Did the AWB kill Vickus Swanepoel because he was a traitor — or was he kill ed in a car crash? Stefaans BrUmmer reports
FOR two years Martha Swanepoel kept quiet about the death of her husband, who she believes fell victim to an Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) plot becaus
e he “ratted” on the organisation shortly before the 1994 elections.
Now she’s talking, even though a number of relatives remain committed AWB memb ers. “This is why I kept my silence for two years — because every time I ta lk the family gets angry,” Swanepoel explained this week.
Shortly before, a close relative had shouted at her: “I am full-blooded AWB .. . Your husband was a traitor. They should have shot him.”
Swanepoel approached the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to have her husba nd’s fatal car accident — after what appears to have been a high-speed chas e — fully investigated. But the commission’s mandate is limited to incident s which took place before December 5 1993, and it could not help her.
Perhaps the forces threatening to tear the Swanepoel family asunder reflect th e disarray into which the AWB itself has fallen. The organisation has been stu ng by the lengthy sentences handed out earlier this year to members responsibl e for the election bomb blasts on the Witwatersrand, as well as criticism of l eader Eugene Terre’Blanche’s failure to accept responsibility for the organisa tion’s “wa r plans”.
Then, a few weeks ago, came the publication of a book by former AWB secretary general Kays Smit, which gave credence to rumours of the leader’s less-than-sa voury personal life. Terre’Blanche, once a crowd-puller compared to Hitler for his fiery oratory style, has become increasingly reclusive and isolated at hi
s farm outside Ventersdorp, once the stronghold of the far-right.
And this week Fred Rundle, AWB spokesman and long the organisation’s most visi ble public face aside from Terre’Blanche, confirmed he had withdrawn from his post. “I still hold to the principles I always ascribed to, but I feel I can c ontribute more to the broader conservative cause,” he said.
Swanepoel joined the AWB in early 1994, and decided to join AWB families who w ent to “retreats” in the Ventersdorp area shortly before the elections. The re treats were mostly farms, where AWB members holed up expecting “war”.
Her husband, railway supervisor Vickus Swanepoel, was not an AWB member, but s he convinced him to join the rest of the family. “I forced him to go. I told h im, ‘When the war comes we’ll die, and the children.'”
On April 24, days before voting started, they left for the farm of the AWB’s P iet Conradie at Sannieshof near Ventersdorp. They stayed with a number of AWB families, but soon returned home to Krugersdorp after a clash with others at t he farm. “It is a long story, but you can say we were just fighting.”
Still uncomfortable about the impending “war”, the Swanepoels left to stay wit h relatives in Bloemfontein. Her husband went “missing” for a day and a night. When she confronted him, he said he had told the police Crime Intelligence Se
rvice about explosives at Conradie’s farm and had pointed them out to police w hen they raided. Bloemfontein police Superintendent Arrie du Plessis confirmed this week
he had met Vickus Swanepoel before the raid on the farm.
Swanepoel said although she had not seen the explosives herself, she had been aware of their existence and that their intended use was for “the war”.
The Swanepoels returned to Krugersdorp. “My husband was extremely tense; he wa s acting scared … Then three AWB men started staking out our house in a whit e bakkie … When we moved, they knew. I took the bakkie’s registration number and gave it to Arrie du Plessis.”
She said Du Plessis promised to send police officers to investigate. But two d ays later, in the early hours of May 11, her husband was dead.
Swanepoel recalled that her husband had come to their neighbour’s house, where she was visiting, after their dog started barking in the early hours of the m
orning. “He asked for the car keys, saying there were two men with AK47s in ou r yard. [The neighbour] gave him the keys, and he left at a speed. That’s the last I saw him alive.”
She said Krugersdorp residents told her there had been a high-speed chase befo re her husband crashed into a bridge. “My daughter went to the scene. While sh e was there the white bakkie came and [the occupants] pulled faces at her … You can come to your own conclusions, but we can prove nothing.”
Swanepoel, who has a 10-year-old son, a daughter of 16 and a baby grandchild, has struggled ever since, barely making ends meet on her husband’s railways pe nsion of about R1 200 a month.
She claims Du Plessis took her to a police station in Krugersdorp the day afte r her husband’s death, warning her not to tell anyone what was about to happen . There, she says, she was handed an envelope with R40 000 cash as reward for her husband’s information to the police about the explosives. She had to sign a form accepting the money as full and final settlement.
Now Swanepoel questions the amount of the payout — she believes the nature of her husband’s information entitled the family to more. And she questions th e way the payout was made: in cash, and with a warning not to tell anyone.
At the time of going to press, Du Plessis’s superiors had not commented on the allegations.