However unlikely their plans may sound, the resurfacing of South Africa’s white far-right has resurrected many old fears in a country which experienced more than its share of violence during apartheid. Just last week, police found an arms cache containing an assortment of pipe bombs and military-type equipment in a rural area of the Northern Cape. In the Eastern Cape, a raid on a farm yielded a hoard of firearms that included AK-47 and R4 combat rifles.
The police actions were part of their investigation into the Boeremag (Boer Force), a shadowy fringe group of white Afrikaners that claimed responsibility for a spate of nine bombings that killed one woman and injured her husband in the black city of Soweto on Oct. 30–the worst such attack since Afrikaner militants failed to disrupt South Africa’s first democratic election eight years ago. Another blast injured two at a Buddhist temple near Pretoria on the same day. Eleven days after the attacks, a Boeremag affiliate calling itself the Boerevolk Krygers (Boer Nation Warriors) e-mailed the media to warn that the country could face a fresh outbreak of holiday violence during what it calls the “false and worldly festive season.”
Afrikaner neo-Nazis, of course, are hardly a new phenomenon in a country once defined by its race laws. Indeed, the Boeremag was formed in 1994, the year Nelson Mandela was elected as the country’s first black president. But its explosive resurgence has raised fears that it may be entering a new phase in its resistance to the ruling African National Congress.
Henri Boshoff, an analyst at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, says the Boeremag–whose members he describes as “leftover Afrikaner nationalists”–has been simmering on the slow burner since the mid-1990s, when Afrikaners despaired of what they saw as their leaders’ betrayal of their cause. Until recently, however, they were hampered by their declining support–the far-right won only 1 percent of the vote in the last general election three years ago–and lack of leadership. (After a five-year legal battle, Eugene Terre’Blanche, the charismatic leader of neo-nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement, finally was jailed last year for his near-fatal beating of a black man.)
Now, however, the group has been galvanized by a variety of factors. These include high rates of crime–in particular, the killing of more than 1,000 white farmers since the ruling African National Congress took power–the marginalization of the Afrikaans language, affirmative action policies that group members see as depriving their children of jobs and, perhaps most of all, neighboring Zimbabwe’s violent ejection of white farmers from their land. They’ve become more sophisticated too. “Unlike the old right-wingers under apartheid, the ‘brandy-and-Coke’ brigade, these people are doctors, engineers and senior members of their communities,” Boshoff told NEWSWEEK.
Both police and security analysts paint a picture of a small but organized, determined Afrikaner group that is prepared to kill to achieve its objective: resurrection of the old Boer republic covering a large chunk of northern South Africa.
Few South Africans believe the Boeremag can topple President Thabo Mbeki’s government. A document in police possession claims the group has 3,700 members, but Boshoff estimates they may have as few as 1,200 to 1,400 supporters in a country of 43 million. By any calculation, white racist extremists are a tiny minority within the country’s Afrikaner minority. South Africa’s 4.4 million whites comprise only 11 percent of the country’s population and Afrikaners make up 60 percent of that white group. “On the ground level they [the far-right] will be able to plant bombs, disrupt society and cause emotional outbursts between black and white people–that’s what they want,” says Boshoff. “But there are few Afrikaners who would be willing to sacrifice their jobs, families and careers in support of the right-wingers”.
Still, the group’s new militancy may be a political wake-up call for Mbeki. Recent studies have shown that the country’s former apartheid rulers are an increasingly unhappy lot. Many young Afrikaners who cheered the end of apartheid now question their place in the new South Africa, says Max du Preez, a progressive Afrikaner columnist and former anti-apartheid activist. A surge of post-apartheid patriotism is being overtaken by disillusionment, with the realities of affirmative action “starting to seep in,” he believes. “Many of those who were progressive after 1994 are returning to the heart of the volk(nation),” says Du Preez. An Afrikaner think tank called the Group of 63 issued a similar warning. “[The bombings are a] symptom of serious alienation among Afrikaners resulting from the present political dispensation,” it wrote in a recent letter to Mbeki.
In spite of the Boeremag’s weaknesses, the group does have potential firepower. Sympathizers among some whites in the country’s now-integrated National Defense Force are believed to have helped them steal military weapons and police are concerned that the organization could pose a threat to the hundreds of thousands of fans expected to attend the Cricket World Cup in South Africa next year.
The Mbeki government says it is pursuing the plotters vigorously. Police have arrested 20 suspected members of the group in the last year and say they foiled Boeremag plans to bomb the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg last September. “[We are] certain of the people we are looking for and their numbers,” police commissioner Jackie Selebi told Parliament.
Mbeki, vowing the attackers will be caught, says the bombings underscored the need “for our own people and the peoples of the world to maintain their resolve to act against terrorism.” But a more ominous note came from Boeremag sympathizer Dries Kriel. “Seeing that the current regime opposes the freedom of the Boer nation, an extended and bloody guerrilla war is expected,” he warned a recent protest gathering to demand the release of Afrikaners jailed for bombings that took place before the 1994 elections as well as bail for the 20 arrested more recently. “I see only more trouble coming.” For a government already confronting rampant crime and rising rates of HIV, that’s a threat it can’t ignore.
