Jan Taljaard
EUGENE TERRE’BLANCHE and the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging this weekend celebrate 21 years as the undisputed wild bunch of the right.
To celebrate, they are returning to Heidelberg, the small town where the organisation was founded. AWB legend has it that the organisation was formed when seven men, among them Jan Groenewald (who would later become deputy leader), gathered on the night of July 7 1973 in the garage of one Eugene Terre’Blanche, then a relatively unknown former policeman who, three years previously, had unsuccessfully contested the Heidelberg parliamentary seat as a Herstigte Nasionale Party candidate.
Operating in relative obscurity until 1979, the AWB was suddenly thrust into the limelight in April of that year when Terre’Blanche and a few supporters forcefully entered a lecture hall at Unisa to tar and feather historian Floors van Jaarsveld for his contentious statements on the Day of the Vow.
But they mark their coming of age beset by severe problems. Having to contend with a large part of its leadership corps awaiting trial, dwindling membership figures and a new government that will in all probability crack down on the kind of vagaries that the organisation could get away with in the past, 21 is not presenting itself as a very good year for the AWB.