in the COSAG alliance. Part of the AVF was obviously the AWB, but Mangope specifically asked General Viljoen not to bring the AWB into his country, because his people would resent these ultra-rightist presence. The AWB was politically unacceptable to them. Viljoen and the AVF were considered moderates.
Viljoen answered the call and the Boere Krisis Aksie was rapidly mobilised under command of Colonel Jan Breytenbach, former special forces commander and Comandant Douw Steyn.
A message was broadcasted over Radio Pretoria, the AWB clandestine radio sender headed by Jan Groenewald, brother of Tienie Groenewald.
All AWB commandoes were told to head for Mmabatho. On hearing this Viljoen told Terreblanche to call off his men, but he said they were already on their way. He then told Terreblanche to keep his men outside at the border and wait for further instructions.
Viljoen also called General Georg Meiring of the SADF and informed him of the AVF operation to ensure there is no clash with the SADF.
The BKA men under Cmdt Steyn were to proceed to the airport unarmed, establish a base and they would then be supplied with weapons, ammunition and rations from the Bop Defence Force under General Jack Turner. After this Colonel Breytenbach would take over.
Steyn had 1500 men ready within hours and another 3000 on standby. When they got to the airport there were only 150 automatic R4 rifles waiting for them. Promises were made that more weapons would come soon from a nearby armoury, but it never arrived.
Meanwhile, reports came in that despite all the orders and requests to Terreblanche that his troops stay outside of Bophuthatswana, about 600 AWB men were already in Mmabatho armed to the teeth, driving through the streets on their pick-up trucks taking pot-shots at the blacks, killing 37 and wounding several more.
The next day, the Beeld newspaper called it a “Kafferskietpiekniek” (nigger-shooting-picnic).
By mid-morning on Friday the 11th of March, Mangope’s army mutinied and joined the rebels against him. They rode through the streets shooting back at the AWB
At the airport Comandant Steyn’s men had still not received their weapons. When he went to the armoury himself, the guards refused him entry. With only 10% of his men armed, he decided to withdraw his force.
He left the 150 armed men to hold the airport until they could hand it over to the SA Defence Force. And so they left the same way as they came.
Not so the AWB. Some of them got lost and were racing through townships firing at people and huts. Several shots were fired back at them.
In the nearby town of Mafikeng a convoy of pick-ups and cars was driving up a long road. Ahead was a roadblock. The convoy broke through the barrier and the Bop soldiers and policemen fired at them. The AWB fired back.
The last car in the convoy was an old blue Mercedes Benz with three passengers, Aalwyn Wolfaardt, Fanie Uys and Nic Fourie. The Bop soldiers fired a burst through the windscreen wounding all three men.
The car stopped and the men crawled out. Uys was propped against the back wheel of the Mercedes. Wolfaardt was stretched out on his stomach. Behind them Nick Fourie, a building contractor from Natal looked dead.
Minutes later, frenzied black policemen by the name of Ontlametse Bernstein Menyatsoe stepped forward and shot the unarmed and wounded Uys with his R4 automatic rifle through the body…all in full view of the national and international television cameras and the reporters.
Menyatsoe then turned to Wolfaardt and shot a single shot through the back of his head. He then went around and shot each of the three men again, just to finish them off, then held the rifle up into the air like a trophy.
Back in Naboomspruit Ester Wolfaardt and her eight year old daughter Analise were watching television that night. Aalwyn was dead for six hours already, but the AWB did not call. She and her daughter saw Aalwyn being executed on the six o’ clock news.
The South African Defence Force moved in and restored order within a few hours. Ambassador Tjaart van der Walt was installed as administrator of the territory joined by the ANC’s Job Mogoro as co-administrator.
The shooting of the three men in Bop was televised all over the world and severely demoralised the white right. Even today, most people get chills down their spines when they think about it. It was a terrible humiliation for the right-wing.
The black policeman Menyatsoe remained in the police and received amnesty from the TRC a few years later. He is still a policeman today and a hero amongst his people.
Meanwhile, the night before the registration deadline for the 27th of April 1994 national election, Constand Viljoen weighing up his options to lead his 30,000 men into war or take part in the election, he took a bold decision after being influenced by his liberal religious twin brother Braam Viljoen. With ten minutes to go before the deadline he registered a party called the “Freedom Front”. The next day the Conservative party and the other generals announced that they were following Viljoen.
And so ended the delusions of grandeur of the Rightwing to fight a Third Boer War.
The Volkstaat Council
After the election The ANC kept their word. They allowed the creation of the Volkstaat Council even funded it for five years (1994-1999), placing the Afrikaners like rats in a labyrinth of bureaucracy, obstacles and red tape to ensure they never realize their impossible dream of a Volkstaat.
The Chairman was Dr Johann Wingaard. In an interview with David Strobin of Global Politician, 27th of May 2005, he said that the ANC was never serious about the Council. Accommodating the Afrikaner’s idea of a Volkstaat was to Mandela and the ANC nothing but a public relations exercise. All talk, nothing more. The ANC regarded the Volkstaat Council as a 'sick joke'.
I quote Dr. Wingaard:
“The only time that the ANC showed any interest in our work was at an encounter with a constitutional committee headed by Essop Pahad (now Minister of the Presidency [until 2008, author]). At that encounter we tabled an interim report and proposed that a tenth province be created where Afrikaners would be in a natural majority. Storming out of the committee room, he accused the Freedom Front of negotiating in bad faith. The press was waiting in the media briefing room, where he delivered a tirade of anti-Afrikaner clichés and rejected out of hand the concept of territorial self-determination as a return to apartheid. Instead of defusing a constitutional deadlock, they deceived ethnic Afrikaners with empty promises of self-determination.”
When Strobin asked Dr. Wingaard if he had any hopes of the ANC ever implementing some of the Volkstaat Council’s recommendations and whether the Afrikaners would ever gain independence or autonomy in South Africa, Wingaard answered:
“No. Afrikaners will have to shed blood for any form of self-determination, as elsewhere in the world…The only way to achieve that aim is the African way. Civil war.”
http://www.globalpolitician.com/2780-south-africa
In 1999 funding was stopped and the Volkstaat Council unofficially disbanded. Viljoen retreated from politics and went to farm 300 km east of Johannesburg.
In 2001, tired and frustrated by ANC politics he handed over the reins of the Freedom Front to Dr Pieter Mulder, son of Connie Mulder who was the Minister of Information during the Information Scandal with Eschel Rhoodie.
On 10 May 2009 President Jacob Zuma announced his appointment of Dr Mulder as the Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. Mulder is now in the pay of the ANC government. “Die Burger” reported on the 26th of August 2011 about a Wikileaks revelation of a diplomatic cable dated 3rd of April 2009, that prior to the 2009, Mulder wanted to enter into a secret alliance with the ANC so that if the ANC did not get a 2/3 majority, the Freedom Front alliance would have ensured them of it.
That is why Zuma, prior to the election was courting the Afrikaners and even having BBQ’s with their leaders.
Source: http://www.dieburger.com/Suid-Afrika/Nuus/Mulder-wou-alliansie-met-ANC-vorm-voor-verkiesing-20110826
Today in his book, The Other Side of history, Dr. Van Zyl Slabbert recounts the general Constand Viljoen…
“He and other generals were urged from various quarters to stage a coup. 'I have 30 000 men under arms who will rise at a moment's notice,' he told me a number of times in those first few months. Viljoen, who is an expert on revolutionary warfare, was well aware of the folly of a coup option, but he was also very frustrated and angry at the political marginalization of, what he saw as, the interests of the Afrikaner minority through the unfolding process of negotiations. And for this, he put the blame squarely on De Klerk's shoulders.”
About General George Meiring, Slabbert recounts…
'Ja, man,' Meiring said to me, 'I know all about Constand and his 30 000, but it would not have worked and Constand knew it. We talked about the coup option and Constand said to me: "You know, George, if you and I wanted to, we can take over this country tomorrow." "Yes," I said, "it is true. But you and I also know that if we did, what do we do the next day?'
What kind of comic book delusion is: “..if you and I wanted to, we can take over this country tomorrow…”? It sounds like the cartoon characters, Pinky and the Brain.
Source:http://www.namibiana.de/namibia-information/literaturauszuege/titel/the-other-side-of-history-an-anecdotal-reflection-on-political-transition-in-south-africa-by-frede.html
Tienie Groenewald and Constand Viljoen confirmed as spies by Mi6
On the 3rd of June 1994 the newspaper “Africa Confidential”, mouthpiece of Mi6, the British intelligence service, ran a story called: “South Africa: Eyeing the spies. (AC, Vol 33 No10). It was reported on in “Die Afrikaner” 19-25 August 1994 and “Patriot” 19th of August 1994. It reads as follows:
“In the past election horsetrading, the African National Congress took all the major security portfolios to the annoyance of the Deputy President Frederik de Klerk…Significantly, The Freedom Front’s Gen. Constand Viljoen and Tienie Groenewald, a former intelligence chief, have become allies of the new government and are feeding intelligence on the far right to the reconstructed DMI (Department Military Intelligence). Africa Confidential has learned it was General Viljoen who passed key intelligence to DMI which led to the arrest of the first two of 33 far rightwingers, including key officials of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) in connection with the series of bomb blasts before the election.”
Further, in September 1994, Constand Viljoen’s car was pushed off the road. Fearing for his life, he asked Tienie Groenewald for help, who in turn called in the VIP protection unit of MI. Normally they only look after the Chief of Defence or the Minister of Defence. A photo of Constand Viljoen’s bodyguards was taken in October of 1994 by Koos Venter of “Die Afrikaner” during Viljoen’s speech at Waterkloof. It confirmed Groenewald and Viljoen’s connection to the government. (SO, pg 371)
Death of the National Party
The first democratic election of The New South Africa on the 27th of April 1994 came and went. Nelson Mandela was the new President. Two deputy presidents in the form of Thabo Mbeki and F.W. de Klerk took his side in a Government of National Unity (GNU).
On the 24th of June 1995, South Africa’s rugby team “The Springboks” won the Rugby World Cup, beating New Zealand at Ellis Park. Mandela was there wearing the No.6 jersey of the captain Francois Pienaar handed him the trophy and when Francois Pienaar triumphantly lifted the Cup above his head, the stadium erupted in euphoria.
Rugby, that sport that has become such an integral part of the Afrikaner culture and kept them in isolation for so many years during Apartheid, was a bridge between the leader of the ANC and the white South Africans especially the Afrikaners. The triumph of the Springboks was a triumph for the whole of South Africa black and white. The hopes among the people were high. South Africa could conquer the world. Most whites, even the diehard right-wingers believed in the possibility that a multiracial, multicultural South Africa, could after all work.
But the danger lights were already flickering to the paranoid in the ANC who feared the rise of Afrikaner Nationalism more than anything else.
On the surface, Mandela was reaching out to the Afrikaners. A month after the Rugby World Cup, he visited the 94 year old widow of Dr. H.F. Verwoerd, Betsie, at her home in Orania where they had tea together.
In a historic move two years before that, Wilhelm Verwoerd a young philosophy lecturer at Stellenbosch University and grandson of the former South African Prime Minister H.F. Verwoerd joined the ANC together with his wife Melanie, who later became South African ambassador to Ireland. Business men were falling over their feet to meet Mandela.
But as the nebula of the euphoria died down, another picture started to become clear. The ANC was not finished with Afrikaner Nationalism...yet.
In his book “Annotomy of a Revolution”, Crane Brinton explains on pg. 24 that all revolutions go through certain stages.
“All are begun in hope and moderation, all reaches a crisis in a “reign of terror” and all end in something like dictatorship – Cromwell, Bonaparte, Stalin. The American revolution does not quite follow this pattern, and is therefore especially useful to us as a kind of control.”
He goes on to explain and use examples of various revolutions to point out that almost without exception, the regime that replaces an oppressive one is normally more oppressive than the former. The ANC would stick to this pattern.
As the Verwoerd’s were dining with the ANC, Dr. H.F. Verwoerd’s name was being changed all over South Africa. The name of the dam changed to the Gariep dam and his statue removed to Orania. Not only was the name of Verwoerd, but in fact all the prominent Afrikaner names of everything from airports to parks, roads and towns changed.
The intellectualism of the Afrikaners was being undermined. Schools were being integrated. RAU, that proud university of Afrikanerdom was integrated and Anglicized/Africanized, many more followed.
The economic strength of the Afrikaners was undermined through Affirmative Action, Black Economic Empowerment and quotas in University entry and sport.
The entire civil service was transformed. Competent Afrikaners and other whites laid off and incompetent blacks took their places.
It was at the backdrop of these events that we should see the final death of the National Party.
De Klerk stayed in the GNU only after the interim constitution was accepted on the 8th of May 1996. The next day, frustrated with the politics of the ANC, he prematurely pulled out his party from the GNU, dealing the NP a fatal blow. On 8th of September 1997 at the founding of the New National Party (NNP) he handed the reins of the Party over to the 37 years young Marthinus “Kortbroek” van Schalkwyk.
The name “Kortbroek” (short pants) he got because several people accused him of being gay, because of his boyish looks (he is married with two children) and being slightly offended he stated, “I am not gay, I am a true Boerseun. I wear short pants”.
At the 1999 general elections, the NNP could only secure 7% of the vote, down about 13% from their 20,4% in 1994. Oh how the mighty NP has fallen. Most of its former supporters have moved past them further to the left to the Democratic Party of Tony Leon.
For a short while after the 1999 election the NNP joined the DP in an alliance called the “Democratic Alliance” or DA, the name it still holds today. However in 2000 it broke away from the DA to join the ANC in an alliance.
Prior to the 2004 elections the NNP leadership informed its MP’s that the party would soon be dissolved and several NNP politicians started looking for other political homes. Many struck deals with the ANC.
Unethically, they kept quiet about it and never informed the electorate who still went and voted for them. The NNP only received 2% of the votes. Shortly afterwards on the 9th of April the NNP was dissolved and the rest of the politicians including the leader Marthinnus van Schalkwyk joined the ANC.
Van Schalkwyk’s reward for destroying the NNP was the post of Minister of Environmental Affairs. He is currently still in the ANC as Minister of Tourism.
But who is Van Schalkwyk really? Van Schalkwyk served in the SADF from 1978 to 1979. His political career began during the late apartheid years at the Rand Afrikaans University as chairman of the Student Representative Council (SRC), the Afrikaanse Studentebond (ASB), and later of the Ruiterwag, the youth wing of the Afrikanerbroederbond.
During this time he became the leader of a new youth movement called “Jeugkrag” (Youth Power), a front of Military Intelligence headed by General Tienie Groenewald. Military intelligence secretly funded Jeugkrag. On the surface it was suppose to be an organization opposed to the Afrikaner establishment.
In reality it was spying on fellow Afrikaans students in an operation known as “Project Essay”. Jeugkrag operated exclusively on Afrikaans university campuses and sought to influence the political views of Afrikaans-speaking students, turning them more liberal.
Conclusion
This chapter attempted to illustrate to the reader that during the Apartheid era, before it and after it, the rightwing was, is and probably always will be infiltrated by their enemies. There are many more examples to use, but this will suffice for the moment.
What makes it so especially disconcerting is that these traitors pretend to be the friends, leaders or mentors of those genuinely conservative or nationalist, yet secretly work against them.
Their agenda is not the wellbeing of the Afrikaners or white South Africans in general. They have no cause, other than their own benefit and self enrichment. They have no loyalty to their nation, their country or to God.
The problem is that they will always be amongst us. In fact there will never be a shortage of traitors and spies when it comes to betraying our people.
As William Shakespeare said in Hamlet:
”When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.
Hamlet, Act 4, Scene five.
http://mspoliticalcommentary.blogspot.com/2011/11/opening-pandoras-apartheid-box-part-34_751.html
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