IN BRIEF AWB MAN UNSURE WHO HIS SUPERIOR WAS
THE Afrikaner Weerstandbeweging had a top-heavy rank structure, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission amnesty committee heard on Friday. Nonetheless, Abie Fourie, one of 10 AWB members applying for amnesty for the pre-election bombings of 1994, did not know who his immediate superior was, or where the orders for the bombings came from.
The rank between himself, a commandant, and Ystergarde leader Brigadier Leon van der Merwe would have been that of colonel. “No-one knew who was the colonel,” Fourie said, “but I thought it was Cliffie Barnard.” Barnard, a close associate of AWB leader Eugene Terre’Blanche, is in prison, as is Van der Merwe.
Earlier the TRC heard that the AWB expected members of the army and police to rise up and support them in destabilising the country before the elections, and to assist them in establishing a volkstaat. The AWB expected the army to supply vehicles and 40000 soldiers. Fourie is on bail pending appeal of his 21-year sentence for his part in the bombings, in which 21 people were killed and more than 40 injured.
43 DIE IN RWANDAN ATTACK
FORTY-three people have been killed and 94 injured in a raid by Hutu rebels on a Tutsi refugee camp in the northern Rwandan region of Gisenyi. The Rwandan Human Rights Association has reported that the injured include 55 women and children, all seriously wounded by spears and machetes. The attack, which took place on Wednesday, was thought to be by members of the Interahamwe youth militias and the ousted Rwandan Armed Forces, who lost a civil war to mainly Tutsi rebels in 1994. Witnesses said the attackers had first staged a diversion with “rifles and machine guns” against Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) troops guarding the camp. Gisenyi hospital director Leon Ngeruka says the injured are in a critical condition,but that the hospital lacks essential blood supplies, which explains why the death toll is still rising.
BRITS TRAIN IN SWAZI
SOME 11 British army officers and non-commissioned officers arrived in the Swaziland on Friday to help the Swaziland Defence Force run a training course for commanders from 14 central and southern African countries. The course aims to increase regional military co-operation for peacekeeping.
BETHANY LAND RESTORED
A LAND claim agreement signed in the Free State on Friday will restore 81 families to land they owned at Bethany. In 1965, 119 families were evicted from the Bethany mission station and the land transferred to the Evangelical Lutheran Church. The families have been fighting for years to have their land restored to them. Philemon Tsese, of the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights, said that the agreement will now be referred to the Land Claims Court for ratification.