Right-Wing Groups - South African Government Information

Vekom aimed to create a paramilitary structure to facilitate access to armaments
and other re s o u rces during the run-up to the 1994 election. Together with
up to sixty-five other organisations, the formation of a ‘right wing front’ was discussed
and the Afrikaner Vo l k s f ront (AVF) was conceived, drawing in a bro a d
spectrum of right wing groups. These included the CP, the HNP, Afrikaner
Volksunie, the Afrikaner Vryheidstigting (Avstig), the Wêreld Apartheid Beweging
( WA B ) 230 , the Boere Vr y h e i d s b e w e g i n g 231 , the Pretoria Boerekommando Gro u p ,
Vekom, the Mine Workers’ Union, the Church of the Cre a t o r, the Oranjewerkers-
Ve reniging and some business and other church groupings. The AWB was also
persuaded to participate. Later the BWB and the BRL also supported the fro n t .
The fro n t ’s rallying call was for a v o l k s t a a t.
39. While the AWB fell in with the AV F, the latter’s formation in May 1993 came as a
blow to Eugene Te r re’Blanche, who now found himself sidelined. Te r re ’ B l a n c h e
had liked to see himself as the strongest force in extra-parliamentary right-wing
politics and the AWB as the original and true carrier of the v o l k s t a a t i d e a l .
Tensions erupted in March 1994 when three AWB members were killed during
the Bophuthatswana debacle. Shortly there a f t e r, AVF leader General Constand
Viljoen cited AWB lack of discipline as one of the main reasons for the failure of
a right wing, and resigned from the AVF directorate. For their part, the AWB and
Te r re’Blanche accused Viljoen of being a traitor.
THE FREEDOM ALLIANCE
40. The Freedom Alliance (FA), which grew out of the Concerned South Africans
G roup (COSAG) in 1993, was a political pre s s u re group comprising the AV F, the
Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), the Ciskei and Bophuthatswana homeland governments
and the CP. All its members had at one stage or another pulled out of the
multi-party negotiations, giving as their central reason their perception that the
NP and ANC were pushing a pre-determined agenda past the other parties.
41. For its part, the FA pushed a strong regional agenda. Some of its members
subscribed to confederalism and others to federalism, following the principles
of the right to self-determination, the protection and promotion of free enterprise
and the limitations of powers of central government. The AV F ’s General
Viljoen spoke on behalf of the alliance at a meeting in Pietersburg during July
230 World Apartheid Movement, aka the World Preservatist Movement.
231 Boer Freedom Movement.
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