Jan Taljaard
IF attendance figures at the Pretoria City Hall are an indication, then the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging is making a comeback in Gauteng. On Monday night AWB leader Eugene Terre’Blanche claimed the biggest crowd to attend a political meeting at the hall during the past two years.
After being devastated by events before the 1994 elections, Terre’Blanche attracted almost 1 000 supporters to Monday’s public meeting. A number were summoned from as far afield as Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal.
Whipping them up with promises of Afrikaner unity and scaring them with the truth commission (“today the generals, tomorrow it could be you”) Terre’Blanche in turn fed off the adulation of the crowd.
Not that he or the previous speaker, Boerestaat Party leader Robert van Tonder, were overly sympathetic towards Magnus Malan and others. Both stated Malan and the other generals had been instrumental in handing over power to the African National Congress and “should take what is coming to them”.
Among political punters, the Pretoria City Hall has long been regarded as a barometer of sorts in right-wing politics — ; the premise being that he who can fill the 1 200-seat hall will do well among the white right.
The city hall factor is quite an important indicator of support. At an AWB meeting there earlier this year, hardly 300 turned up, which signalled an all-time low for the AWB.
In early October, just before local government elections, just over 350 turned up to listen to Conservative Party leader Ferdi Hartzenberg during the opening of the party’s “Transvaal”
A few days later the Freedom Front’s Constand Viljoen attracted a few more, perhaps 400, at relatively short notice. Inside the CP, observers warned that the writing was on the wall — a fact confirmed by the local government election results.
So it was not surprising when, just prior to the same elections, Gauteng Premier Tokyo Sexwale drew fewer than 50 people to the hall. But the fact that the ANC did not manage to win a single ward in historically “white” Pretoria, was already prophesied by the empty seats.
Other parties are just as conscious of the “city hall” factor. Perhaps wisely, the NP, which has been moving away from traditional Afrikaner politics, with its associated elements of kragdadigheid and emotional public meetings, has elected to switch its public meetings in Pretoria to the smaller assembly halls of primary schools.
Of course, apart from the Pretoria City Hall, there remains one ultimate test for those proclaiming themselves to be the representatives of the right wing: He who can pack the Voortrekker Monument’s amphitheatre really has something to shout about. But the standard set in the days of former premier HF Verwoerd has only been matched a few times — the last during a particularly emotional Day of the Vow celebration before the 1994 elections.
Viljoen, Hartzenberg, Marais and Terre’Blance all served as drawcards then. It is unlikely that they or any right-wing leader will again be brave enough to put their support to the test at the Voortrekker Monument. And the AWB is not going to push its luck. It is having its annual Day of the Vow bash in Klerksdorp this year.