by Fenek Solère
After five months of rigorous training Gijs was ready to take the oath in a torchlit ceremony under the marula trees.
The commander stepped forward and read the names of the new graduates, then intoned: ‘Do you solemnly declare, in the presence of the witnesses here gathered, that you will fight to protect your people and liberate your land. That you will remain true to the word of God and enact the Father’s will by upholding the honour and spirit of the Afrikaner Union that built this country and that will one day reclaim its inheritance passed down to us from Den Briel, who liberated it from the Spanish Empire in 1572.’
‘I do,’ each and every one replied solemnly, ‘unto my dying breath.’ Then the whole assembly broke out into a spontaneous rendition of Bok van Blerk’s Die Kaplyn or ‘Chop Line’:
Between bushes and trees
Between borders we all wait for tomorrow
But at eighteen we were all lost
How could we understand
And who weighs our lives now
Because only God alone knows why we quiver
Because at eighteen we all just wanted to live
Just one flash and your life was gone
Are you calling me
Calling me back to the chop-line my friend
The world has turned over the years
When we were young how could we have guessed
Are you searching for me
Searching for me now in the dust and your blood
You said you heard how God was calling you
Then it was all over…
After all these years
Far gone do we drift around in our deeds
Only soldiers live damage caused by borders
How can you understand?
Because the bush gobbles our tracks
In the dark bush we prayed together for tomorrow
But in one flash your life was over
Are you calling me?
Are you calling me back to die kaplyn, my friend?
The world has turned over the years
When we were young how could we have guessed
Where are you now?
Is your name then retained on our walls?
You were never honoured and no one will
Write about your life and what you still wanted…
And at that wall
I stand for hours
But where’s your name now my friend?
Can they not understand?
Young soldiers perish
Without reason they carry the blame…
→ The 600,000 whites living in squalid camps across South Africa, often without water, power or electricity, are informed that their shacks will be bulldozed and they must leave or be arrested for squatting illegally;
→ Charges of genocide are laid by a pro-European patriotic group at the International Court in the Hague but there is a virtual media blackout on the issue;
→ Naspers, the biggest News Media group in South Africa, generates 72.2% of its revenue from investments in South Africa;
→ The Economic Freedom Fighters newsletter repeats an image first used in October 2013 which displays a banner reading: ‘A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.’ Other posters reading ‘The honeymoon is over for white people in South Africa’ and ‘We need to kill them like they killed us!’ are witnessed but denied by Economic Freedom Fighters spokespersons on News 24;
→ Attendees of the 30th June 2019 rally in London against violent crime in South Africa are arrested by order of the Head of the Counter-Terrorism Unit;
→ Claims that 70,000 whites have been killed by blacks since 1994, effectively 10.6 per day, are hotly disputed in the British media. With the Chair of the Afro-British Advisory Council on British Foreign Policy, demanding that such an accusation be retracted on the grounds of ‘pure racism alone’.
‘Listen up,’ the Major said one day to a group of them around mid-morning. Something in his voice brought their attention around at once. One of them, squatting in the dust, slowly rose. ‘Viljoen, Bouwer and de Wet, you are going on a mission tonight. Collect your ordnance from the armoury at midday and meet me back here by 12.30, understood!’
The men glanced at each other, but knew better than to ask questions.
The Afdeling Commando cell gathered at the pre-ordained time as Muller drove up in a yellow Volkswagen car. The windows were down and a song by Steve Hofmeyr blasted through the dry heat. ‘Get in,’ he commanded. ‘You’ve all got your things?’ One by one they confirmed, each running through the checklist with which they had been provided. ‘Excellent!’ Muller said. ‘Now it is time for action!’
They drove for hours along the R61 to Hairfield and pulled up close to the arrivals building at what had once been Matanzima airport but was now rebranded Desmond Tutu airport. Muller got out and indicated for Bouwer, an explosives specialist, to set the one hundred and fifty kilogramme Anfax bomb in the boot. ‘That will bring the house down,’ he quipped before ratcheting his automatic. Then the commando hid their firearms in fake luggage bags and fanned out through the expectant crowds, waiting to cheer the arrival of the former American President, an honorary Kenyan citizen, whose avowed aim was to re-energise Africa, or as his wife put it, while speaking at the opening of an all-black fraternity house in Mbombela, ‘to heal the wounds inflicted upon the poor and oppressed by the Atlantic slave trade across both the American and African continents!’
Each member of the unit had memorised his specific instructions about who and what to target. All were ready when the thirty-minute Anfax timer ticked over and the car bomb went off shattering the glass frontage of the auditorium, buckling the concrete, tipping people onto the concourse just above where the former President was giving a press conference. The Ystergarde moved forward peppering security with automatic fire. ‘Heal this, you hypocritical mother-fucker!’ Gijs found himself yelling into the rolling cameras of the world’s media, wading through rivulets of blood and dessicated Bantu limbs, his tear-clouded eyes streaming with memories of his murdered wife and daughter.
Chapter 7
We are told that investors are going to be scared away when we speak about the economy. Good riddance. South Africans will take over…
— Roland Lamola, 8th June 2012
‘We have to destroy what is evil in order to build a good and just society,’ Hastings was explaining to an exhilarated audience, ‘just like the communities we had before the Afrikaners came.’ Then, after taking a mouthful of water from an open bottle, he sprayed, ‘Like our brothers say — Our Economy, Our Land, Our Way!’
The crowd was in a state of frenzy from his dizzy rhetoric, the dancing throng imagined the broken bodies of dying children, screaming women and the wriggling pink torsos of flayed European skin. ‘We must continue this work!’ he cried, his voice rising to the pitch of their enthusiasm. ‘Their blood-thirsty terrorism will not stop our mission!’
‘Mayibuye! Afrika, Mayibuye Afrika!’ the audience responded.
After his performance Hastings climbed down off the podium, his face glowing with joy. He was immediately mobbed by Spear of the Nation activists and Veterans of the Bush War, a ragtag of old men — freedom fighters that the whites had accused of attacking isolated villages alongside poachers and drug runners. Troops that some right-wing historians claimed had fled in panic before the well-trained but heavily outnumbered South African army units operating in countryside. He gripped their hands warmly in his own, letting their compliments stream upon him.
‘Wonderful, simply wonderful,’ people were murmuring. ‘Inspirational!’ an excited face shouted from the back. Mabuza’s place on stage was soon occupied by a traditional singing troop, blasting out hypnotic rhythms. Hastings raised his fist in a symbolic gesture of unity and bellowed, ‘Father Mandela lives forever!’
‘Father Mandela, Father Mandela!’ came back in wave upon wave of deep resonating bass tones. There was some screaming too and one feat
her-clad woman sliced through a cockerel’s wattle with a sharp blade, pulsing blood spraying over people as they swayed and moved. ‘Mayibuye! Afrika! Mayibuye Afrika!’
Hastings saluted once more and left the township hall, making a call on his mobile, insistent his chauffer should pick him up quickly so he could get to the airport at once. He had made plans to fly to Mauritius that evening with Marie, having already collected their Air Natal tickets in the name of Mr and Mrs Gazupo.
Hastings waited uncomfortably on the sidewalk, avoiding an insect nest lodged in the asbestos sheet roofing above his head. His nostrils picked up the odour of a broken sewerage pipe over-spilling onto the side of the dirt-track road. He could see where the locals collected water from discarded oil drums and carried it between the carefully demarcated tribal boundaries in the curved rubber bladders of tyre inner-tubes. This is why he fought so hard — so that these people, his people, could have a better life. So that the descendants of Stompie Moeketsi, the murdered teenager who had once stood alongside Winnie Mandela, could make their way in the world. There were a million Stompies now, and he knew some were hiding behind a sheet of iron or loosened planks at that very moment, watching him. He felt his spirit expand at the thought. They would make good soldiers for his empowerment agenda.
Hastings may have had some reservations about many of them but he needed them and he had convinced himself they needed him. At least he had their respect for now, and their envy. He was after all a powerful man. He understood that some of the brighter ones wanted to be like him, aspiring to his way of life. That was why the arms shipments coming in from Beijing were needed. Not just because the government were anticipating some kind of external military threat, but also to use against their own people, so that the new elite like Mabuza could maintain their control of things.
Within minutes Mabuza’s car pulled up and a slope-shouldered driver with an especially horizontal forehead sidled around the car, saluted awkwardly and opened the door for his baas to slide inside and escape the bright dusty sunlight.
‘The airport!’ Hastings barked. His mind was on the vanilla-skinned woman waiting for him and he did not want to be late.
←→
Hastings leapt out of the car and ran towards the Departure Lounge just as a soothing pre-recorded English voice was saying, ‘Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. This is an airport announcement for Air Natal Airlines, departing at 17.20 for Mauritius. We are now inviting our first class guests to make their way to the boarding area in preparation for departure. Please ensure you have your boarding cards and internal identity certification with you for our cabin crew to check, thank you.’
Mabuza’s legs were beginning to tire as he forced his way through the hawkers selling powders and snake skins. He was lost for a moment amid the low constant hum of conversation. All around was a sea of boubous and burquas, pushing forward as though they expected there would be insufficient seats for all of them. The internet was full of stories about how Natal Airlines short-changed their clientele, but Hastings was only too aware that the company was part owned by a senior ANC administrator, and it was exceedingly unlikely any formal enquiries would be sanctioned despite the multitudes of complaints that flooded in by e-mail and post on a daily basis. What did it matter? He lived above all of that.
Hastings thought the security appeared relaxed considering the recent terrorist attack at Desmond Tutu airport, but he was too excited about his trip to give it any serious consideration. Those Nazis would be hunted down like the animals they were for embarrassing his government in front of the world, causing America’s Good Will Ambassador to run and hide. Catching sight of Marie among the melee, Hastings took hold of her small pale hand and held it firmly in his own.
‘I didn’t think you would make it,’ she gasped as he pulled her after him.
‘Come,’ he said, ‘we must get our seats!’
As they approached the flight desk, Marie watched as Hastings literally grew taller in his demeanour, pushing up on his toes and puffing out his chest in a peacock’s show of self-importance.
‘Hello, Sir,’ said the woman behind the desk as Hastings offered his own and then Marie’s identity cards through the gap in the plastic screen.
‘Please, I was unable to make the reservation for the seats with the private cubicle...’
‘Oh, I see,’ said the girl, unsure how to respond. ‘The passengers with that reservation, Mr and Mrs Schmidt have already boarded.’
‘Whites?’ Hastings surmised.
‘Yes.’
‘Have them moved to other seats, these if necessary,’ Mabuza carelessly indicated the green dockets he had placed before her. ‘I want that cubicle!’ The girl hesitated for a micro-second, looking around vainly for a superior to help her, and Hastings pounced.
‘Do you know who I am?’ he whispered, the backs of his hands hitting down hard onto the wooden surface, chocolate knuckles hinting at his genealogy. ‘I want those seats now!’ The young check-in girl was visibly shaking, big eyes staring up at Hastings, mortally terrified he was going to strike her.
Marie seized his arm, pulling his face, knotted with angst and practically bursting with muscular spasms, towards her.
‘Do not worry, Hastings,’ she breathed, ‘we will be perfectly comfortable...’ Mabuza’s shoulders unbuckled and his short neck bowed.
‘If you are sure?’ Hasting was still glowering at the Natal airlines employee.
‘Yes, of course!’ Marie smiled, blushing in nervous excitement at this show of masculine dominance. Hastings relented, slowly, and nodded his curt acquiescence, with the same air of brutal authority, to the girl behind the desk.
Then, walking on through the security barrier, the couple joined the others aboard the plane bound for Port Saint Louis.
→ The Afro-American co-founder of the Giraffe Movement, demands Silicon Valley donate more money to Africa;
→ Tanzania’s leading anti-corruption campaigner is revealed to be a beneficiary of illegal off-books trading at the Tanzania Port Authority;
→ New revelations from investigators looking into financial malfeasance in Dar es Salaam reveals that The Tegeta Escrow scandal of 2014 is likely to be overshadowed by corruption linked to the Tanzania Election Supply Company (TANESCO) involving Kenyan and Indian business tycoons;
→ National prosecutors say they are trying to recover over $4billion related to an Indian family’s project management of a range of state assets including schools, public housing, the police, power utility companies, airways and rail services.
Chapter 8
Skep self u eie toekoms!
It was far from a unified group that met in an Een-heidskomitee in Kroonstad. For despite Afrikanerdom having a common enemy, their various strategies as to how to address the problem and their very differing visions for the future greatly hampered them. In that regard this was not unlike the first meeting of the brothers in Vereeniging way back in 1902. Just like then, straggler units had drifted in from across the Vaal River, some in secret, others in open defiance of the temporal authorities. A century or so ago, it was the British Imperial forces under Lord Kitchener that brought them together, now it was teflon-faced Bantus and their allies armed with automatic weaponry and an inflated sense of victimhood. In cold echoes of the splits between Hertzog and Smuts and their young intellectual rivals of the burgerstand persuasion like Malan, Van der Merwe and Verwoerd, the post-apartheid forces were similarly riven with distrust and uncertainty. What they all recognised however was that they could not risk another Herzog-style Smithfield Address, outing their intended activities to the ANC government. They knew round-ups and summary justice were bound to ensue and their key people would be mercilessly liquidated in much the same way that all those years ago Ontlametse Menyatsoe, the Bophuthatswanan policeman, had opened fire with his R4 automatic rifle on unarmed AWB men in their Mercedes. And just like that historic incident in 1994, the world’s media would present these events in a manner that
exonerated the executions, so that no blame or illegality could be attached to the perpetrator’s so-called justifiable homicide.
Firstly, there were the remnants of the National Party headed by Jon Botha, a direct descendant of a former Minister. Smug and conservative, his approach was essentially to limit and mitigate majority excesses rather than confront the enemy militarily. They were the traditionalists, committed to power-sharing and compromise, believing that the ANC leadership could be reasoned with or made to realize that the whites could fight back and possibly inflict sufficient economic damage to harm their personal interests. Then there were the re-formed Orde Boerevolk led by Ben Aarde, and the Aksie Eie Toekoms led by Joseph Czapski. Both groups were committed to armed struggle, total segregation, expelling blacks from the identified Boer homelands and enforcing their boundaries by recourse to a trained militia. The only substantive difference between these two was the location of the proposed homelands and eligibility of non-Boers for citizenship.
The Landsberaad was being conducted under a Vierkleurs flag depicting the valorous three sevens emblem. The Chair read aloud a quote by Eugene Terre’Blanche, martyr of Venersdorp, which was heard in respectful silence:
‘They came from the sea, the white people of this country. Not because they wanted to but because their ship stranded and they had to... Because for many dark years Africa had lain and waited for civilization to come to it. For thousands of years when older civilizations had been established and had fallen, this land had stood empty and uninhabited, waiting for the nation that God chose should come here... And the white man and the new white people became like their land. He became as hard as his land. He became as pure and as strong...’