8th of April 2011
When F.W. de Klerk mounted the rostrum to open parliament for the 41st time on Friday the 2nd of February 1990, nobody except his cabinet and National Intelligence knew what was about to be announced…and obviously General Tienie Groenewald of Military Intelligence Com.Ops. who wrote the speech for him.
De Klerk unbanned several terrorist organizations, announced the freeing of Nelson Mandela and expressed a desire to renegotiate the future of South Africa with all concerned.
The Conservative Party showed their disgust with the speech by walking out of parliament.
After his speech South Africa would never be the same again and would continue on a downward spiral for all its citizens.
The press later dubbed it “Red Friday” and “The Red Speech”, because of all the Marxist terrorists that were unleashed on South Africa.
Later on De Klerk would cite the demise of Stalinist Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe as his main reasons for allowing him the opportunity to unban these organizations. He felt that without the support base from these former Communist countries, the “liberation movements” posed less of a threat.
Truth is that the economical and ideological support that these Marxist terrorist organizations were receiving came mostly from the West. From Churches, from charities, from singers, actors and other celebrities, from Scandinavian donors, etc…
De Klerk knew this. He was a member of the State Security Council (SSC) and had full access to all intelligence reports.
Nevertheless, De Klerk announced in his speech,
“The season of violence is over. The time for reconstruction and reconciliation has arrived.”
We all know that hindsight is twenty-twenty, but of all the forms of wisdom, hindsight is probably the least merciful, the most unforgiving.
Truth is that
De Klerk’s speech on the 2nd of February 1990 did not end the season of violence, it started it. Between his speech in 1990 and 1994 South Africa experienced the most violent period in her history.
On the 11th of February 1990, arch Communist Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela walked hand-in-hand with his wife Winnie out of Victor Verster prison near Paarl. He was whisked away to Cape Town’s City Hall from where he would make his first public address in 27 years…a rather unforgiving and resentful speech in front of 80,000 people.
He called for the intensification of the struggle on all fronts, saying,
“Now is the time to intensify the struggle on all fronts” and he called for.
“redoubling” of efforts in the armed struggle. He further called for
the continuation of sanctions against South Africa and
the isolation of the Pretoria regime. He called for
more rolling mass action saying, “It is only through disciplined mass action that our victory can be assured.”
Hardly reconciliatory and peaceful. Rather, it sounded like Mandela was on the war path.
Mandela's complete speech.
After his speech he spent his first night out of prison at the mansion of Champagne Socialist, Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu, in Bishops Court.
In the next two months mass action intensified in Tokoza (80,000), Daveyton, (60,000), Alexandra (50,000) etc. By the end of April 1990, 25 policemen were killed, their homes demolished with front-end loaders….the SAIRR monitored more than 400 assaults on councilors and policemen from January to July 1990.
The institute’s CEO John Kane-Berman later wrote in his book, “Political Violence in South Africa”, pg 58 that more than half of these incidents were never reported in any of the six English newspapers in Johannesburg. Almost no photographs either,
“yet Right-wing violence and intimidation were regularly featured, prominently displayed, and reported on by teams of investigative journalists, accompanied by photographers”.
Unrest in the Black homelands of Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei escalated with murder and bomb blasts…the season of violence was only starting.
What were the whites feeling at the time?
At this stage whites were mostly unaffected by the violence. It was still mostly in the black townships and the homelands. Whites still had hope. They thought the violence would soon dissipate. After all Nelson Mandela was free, Apartheid laws were for the most part scrapped and South Africa was on the road to black rule…Why the violence?
Further, De Klerk and Mandela promised that the season of violence was over and the whites naively swallowed it all.
In Natal, virtual civil war erupted between the ANC (who bought youths over to their side with R50 notes) and the IFP. Still the whites hoped it would all be over soon.
Where were De Klerk and Mandela at this stage?
They were dogging each other’s footsteps in Europe and the USA, De Klerk asking for sanctions to be lifted and Mandela asking for sanctions to remain until he was in power.
South West Africa becomes Namibia
During the same time President De Klerk and Foreign Minister Pik Botha were involved in giving more South African territory away, namely South West Africa and the South African harbor Walvis Bay.
A brief history of the South West issue is here necessary. The vast land between the Kunene River in the North and the Orange River in the South is for the most part a desert. It was of no use to the British during the nineteenth century and all they were interested in were the Penguin islands and the deep water port of Walvis Bay which they annexed in 1878. The rest of the land became a German colony since 1884. The Caprivi Strip became part of SWA in 1890.
During the Second Anglo-Boer War, the Germans supported the Boers, but when the Boers surrendered in 1902 they had to pledge legion to the Crown of England…which they reluctantly did. Thousands of Boers refused to do so and rather emigrated to Argentina.
In 1910 South Africa became a Union made up of the Two Boer Republics of The Orange Free State and The Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek as well as the two British Colonies of The Cape and Natal.
At this stage Walvis Bay became part of South Africa.
In 1914 the First World War broke out in Europe and it presented a nice opportunity for the British to test the loyalty of the Boers. Prime Minister Louis Botha was asked to annex SWA on behalf of the British Crown, basically going to war with their former friends the Germans. It further has to be remembered that a great deal of Boers to this day are themselves from German decent. At the time of 1914 many could still speak German.
This sparked a rebellion by General Manie Maritz and some others who saw an opportunity to restore the old Boer Republics. They managed to get a total of about 3000 men together. Generals Jan Smuts and Louis Botha along with 32,000 troops of which about 20,000 were former Boers themselves quelled the rebellion and by 1915 South West Africa came under South African control. Please note how the majority of the Boers were now fighting on the side of the British…not on the side of Maritz and De La Rey.
At the end of the First World War, Germany was bankrupt and could not run the colony again. Britain did not want it, because it was a useless desert, so the League of Nations put it under a mandated rule by South Africa.
According to this mandate South Africa had to introduce its laws and protect the citizens, by amongst other things keeping out hostile foreign forces.
The League of Nations seized to exist when the United Nations was created, but the UN was not the automatic successor of the League of Nations.
When the UN wanted SWA under their control South Africa objected, because at that stage the South Africans have built up SWA complete with harbours, dams, roads, airports, and other infrastructure. SWA was for all intents and purposes a fifth province of South Africa, although it was never officially incorporated.
The International Court of Justice in 1966 further ruled in South Africa’s favour and said that South Africa was not obliged to hand over SWA to the UN and should continue its supervisory role.
Despite this ruling by the ICJ in 1966, the UN unilaterally ended South Africa’s mandate in SWA.
In 1971, acting on a request for advisory opinion from the United Nations Security Council, the ICJ ruled that the continued presence of South Africa in Namibia was illegal and that South Africa was under an obligation to withdraw from Namibia immediately. It also ruled that all member states of the United Nations were under an obligation to recognize the invalidity of any act performed by South Africa on behalf of Namibia.
Since 1966 until 1989 (for 23 years) two generations of mainly White but also Coloured, Indian and Black men would fight on the Namibian Angola border to keep out the Marxist terrorist insurgents and keep the citizens of Namibia, of all races, free from Communist oppression and genocide that was rife in the rest of Africa, basically everywhere where the Communists took over.
On the 21st of March 1990, the 30th anniversary of the Sharpeville incident, De Klerk handed over the keys of Namibia to South Africa’s former enemies, the Marxist terrorist SWAPO. For 14 years prior to that, Foreign Minister Pik Botha along with his friends, Chester Crocker, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, and Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State, were planning this treacherous event whilst sending South African men to die on the border.
For almost a century South African taxpayer money went into Namibia to build up infrastructure on par with South Africa. Hospitals, schools, universities, roads…everything was built with the money of South Africans.
Pik Botha and F.W. De Klerk gave it all away with no mandate from the South African voters. In 1994 even the official South African territory of Walvis Bay was given away with no referendum, no mandate and no compensation whatsoever.
This was an act of high treason. De Klerk had no right to give away property that did not belong to him and in fact belonged to South Africans.
Nevertheless, at the handing over of Namibia on the 21st of March, De Klerk again echoed his words from the 2nd of February. He called himself an
“Advocate of peace” and the “Season of violence was over”. It proved to be a trifle too optimistic.
Irreversible change
As De Klerk and Mandela traveled the world for the rest of 1990, one would constantly hear De Klerk making reference to “Irreversible Change”.
For instance, on the 24th of September 1990 De Klerk addressed the Washington National Press Club, expressing his satisfaction over President Bush accepting the “Irreversibility” of change in South Africa.
During a ceremony at the Rose Garden that same morning he used the word “irreversible” five times and it bounced off his lips another few times in the question and answer session that followed.
The “irreversibility” of change was a precondition of the lifting of sanctions, but it also signaled at that stage that for the whites of South Africa, the time was over. The omelette was scrambled. There was no turning back.
In October 1990 despite major violence, the State of Emergency had been lifted totally and Foreign Minister Pik Botha informed the President of the UN General Assembly that more “than 100 discriminatory laws and regulations have been repealed and only three Apartheid Laws still remained”.
Two of these, The Group Areas Act and the Lands Act, Botha promised would be repealed at the opening of Parliament in early 1991. The Third one, The Population Registration Act could only be adopted if the new constitution was accepted.
This is where it gets interesting
The Population Registration Act was the cornerstone of not only Apartheid, but as well as the Tri-cameral Constitution of 1983. Scrapping it would not only bring down Apartheid, but the Government itself and would leave a void. It was a constitutional impossibility to scrap the Population Registration Act.
The entire Tri-cameral constitution was based on the fact that there were different houses of parliament (House of Assembly-Whites, House of Representatives-Coloureds, and House of Delegates- Indians).
If the NP government scrapped this Act, it would mean there would not be anymore Whites, Coloureds and Indians as per definition. Everyone would be equal in front of the law.
It would mean that the NP would have to dissolve the entire government, call an election and that the people of South Africa would have to create a new constitution.
There was no way around this and the NP knew it. If the NP wanted to remain in power it could not repeal the Population Registration Act. If they did repeal the act, they would be committing political suicide and lose all power.
F.W. de Klerk himself was a lawyer and he knew this only too well. There was only one way to pull this off. They had to play the biggest confidence-trick on the whites voters of South Africa.
How to con Whites out of power 101
The government was fully advised by MI and NIS on how to do this.
General Tienie Groenewald was the protégé of Eschel Rhoodie and the chief expert on propaganda as well as psychological warfare. He knew the South African public intimately. He would play a major role in what happened next.
By early 1991 Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok released figures on violence in South Africa. A total of 17,088 incidents of unrest in 1990 set a new record. (The Star, Johannesburg, 11th of February 1991).
The Civil War between the IFP and the ANC spread from Natal to the townships around Johannesburg and Pretoria.
The death toll in the first four months of 1990 stood at 1400; about the same as for the entire year before. By the end of 1990 there had been 3700 deaths in political violence. This was 163% increase over the 1400 deaths in 1989. Since the war between the IFP and the ANC started in the late 1980’s the death toll now topped the 7000 mark. There was surely no “end to the season of violence” as De Klerk promised.
On the 1st of February 1991 De Klerk again opened parliament with a speech. As everyone expected, he announced the repealing of the Group areas Acts and the Land Acts.
He sprung a surprise when he announced that also the Population Registration Act of 1950 would be repealed, despite earlier indications that such a step would be constitutionally impossible.
Les De Villiers write in his book “In sight of Surrender”, page 179…
“On the part of the Government”, De Klerk explained, “the view was held that the Population Registration Act would have to be repealed eventually, but that this could not be done immediately because the Act was technically necessary for the maintenance of the present constitutional dispensation. Therefore it would be possible to repeal the Act only once a new constitution had been implemented.”
Further investigation, he announced, showed that it was, in fact, possible to repeal this Act, provided that it was accompanied by the adoption of “temporary Transitional Measures” toward the acceptance of a new constitution”.
De Klerk was lying through his teeth. It could not be done. He did not fool the opposition Conservative Party. De Klerk's speech was interrupted by jeers and cries of "traitor" from white opposition Conservative Party members. Some were forcefully ejected, which prompted a walkout by the remainder of the 41 party members.
After this speech, more violence and rolling mass action by tens of thousands of blacks took place. The townships were in chaos. Necklace murders were the order of the day…
De Klerk waited until the Currie Cup Rugby season was in full swing. The White public, for whom Rugby is a second religion, would be totally fixated on the biggest sporting event on the calendar. At that stage the Rugby World Cup was only a few months away and South Africa would once again not be able to partake due to sports boycotts.
The human mind does not like chaos. It is repulsed by horrible acts of violence such as necklace murders. It wants order and calm. On the television, radio and newspapers the public was bombarded with scenes of horrible violence, chaos and mass action across the country as well as, at the same time, the beautiful game of Rugby. People wanted an end to this chaos they just wanted to watch Rugby, but instead it was getting worse by the day.
The Intelligence operatives knew exactly what they were doing. They relied on another factor; The political blindness, naivety and ignorance of the greater white electorate.
Probably 99% of them had never read the Constitution or the Population Registration Act let alone understand it. They simply trusted the NP to take care of them…they just wanted to watch the Rugby, have a beer and forget about the violence ripping across the country.
At a special ceremony on Thursday the 27th of June 1991at his office in the Union Buildings, in Pretoria, President F.W. De Klerk signed off on the last three remaining Apartheid Laws in full view of the world press and television cameras.
According to De Klerk, the scrapping of the Group Areas Act, the Land Act and the Population Registration Act meant that the book on Apartheid was closed.
What De Klerk forgot to add was that when he did that, he also closed the book on himself and his government.
From that day onwards, the NP had no constitutional right to govern anymore, they had no mandate anymore. There was no interim transitional measures in place, nothing.
On the 27th of June 1991, the National Party Government became an unconstitutional and illegal government.
That makes everything they have done afterwards also illegal, including the 1992 referendum and the negotiations on behalf of the whites of South Africa. The entire 1994 election was illegal and the ANC government today is therefore illegal.
One would ask today, “But why did the lawyers not do anything? Surely they knew what was going on.”
Yes. They knew full well what was going on. ONE man…one such a lawyer raised his voice.
His name was Jaap Marais, the leader of the HNP (Herstigde Nasionale Party or the Reconstituted National Party), a small rightwing faction that broke from the NP in 1969.
Jaap Marais said that the NP was an illegal government and had no right or mandate to govern. He was 100% right. Marais called for a boycott of all elections since then. Taking part in any election after 27 June 1991 would give legitimacy to such an election and therefore legitimacy to the ANC Marxist regime.
Problem was that the HNP catered exclusively for the Afrikaners and almost all their literature and speeches were in Afrikaans. The HNP even refused to translate their name into English, rejecting bilingualism. They were seen as a fringe, extremist, and somewhat Calvinistic religious fanatic, right-wing group, mostly because of disinformation by the liberal media and the NP government.
Even so, Marais prided himself on his command of the English language and would gently correct English-speaking interviewers on their grammar and syntax. He was a devotee of poetry, particular the works of John Keats and T S Eliot, and had translated Shakespeare's Julius Caeser into Afrikaans. He was also a connoisseur of fine wines - and an acclaimed breeder of budgerigars, winning many international awards for this hobby, some of them from Britain.
Source Tellegraph
To his dying day he continued to recall the good old ways of apartheid and to predict the eventual inevitable collapse of a foolhardy experiment with multiracial democracy. He never forgave the British for the Anglo Boer War in which both his parents were interned.
Pity… Maybe if the HNP took a more reconciliatory and unifying stance and catered for all the whites in SA instead of just the Afrikaners and adopted bilingualism, they would probably have been taken more seriously at the time and would have mustered more support.
I am not sure if there were any other lawyers at the time that also realised that the whites of South Africa were being conned out of their country, but if there were, they were few and far between and certainly not mentioned in the media.
At the end of the day, the Intelligence operatives won. The NP remained in power and the Whites of South Africa carried on watching Rugby while the townships were burning…The whites had confidence in the NP and believed they knew what they were doing. They firmly believed that the NP was acting in the best interest of South Africa and its people.
