Opening Pandora’s Apartheid Box

[Kubaan]

06 November 2011
Opening Pandora’s Apartheid Box Part 34 - How the right was neutralized. (Section B)

By Mike Smith

6th of November 2011


Piet “Skiet” Rudolph

Many in the rightwing were livid after De Klerk’s speech…at least appeared to their followers to be. One man that stepped to the fore was Piet “Skiet” Rudolph an agent of the Security Police (SO, pg355).

He was a former politician, member of the HNP,CP, AWB and leader of the Orde Boervolk. On the night of 15 April 1990, he and some supporters stole weapons and ammunition from the South African Airforce Head Office’s armoury in Pretoria and the Wemmerpan military base, south of Johannesburg. He phoned the Pretoria news and said that war was eminent and the weapons would be used to arm Boer Commandoes.

Several bombs were planted. Melrose House in Pretoria, the place where was signed the peace treaty that ended the Second Boer War of Liberation and the existence of the Boer Republics was the first. A bomb was also placed at a black taxi rank. Another bomb flattened the headquarters of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) of Rustenburg.

In June 1990 Piet Rudolph made and released a video in which he declared war on the government of “the empire of the Republic of South Africa”, the ANC and on the SACP (South African Communist Party).

After the call to arms of Rudolph, actions across the country followed one another. Some offices of the National Party (NP, De Klerk’s party in power) and the ANC were blown up; houses of NP members; properties of Jews who supported the ANC and the idea of a single supranational state in South Africa; a synagogue; two taxi stations; a store frequented by blacks in Kempton Park; the tracks that connected the black township of Tembisa with Kempton Park; the offices of an anti-nationalist Afrikaans-language newspaper and pro-government Beeld. Occurred some actions with throw of grenades against blacks in West Rands.

Some of these actions were carried out by members of the Orde Boerevolk, some by members of AWB, other by small cells joining the nationalist armed struggle. Other violent acts were implemented by the South African Secret Service, as a means to promote the repression against Boer nationalists.

Piet Rudolph was arrested on September 17, 1990. In court Rudolph declared himself in favour of peace as long as this didn’t lead to the slavery of the Boer nation, dominated by a black and foreign majority. In this case, he said we will “struggle to the death”.

The Orde Boerevolk publicly renounced the armed struggle, saying it supported negotiations leading to the creation of an independent Boer state. The waiver led to a rapid release of many fighters, including Piet Rudolph. Piet Rudolph never said where he had hidden, or where they had finished the many weapons and explosives removed from the South African armed forces. Once released he was immediately appointed publicity secretary of the AWB.

Rudolph gave up the post of deputy leader of Boerestaat Party and left the Orde Boerevolk, dissolving it. But other members decided to keep it active.

Annoyed by the lack of agreement with the Inkhata Freedom Party (the Independence Party of Zulus), Piet Rudolph abandoned the AWB in 1992. After Piet Rudolph, left the AWB, he reactivated the Orde Boerevolk, organization that he leads even to this day. He, at the age of 74, still goes around disrupting meetings of organizations who genuinely strive for Afrikaner secession such as the VVK meeting on 17th of February 2011. According to him they are trying to subvert the Boer cause of the re-establishment of the original Boer Republics.
Source

The only thing the exploits of Piet Rudolph and the Orde Boervolk succeeded in was to drive the Afrikaners further to the left and vote “Yes” in the 1992 referendum.

The Battle of Ventersdorp

The build up to the battle of Ventersdorp started on a farm called Goedgevonden on 11 May 1991. Black squatters moved in and virtually overnight erected a shanty town and started stealing livestock from the Boer Farmers. The AWB warned the government that if they did not do anything, the AWB would take matters into their own hands.

The police warned back that if they do the police would protect the squatters. A standoff occurred and the farmers broke through the police and horsemen with clubs razed the shanty town to the ground. The police fired on the white farmers injuring four.

It was the first time since 1922 that the police fired on Boers.

The Boers warned that next time they would fire back.

On the night of 9th of August 1991, President F.W.de Klerk decided to deliver a speech and hold a public meeting in the Rightwing stronghold of Ventersdorp.

Terreblanche announced that he would hold an AWB meeting that same night and that they would deliver a petition to De Klerk.

Sensing a possible confrontation the police (about 2000) cordoned off De Klerks hall with six rolls of razor wire. An entire squadron of RSA Defence Force armoured cars, called Ratels, each armed with a 12,7mm calibre rapid fire gun, were placed on standby some 7 kilometers out of town. Roadblocks were set up on all the incoming roads but these proved to be fairly ineffective.

When de Klerk arrived at the hall he was informed by a senior RSA police officer that he should not proceed with the meeting as the possibility of violence was great. The advice was turned down.

Outside, things began to hot up. Terre’Blanche announced to the crowd that he was going to the NP hall to try and get into the meeting and present a petition to De Klerk. Heeding a call up, a large crowd of about 2,000 AWB men formed outside the Ventersdorp hotel, to be met by a contingent of RSA policemen and dogs, which had been deployed there to try and prevent the crowd from moving in the direction of the hall.

The marchers split into two groups, one group being led by Terre’Blanche and the other by Piet Rudolph. Vicious hand fights broke out between the protesters and the police after the AWB shouted insults at De Klerk and a policeman sprayed teargas in the face of an AWB member.

A black taxi drove past and the AWB members attacked it and shot at it. The taxi crashed into a police vehicle.

All of a sudden the entire town’s lights went out after someone cut the electricity.

The Boers and the police then started exchanging fire with live rounds. Almost out of nowhere a pickup full of blacks drove through the AWB injuring several whites. Two died later. Suddenly another black taxi and a bus appeared in the main road. On the one side of the war was the AWB on the other was the Old SA and the New SA.

By the time the lights came back on 3 AWB’s men lay dead and another 43 whites were injured. 15 Blacks (who had been inside the taxis and the pickup) had also been injured. Two of the dead Boers had been run over by the pickup while the third Boer had been hit in the torso by a full burst of RSA police shotgun fire. At least seven RSA policemen were admitted to hospital with gunshot wounds.

De Klerk left the area in a Caspir armoured vehicle. Terreblanche went to a TV camera and asked, “Where is De Klerk? I want to speak to him. There are men lying dead here”.

The Battle was over at about 10h30 that night.

Afterwards a fresh wave of rightwing bombings of NP targets occurred in late 1991 into 1992…And the Afrikaners as well as other whites moved further to the left.

The AVF, the Generals, and secret Rightwing negotiations with the ANC

We have seen in previous chapters how the government and the intelligence community of NIS and MI were all unconstitutionally and illegally holding secret talks with the ANC in various places in the world, but mostly at Mells Park House in Somerset, England.

What is less well known is that the right and far-right organisations were also secretly meeting with the ANC.

But first some background.

In 1980 the American diplomat and soon to be assistant secretary of State for African Affairs, Chester Crocker wrote a document under the heading, South Africa: Strategy for Change. On page 333 we read:

“...the primary issue facing Botha and his like-minded lieutenants is to organise and lead Afrikanerdom away from the dead end of Verwoerdian ideology. The answer lies in using the NP and the state apparatus itself as instrument for change.”

The state apparatus Crocker talked about was the intelligence services. In 1982 the intelligence networks such as NIS, MI and the State Security Council started working together in what was called the “Co-ordinating Intelligence Community” or KIK.

By 1982 the HNP was eliminated and neutralised as a threat to the NP and the Conservative Party (KP) was formed after Dr Treurnicht, former Broederbond chairman (1972-1974), broke away from the NP and took about a third of its members with. This moderated the “Verkrampte Afrikanerskap”

From the start the KP and the HNP could not find each other and the Rightwing was split down the middle.

In 1980 the CIA made a target analysis of Tienie Groenewald with the view to recruit him. In 1983 he became a CIA informer and from February 1983 a spy in the CIA network. In 1986 Groenewald converted to the Mormon faith and was given American Citizenship, but it is not clear under which name. From August 1986 to Novemebr 1995 Tienie Groenewald was head of the liberal group inside the Afrikanerbond known as the “Enlightened Action Movement”.

As far as can be ascertained, not even the Intelligence community was aware of his hidden agendas, but Harry Oppenheimer was aware of what was happening and fully supported Groenewald. They met from time to time (SO, p309).

From 1980 onwards Tienie Groenewald oversaw the training of a group of rightwingers with Koos van der Merwe as their ringleader on the MI Fontana farm next to the Murray Hill and Petronella turn off on the N1 Pietersburg/Pretoria highway, about 120km north of Pretoria. Koos van der Merwe infiltrated the IFP and is today the chief whip of the Zulu Inkhata Freedom Party.

Tienie Groenewald’s son, Pieter Hendrik Groenewald, a petty officer was also involved with various duties on Fontana farm such as delivering provisions.

At that stage Jan Groenewald, brother of Tienie Groenewald was the deputy leader of the AWB.

The idea was to create a Rightwing Front...And this is exactly what they did and what it was and always will be. The word “Front” is an ambiguous word. It can mean to some “Front Line” in battle, to others a “united front” when in reality to the inner circle the “Front” is a deception to hide behind.

In 1990 as part of the deception, General Tienie Groenewald resigned from MI, apparently disgusted by President F.W. de Klerk’s the concessionary policies of F.W. de Klerk. We know this is nonsense because Groenewald himself acknowledged that he wrote De Klerk’s 2.2.1990 speech.

He resigned, because his only son Pieter Hendrik Groenewald, a police officer by day and also an undercover agent who did covert work in the black townships, stuffed up when he and a Brian Chester-Browne wanted to murder three ANC activists and blame it on a fictitious rightwing organization created by MI called “The White Wolves”.

In a brutal assault that made headlines, two members of the so-called “Witwolwe” stalked a car carrying three ANC activists: Petrus Mbakena, Simon Koba and Xavier Lekgoate. They forced the car from the highway near Mamelodi and shot at the three men. Mbakena and Koba died instantly when they were shot in the stomach and face. Lekgoate who was shot three times crawled into a ditch and played dead. He later identified his assailants.

The two men were released on R1000 bail, after which Pieter Hendrik fled to Portugal abetted by what one insider called "his father's connections". He married a Brazilian heiress and had a son with her.

He was on the run for almost ten years and on Interpol’s most wanted list. In August 1998 he was arrested by the Portuguese authorities for spying and being in possession of surveillance equipment. Daddy Tienie spent a fortune on his son’s defence and flew over regularly to visit him. Pieter Hendrik was extradited to SA and spent seven years of a 20 year sentence at the Zonderwater Prison. He was released in January 2010.

Nevertheless, also in 1990 an organisation called VEKOM was created by Eugene Terreblanche of the AWB. It stood for Volkseenheidskomitee (Nation Unity Committee). (Originally called Eenheidskomitee 25).

It was an MI front created as an umbrella organisation of rightwing parties, organisations, academics, theologians and professionals to pursue an Afrikaner homeland outside of the parliamentary sphere.

Tienie Groenewald was called in and almost immediately took over the leadership position. From the start they wanted to pursue the path of negotiations. It was a set up to rope the Right-wing into negotiations with the ANC.

During this time, in November 1990 Prof Willie Jonker of the NGK (Dutch Reformed Church) at a theology seminar at Stellenbosch delivered a leftist speech in which he apologised to blacks on behalf of the Afrikaners for “injustices to the blacks during the Apartheid years. This blatant speech read by Jonker was written by brilliant speech writer, Tienie Groenewald. (SO,338)

VEKOM like all the rightwing organisations Tienie Groenewald was involved in such as the Blanke Bevrydings Beweging and the Afrikaner Volks Unie did not last long. It quietly withered away into insignificance.

During this time Ivor Jenkins of the Institute for Democratic Alternatives in SA (IDASA) launched a program called, “Conservative Dialogue Programme” (CDP) through which they tried to persuade the rightwing hardliners to join the negotiations with the ANC and the SA Communist Party.

IDASA was a pro-democracy lobbying group founded by former Liberal opposition leader Frederik van Zyl Slabbert under suspicious circumstances after he quit Parliament in 1986 to try to bring Afrikaners and the African National Congress (ANC) closer together. It is commonly accepted that it was a front of the NP and probably created by Tienie Groenewald of MI Com.Ops. Prof Abraham (Braam) Viljoen was the coordinator of the CDP that wanted the Rightwing to negotiate with the ANC and the Communists.

This is how the Afrikaner Volksfront was created. It was a deception; A “front” to fool genuine right-wingers into believing that it was there to unite them when in fact it worked actively against them behind the scenes.


The AVF was created on the 7th of May 1993 by General Constand Viljoen and three other Generals including General Tienie Groenewald, Koos Bischoff and Kobus Visser. It is said that Constand Viljoen had financial difficulties at the time (SO,356).

Present at the creation of the AVF was the Conservative Party and none less than twenty rightwing organisations including the BBB and the AWB.

A few days before that the CP leader Dr. Andries Treurnicht died under suspicious circumstances. Less than a month prior to that on the 10th of April 1993, Communist Party Leader Chris Hani was assassinated by Janusz Walluz, a Polish immigrant. According to Adv. Pretorius in Sell-Out, pg 355 Walluz was an MI agent and the assassination was orchestrated by MI. The firearm was traced to be one of the ones stolen by Piet Rudolph from the Air Force head quarters.

Funny how the same names keep coming up time after time.

In the latter part of 1992 Constand Viljoen was sent to Washington, DC by Tienie Groenewald to undergo a crash course in handling the public as a politician. Dr Piet Koornhof was his mentor.

On the brink of Civil War

On the morning of 7 May 1993 about 15,000 farmers, armed to the teeth assembled at a Rugby stadium in Potchefstroom in the Western Transvaal. The NP deputy minister of Agriculture, Tobie Meyer, brother of Roelf Meyer, tried to address them. The farmers were suffering a severe drought and several farmers were recently murdered across the country.

The crowd shouted, “Shoot him, send him home, get rid of the traitor!”

Constand Viljoen was called to the stage. He spoke off the cuff. He told them that the ANC was still pursuing an armed struggle and that the farm murders were part of it. The NP should stop negotiations and sort out the security situation first...

“Lead us, Lead us!” the crowd shouted at the general.

The general continued, “Every Afrikaner must be ready. Every farm, every school is a target...A bloody conflict which will require sacrifices is inevitable, but we will gladly sacrifice, because our cause is just.”

“You lead, we follow!” the crowd bellowed in response. (Unspoken Alliance, Israel and SA, pg 225)


They wanted him to lead them into an apocalyptic Third Freedom War, but a few days later it became clear that they misread the general, because in an interview with Allister Sparks he said that, “I am not for fighting. I am not available for that role-not at the moment.”

Viljoen would repeat this many times later. Denouncing a possible armed struggle and showing his commitment to “negotiations”. (TIAC, Sparks, pg 200-201).

However, part of the AVF creation was the creation of a “Boer People’s Army” drawn from farmers, miners and a large amount of Citizen Force reservists who have all undergone two year military service and have served in the Angolan War. It was called the Boere Krisis Aksie (Boer Crisis Action) under Commandant Douw Steyn.

In 1993 Tienie Groenewald became an agent for NIS (agent reference # 93G1092MG). One of his tasks was to compile a list of all the names of the top BKA members.

On the 1st of March 1993, the Cape Times on page 2 reported the following:

“General Tienie Groenewald, former SADF Intelligence chief, claims the government and the ANC have a list of 5000 Boer Volkstaat supporters who ‘will be locked up’ if violence follows a constitutional deadlock, according to a report in the Sunday Times here yesterday.” (SO, pg362)

Nevertheless, the rightwing supporters and farmers who have lost faith in their politicians and saw them as traitors were all swept forward in a new wave of enthusiasm and hope. Finally their Generals, their real leaders, would lead them, like in the Anglo Boer Wars a century before...30,000 men armed to the teeth and military trained stood ready to be led into the Armageddon of the Third Boer War.

But Tienie Groenewald and MI had that base covered already.