Right-Wing Groups - South African Government Information

91. The application was not formally opposed by the members of the family of the
late Professor van Jaarsveld, who pre f e r red to leave the matter in the hands of
the Amnesty Committee. However, one of Professor van Jaarsveld’s sons, Mr
Albert van Jaarsveld, said that some individual members of the family opposed
the application on the grounds that the act was not perpetrated to meet a political
objective, but rather to gain publicity for the newly-formed AWB.
92. Mr van Jaarsveld read out a statement at the hearing, explaining the effect that
the incident had had on the Van Jaarsveld family. Overnight, Professor van
Jaarsveld had been ‘transformed into a man who was looked upon with suspicion
by his peers’. As a man deeply rooted in the Afrikaner culture, who had lived
and worked within the inner circles of Afrikanerdom, he was humiliated and
belittled at a public conference in front of an audience of his academic peers.
The tarring and feathering incident effectively expelled him ‘from that same
community which he so dearly served’.
As regards my father’s viewpoint on the Day of the Covenant, Mr Te r re ’ B l a n c h e
is still spreading lies. It is clear that Professor van Jaarsveld took issue with legislation
which effectively was forced upon South Africans other than Afrikaners,
who felt themselves bound by the Covenant to celebrate the Day of the Covenant
as a Sabbath, which legislation was enacted by the National Party in 1952.
At that stage, it was necessary to investigate this legislation seen in the light of
the political changes which began to creep into the country. It is clear that he
[Mr Te r re’Blanche] does not want to or cannot understand the information in
that paper. (Klerksdorp hearing, 10 May 1999.)
93. Mr van Jaarsveld confirmed that one of the consequences of the incident was
that Afrikaans publishers like Perskor turned their backs on Professor van
Jaarsveld and removed ‘his popular and well-known history textbooks from the
market’. He was ignored by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC)
to which he had regularly contributed to radio programmes. He was investigated
by the security police and threatened with anonymous telephone calls and
hate mail. Shortly after Te r re’blanche and others had been found guilty, an
attempt was made on the pro f e s s s o r ’s life and he was shot at with a cro s s b o w.
Other members of the family were threatened and a stone-throwing incident
took place at the family home.
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