Jan Taljaard
IT was truly a gathering of the faithful. In contrast to the milling throngs of the past, just over 800 supporters turned up at the Pretoria City Hall this week to listen to the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging’s Eugene Terre’Blanche.
In the past, the Pretoria City Hall had served the AWB well as a recruiting point. At previous meetings the plastic collection buckets virtually bulged in gratitude to the leader.
Was it to happen again? Even taciturn AWB spokesman Fred Rundle got caught up in the momentousness of the occasion- to-be: “Very important meeting — the leader’s first public appearance after the elections,” he broadcast on the media pager.
As it turned out, no lists were circulated to ensnare potential recruits. The faithful were there already — a small band of people, perhaps not very well-to-do and not as tauntingly aggressive as the multitudes of the past, but a group which was still blindly loyal to the leader.
On stage were Terre’Blanche’s brother, “general” Andries Terre’ Blanche, and a few others: loyal “general” Willem Etsebeth from the Free State, deputy leader Ernie van der Westhuizen and, perhaps the most loyal of them all, AWB stalwart “chaplain” Coenie Snyman.
The rest of the general staff, among them Alec Cruywagen, were either in jail or had apparently decided to pursue their interests apart from the organisation. Beneath the stage, only the faithful remained.
This became a recurrent theme of the meeting. Snyman started off the evening by recalling how Moses was rejected by the majority of his volk after leading them into the desert. A parallel existed today: only a pure minority remained loyal. But not to worry, Snyman assuaged them: history teaches that God never needed numbers when his work was to be done.
Terre’Blanche himself made a grudging concession: “The time has come,” he said. “We have been sifted. The traitors have voted. But those remaining are ready for what lies ahead.”
A bit vague about what actually lay ahead, Terre’Blanche nonetheless seemed certain the country would be plunged into economic chaos. Once again it would be the work of the communists. In an unprecedented gesture, he was so gracious as to alert President Nelson Mandela to communist plans to undermine his government: “I want to warn you, Nelson Mandela, the communists are going to rip your authority from underneath you.” Not your run-of-the-mill racist, Terre’Blanche.
He reserved his sharpest criticism for Minister of Housing Joe Slovo. “This former KGB colonel has now become a brickie,” he told his appreciative audience. “He is now building houses.”
The faithful lapped it all up. Why not? They had been purified. They had become the leader’s chosen few.