No Laughing Matter

Eight years after the first post- apartheid elections, most of South Africa’s Afrikaners — the three million whites of European, mainly Dutch, origin — have put their days of struggle for racial exclusivity and independence in the past. But not all of them. A small but determined band of Afrikaners is still threatening revolution. A dozen men, all Afrikaners, have been arrested since late July for allegedly taking part in a conspiracy for armed insurrection against the African National Congress (A.N.C.) government, and the police are searching for other suspected ringleaders. The men go on trial in February on charges of high treason.

The South African security forces have reason to regard the threat as real. Last week, a large cache of weapons and explosives, which police say may be linked to the plot to overthrow the A.N.C., was discovered at a farm some 170 km north of Johannesburg. And 3 weeks before that an abandoned truck filled with arms, ammunition and explosives was found in South Africa’s North West province. Police say a meeting of the Farmers’ Force, the right-wing splinter group suspected of being behind the plot, was planned in the area. But the gathering was called off when members learned that the police were on to them. A local Afrikaans physician, Lets Pretorius, was arrested — the truck was registered in his name — for alleged contravention of the Internal Security Act.

Police began their roundup of right-wingers earlier this year. Months of undercover investigation led to the discovery of the Farmers’ Force’s written plans for an armed coup. The plans — entitled Document 12 — involved a military take-over of army and air force bases, radio stations and parliamentary institutions. It is unlikely that the ambitious coup could have ever succeeded, but police say that however unrealistic, the conspiratorial nature of the documents and the arms caches are enough to raise a security threat.

The Farmers’ Force claims to be the “war cabinet” of the “interim government of the South African Boer Republic.” Their aim, according to Document 12, is to form a white, Afrikaner state, a throwback to the republics of the Boer War era — meaning that all blacks and Asians would be “chased out.” The group also branded Afrikaner politicians, such as former President F.W. de Klerk — who negotiated the transition to democratic rule with Nelson Mandela — as traitors for “selling out” the Afrikaners.

Crazy as the group may sound, the Farmers’ Force cannot be dismissed as harmless fantasists. Some of the documents indicate a sophisticated knowledge of the technical details of military and police installations and equipment. “These weren’t dreamed up by a delusional idealist,” says Martin Schonteich of South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies. Former military men, and even some who are currently serving in the South African defence force, are believed to be involved with the underground organization. “They don’t have the potential to overthrow the state,” says national police commissioner Jackie Selebi, “but we take any threat to peace seriously.”

It is possible that some of the extremists in the Farmers’ Force may have broken away from the Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB), which attempted a coup in the apartheid-created black homeland state of Bophuthatswana in March 1994. The rebellion was put down and the whites were ignominiously routed as the country moved to majority black rule in May.

The AWB tried to keep the spark of militancy alive, but in time became just another ugly, lost cause. Its leader, Eugene Terre’-Blanche, a choleric, bible-punching farmer, distinguished himself by falling off his horse during an AWB parade. In 2000 Terre’-Blanche managed to ride his horse to court to serve six months in prison for assaulting a black petrol-station attendant. In the same year he was sentenced to six years imprisonment, later reduced to four, for the 1996 beating of a black farm worker that left the man paralyzed. Though still virulently racist, the AWB has mostly become a beer-drinking club for Afrikaners who still want to wear uniforms and complain about black rule.

Security force investigators think the Farmers’ Force includes some AWB extremists who want to return to what they regard as the organization’s glory days. It’s difficult to take them seriously, though, since even they seem less than totally committed to the cause. In call-up papers sent out to the Afrikaner faithful to prepare for battle against the A.N.C., the Farmers’ Force urges volunteers for the next Boer War to report with weapons, uniforms and supplies — enough to last for all of three days.