Jan Taljaard visits the camp where the AWB awaited the apocalypse
ALL along the road to Koster, signposts remind one of the Afrikaner battles of the past: Nooit-.gedacht, where Boer general Koos de la Rey ambushed the British; Tweebosch, where the same De la Rey captured Colonel Methuen, and outside Koster itself, the small railway siding carrying the self-explanatory name of Skermutseling – skirmish.
These heroics may be what Eugene Terre’Blanche and the AWB had in mind when, some days before the April election, they gathered at their own hide-away just outside Koster, waiting for the war that Terre’ Blanche had promised would come.
As South Africa went into the last stages of its transitional period, stories emerged … of AWB families who had resigned their jobs, sold their houses and packed up their belongings to wait for the war … of the war not coming and the food running out. … of illness breaking out among the children.
Still, these were all rumours. The forbidding presence of guards at the entrance to Terre’Blanche’s camp saw to it that the stories could not be verified.
But as the rumours faded away, so did the guards _ until they all vanished. This week only rubble remained where up to 400 AWB members once waited for their time to come. Dilapidated buildings and structures, including an empty swimming pool, a signpost to an (empty) kiosk and a hall complete with stage, were all that still stood there.
Amid hundreds of empty cigarette boxes, torn sachets that once contained high-energy drinks and empty brandy bottles, poignant left-overs pointed to Terre’Blanche’s lost cause.
There were broken ampules of Baralgan, an intravenous remedy for serious stomach cramps in children. A small girl’s shoe forlornly waiting for little Cinderella. Detailed lists of guard duties. The torn pages from a Johannesburg telephone directory. A birthday card from a father and brother.
But more telling than anything else about the far-right desperadoes who waited here for a war that would never come, was a letter from a son to his mother
The letter _ reproduced word for word here _ was dated May 11 1994, a day after a flight of jet fighters stamped their approval on the inauguration of a new president:
Dear Ma,
How are you doing down there, I hope well. Up hear all is going ferly well.The goverment has not done anything to us yet but the kaffers are giving us a bit of up hill.
Ma I do not want you to worry about me because of the kaffers, we can handel them with ees.
The men that are hear are top soldiers and we all know what chances we have here but you must not forget that I am fiting for a caus and I will not give up untill we have reched ower goll and we will.
Ma. I am strugling hear with out mony I do not have any sope left and there are a few other things that I need so pleas ask papa to pout some mony in the bank for me thank you.
The reason why I do no want to let you send me a parsel is because if this letter dous not rech you then no one can find us. I am shower that you know which town we are near so if things get to hot for you and the family you know were to go.
I am in town quit often and you can even ask the pepol in town and they will know where we are. Where food is consined we are very well loked after, there is two woman, that have been doing all the koking for the brakpan men. I have moved in to a bungelo with the brakpan group because I was the only purson from ower regen that went and they liked me so I moved in and took over second in command of them dew to me being an assistant komandant.
If we move from hear then I will let you know when I get to the new desternashen but I will not be abell to tell you where we are for sekurity resens. Oh well I must end this letter know dew to dewty that have to be sorted out. Please tell papa I am ok and not to worry about me.
From X (name withheld)
While I read this letter, a woman ambled up from the river, a holstered revolver hanging from her giant brass belt with a Harley Davidson logo.
No, she was not an AWB member, she said. The gun was only there to shoot snakes. She was part of a consortium that bought the place to restore it as a holiday resort again.
A while later she changed her story: no, someone else had actually bought it, but she was helping them.
She was joined by a younger woman who admitted to seeing the AWB members while they were still there in full strength. No, she was not an AWB member herself, she said.
They said their goodbyes, turned around and followed a path that led to a bungalow hidden from view by the trees. Next to it a green Ford Sierra with a remarkable number plate, LZK 777T, was parked.
It was bought in 1987 for the then deputy leader of the AWB and registered to the AWB. Three cars, all carrying the triple-seven number plate, were bought at that time, a former AWB member tells me later.
While I waited, an Eskom technician drove up and stepped out of his bakkie. He had been sent, he said, to cut the power supply to the resort.