WEBVTT - The Whites' Last Stand 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:06.519 Col Zone Media. 0:00:08.320 --> 0:00:12.480 September twenty second, twenty twelve may have been the first 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:15.560 day of autumn, but it was a warm afternoon in. 0:00:15.600 --> 0:00:16.920 Washington, DC. 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:19.880 A charter bus pulled to the curb at the edge 0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:25.079 of Lincoln Park and its passengers piled out, all fourteen 0:00:25.120 --> 0:00:29.080 of them. Most of the attendees of that day's rally 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:32.919 were dressed alike, black pants and a blue button up 0:00:32.960 --> 0:00:37.960 shirt with a black tie, the uniform of the Aryan Nations. 0:00:38.400 --> 0:00:41.840 They'd denounced the rally months ahead of time, giving DC 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:46.640 locals ample time to plan their counter protest. Hundreds of 0:00:46.720 --> 0:00:49.440 people showed up to see what turned out to be 0:00:49.520 --> 0:00:54.120 barely a dozen neo Nazis. The tiny group marched the 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:56.440 mile and a half from the park to the Capital 0:00:56.480 --> 0:01:01.200 Reflecting Pool, safely escorted by hundreds of police officers from 0:01:01.240 --> 0:01:04.960 the DC Metropolitan Police, US Park Police, and the US 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:09.959 Capitol Police. Dozens of officers on bicycles and on horseback 0:01:10.120 --> 0:01:14.480 flanked the little march, keeping counter protesters at bay. A 0:01:14.560 --> 0:01:18.960 fax of Capitol Police in riot gear marched alongside them, 0:01:19.160 --> 0:01:24.320 far outnumbering the actual marchers. When they reached their destination, 0:01:25.000 --> 0:01:28.800 they were escorted into a little pen surrounded by barricades, 0:01:29.280 --> 0:02:01.160 with the Capitol building in the background, surrounded by angry 0:02:01.240 --> 0:02:06.560 counter protesters and curious tourists. ARAN Nations member Ryan Mullins 0:02:06.920 --> 0:02:10.160 tried to address the crowd with a megaphone, but he 0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:14.799 was almost completely drowned out by chance of Nazi scum. 0:02:15.800 --> 0:02:17.720 If he did manage to give a speech about the 0:02:17.720 --> 0:02:21.079 plight of the white South African farmer, he'd saw most 0:02:21.080 --> 0:02:25.040 certain no one actually heard it. But just behind him 0:02:25.360 --> 0:02:29.440 the rally goers were holding a banner that read stop 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:34.119 White Genocide in South Africa, and standing between the two 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:37.320 nearly identical bald men dressed all in black holding either 0:02:37.440 --> 0:02:39.800 end of that banner was an old woman. 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:41.960 She stood out in the. 0:02:41.960 --> 0:02:46.080 Small crowd not only as the only woman, but because 0:02:46.120 --> 0:02:49.639 she was wearing a neatly pressed Khaki uniform. 0:02:50.680 --> 0:02:51.720 It had been nearly. 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:55.800 Twenty years since the fall of the apartheid regime, and 0:02:55.919 --> 0:02:59.079 over a decade since she'd married an American and moved 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:04.639 to Louisiana, but it seems Monica huggets Stone still had 0:03:04.680 --> 0:03:08.680 her Africaner Resistance Movement uniform in the back of her closet. 0:03:11.720 --> 0:03:12.760 I'm Molly Conger. 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:45.680 This it's weird, little guys. 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:36.120 We are nearing the end of the story of Monica 0:03:36.200 --> 0:03:40.240 huggets Stone. Not because I'm done digging. I could write 0:03:40.880 --> 0:03:44.560 half a dozen more episodes, but because I think you'll 0:03:44.560 --> 0:03:46.839 start to get restless if I keep trying to tell 0:03:46.880 --> 0:03:50.320 the same story for months at a time. I know 0:03:50.400 --> 0:03:54.360 I keep saying this, but it's always true. I really 0:03:54.400 --> 0:03:57.600 thought this was going to be a two parter, starting 0:03:57.600 --> 0:04:00.000 with those rallies in twenty twelve, talking about the model 0:04:00.160 --> 0:04:03.880 resurgence of the white genocide conspiracy theory rhetoric couched in 0:04:03.960 --> 0:04:07.800 this concern for the largely imaginary murders of South African farmers, 0:04:08.680 --> 0:04:12.240 and then just a brief retrospective on the woman behind 0:04:12.280 --> 0:04:17.720 those rallies. I could not possibly have predicted that there 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:21.000 would be so much international intrigue buried in her past. 0:04:22.080 --> 0:04:25.520 I certainly didn't expect to spend the last month translating 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:30.080 fifty year old white supremacist newspapers from Afrikaans, or pouring 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:33.159 over thirty year old memos in Croatian tapped out on 0:04:33.240 --> 0:04:38.360 typewriters by dead war criminals. I had no idea that 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:41.279 a German neo Nazi blew up a United Nations office 0:04:41.320 --> 0:04:44.960 in Namibia, or that a South African accomplice still coaches 0:04:45.040 --> 0:04:50.720 rugby in Cambridgeshire, evading an international arrest warrant. How could 0:04:50.760 --> 0:04:55.960 I have known? But now we do. History is a 0:04:55.960 --> 0:05:00.360 strange and messy thing, and I suppose it's only fair 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:02.719 to give you a brief recap here at the top 0:05:03.800 --> 0:05:06.520 before we start approaching the end. You might need a 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:10.120 reminder of where we've been. The first episode in this 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:13.359 series was about an event that took place in February 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:17.080 of twenty twelve, a dozen or so rallies across the 0:05:17.080 --> 0:05:20.919 country that all took place on the same day. Only 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:23.240 the one in Sacramento was attended by more than a 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:25.359 handful of people, and it was the only one that 0:05:25.400 --> 0:05:28.800 made it into the newspaper because counter protesters from the 0:05:28.800 --> 0:05:32.240 nearby Occupy encampment showed up to heckle the neo Nazis 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:34.880 and ended up getting into a bit of a scuffle 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:38.800 with the police. In that episode, I talked a bit 0:05:38.839 --> 0:05:43.360 about what the event claimed to be doing, raising awareness 0:05:43.400 --> 0:05:48.200 about white genocide and South Africa, which, if you don't 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:51.560 remember the episode, is not a real thing. It is 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:56.400 not happening at all, but it is a conspiracy theory 0:05:56.440 --> 0:06:01.280 of some importance to white supremacists around the world, and 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:06.400 it was something of a fringe idea, but unfortunately now 0:06:06.440 --> 0:06:08.680 the President of the United States has gotten a hold 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:11.599 of it and decided that white South Africans qualify for 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:17.280 refugee resettlement in the United States. In the second episode, 0:06:17.440 --> 0:06:19.640 the one I really thought was going to be the 0:06:19.760 --> 0:06:22.880 end of the story, I only managed to get through 0:06:22.920 --> 0:06:27.160 a single incident. The first time Monica Huggot's name showed 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:32.279 up in the historical record alongside a bombing. In nineteen 0:06:32.320 --> 0:06:34.440 eighty she was a member of a small African or 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:39.120 nationalist terrorist cell calling itself the VIT Commando or the 0:06:39.120 --> 0:06:44.680 White Commandos. After a brief bombing campaign targeting anti apartheid 0:06:44.760 --> 0:06:49.400 activists and academics, they were all arrested. Most of the 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:53.520 members of the Vit Commando turned out to be Italian fascists, 0:06:53.560 --> 0:06:58.039 and Monica Huggot's charges were dropped after she testified against them. 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:01.360 In her testimony, she claimed to be a member of 0:07:01.400 --> 0:07:07.359 the American Ku Klux Klan. She wasn't even in the 0:07:07.400 --> 0:07:10.520 next chapter of her own story. I lost track of 0:07:10.560 --> 0:07:13.760 her for most of the nineteen eighties, but one of 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:15.560 the men who would be connected to her later on, 0:07:16.360 --> 0:07:19.880 had a very strange past of his own. In the 0:07:19.880 --> 0:07:22.720 third episode of the series, we followed German neo Nazi 0:07:22.760 --> 0:07:27.240 Horsed Cleans and his South African accomplices. They carried out 0:07:27.280 --> 0:07:30.240 an attack on a UN office in Namibia in nineteen 0:07:30.240 --> 0:07:33.360 eighty nine, killing a security guard and later murdering a 0:07:33.360 --> 0:07:37.679 police officer In their escape from custody, The men involved 0:07:37.680 --> 0:07:40.640 in the attack fled back to South Africa, joining a 0:07:40.680 --> 0:07:45.760 new africaner Neo Nazi organization called the Order Borafolk. After 0:07:45.880 --> 0:07:49.960 another series of bombings and arrests, they all somehow ended 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:54.920 up no longer in jail. That group, the Order Borafolk, 0:07:55.560 --> 0:07:58.600 also pulled off a high profile heist of a massive 0:07:58.680 --> 0:08:01.840 cache of weapons from a South African Air Force base. 0:08:02.880 --> 0:08:04.960 Remember I asked you to keep those guns in the 0:08:04.960 --> 0:08:07.840 back of your mind. One of them shows up again 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:11.720 in this story. And by this point we're up to 0:08:11.760 --> 0:08:15.960 the early nineteen nineties and it's clear to everyone who 0:08:15.960 --> 0:08:22.120 is paying attention that the apartheid regime is unsustainable. Multi 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:26.080 party negotiations had begun. The African National Congress and the 0:08:26.160 --> 0:08:29.680 ruling National Party were slowly working their way through the 0:08:29.680 --> 0:08:33.640 process of coming to an agreement about how the nation 0:08:33.880 --> 0:08:38.880 would move forward. And as you might expect, most of 0:08:38.920 --> 0:08:42.440 the characters in this story weren't ready to give up 0:08:42.440 --> 0:08:47.280 the fight. And that's where our international network of mercenaries 0:08:47.320 --> 0:08:52.079 comes in, the subject of last week's episode. In the 0:08:52.080 --> 0:08:55.640 summer of nineteen ninety three, at an international fascist rally 0:08:55.640 --> 0:08:59.400 in Belgium, leaders of European Neo Nazi groups met to 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:04.800 discuss an mercenaries to South Africa to cause chaos. A 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:07.840 date had been set for the election. They only had 0:09:07.840 --> 0:09:10.440 a few months left to either overthrow the government and 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:14.320 cancel that election, or convince enough white South Africans to 0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:19.120 secede and form their own white ethno state. And in 0:09:19.120 --> 0:09:22.480 that episode last week I got a little lost sifting 0:09:22.520 --> 0:09:26.040 through old documents from the Bosnian War, trying to nail 0:09:26.120 --> 0:09:30.080 down exactly how our German mercenaries got from one conflict 0:09:30.240 --> 0:09:34.160 to another, so that brings us all back up to 0:09:34.200 --> 0:09:38.600 speed more or less. I spent most of last week's 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:42.520 episodes sifting through the distant past, looking at the history 0:09:42.520 --> 0:09:45.760 of the clan in South Africa, then looking at distant 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:50.920 places tracing the paths of those mercenaries but there is 0:09:50.960 --> 0:09:54.240 some context at the heart of this story that we 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:58.000 need to sketch out before we move on, because, like 0:09:58.040 --> 0:10:00.680 I said, the end of a part time it wasn't 0:10:01.120 --> 0:10:05.920 a single moment. There were years of political negotiations before 0:10:05.960 --> 0:10:09.880 that election. In April of nineteen ninety four, the election 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:13.600 of Nelson Mandela marked the official end, but it had 0:10:13.640 --> 0:10:16.640 been all but over for months, and the end had 0:10:16.640 --> 0:10:21.040 been in sight for nearly a year. Here's AWB's leader, 0:10:21.120 --> 0:10:25.920 Eugene tare Blanche, offering his thoughts on the negotiation process 0:10:26.080 --> 0:10:28.560 to a reporter in May of nineteen ninety three. 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:36.199 If I believe that they can can negotiate for our 0:10:36.280 --> 0:10:39.439 fatherland and get it back and travel, let them try. 0:10:40.000 --> 0:10:41.560 I'm preparing myself for the war. 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:49.360 An increasingly desperate and fractured extreme right wing was doubling 0:10:49.400 --> 0:10:54.160 down on violence, but the political process was proceeding without them, 0:10:55.120 --> 0:10:58.720 and everything they did to try to stop that process 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:04.280 only seemed to accelerate it. On April tenth, nineteen ninety three, 0:11:04.960 --> 0:11:10.960 the Saturday before Easter, Chris Hani was assassinated. Hani was 0:11:10.960 --> 0:11:14.200 the General secretary of the South African Communist Party and 0:11:14.280 --> 0:11:16.520 the chief of staff of the a N c's armed 0:11:16.520 --> 0:11:21.000 wing Mukanto with Siezway. He was a beloved and immensely 0:11:21.120 --> 0:11:25.880 popular leader within the African National Congress, particularly among young 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:30.480 anti apartheid activists. He'd given his bodyguard the day off, 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:34.400 and he was supposed to be at home. His killer 0:11:34.480 --> 0:11:37.600 hadn't actually intended to carry out the plan that day. 0:11:37.640 --> 0:11:40.920 In particular, he would later claim he'd only been in 0:11:40.960 --> 0:11:45.600 the area conducting one last reconmission, but when he spotted 0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:49.199 Hani returning home from buying a newspaper, accompanied only by 0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:52.400 his fifteen year old daughter, he knew he'd never get 0:11:52.400 --> 0:11:56.400 a better shot. As Hanni stepped out of his car, 0:11:57.040 --> 0:12:00.520 the killer shouted his name, and as Honey turned around 0:12:00.640 --> 0:12:03.800 to see where the voice had come from, his killer fired, 0:12:04.800 --> 0:12:08.800 hitting him four times in the chest and head. The 0:12:08.840 --> 0:12:13.760 assassin was arrested almost immediately. One of Hani's neighbors, a 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:16.440 white woman, called the police and was able to give 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:21.160 them the killer's license plate. When police found him that afternoon, 0:12:21.520 --> 0:12:23.560 the murder weapon was still sitting on the back seat 0:12:23.600 --> 0:12:28.240 of his car. By Monday, Eugene taire Blanche had publicly 0:12:28.240 --> 0:12:32.120 confirmed that the killer, a Polish immigrant named Yanush Walous, 0:12:32.800 --> 0:12:38.600 had been a member of the Africaner Resistance movement. Once 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:42.280 in custody, Wallous confessed to a police officer he had 0:12:42.320 --> 0:12:46.559 incorrectly assumed was a fellow traveler. There were plenty of 0:12:46.600 --> 0:12:49.640 police officers who would have been on his side he 0:12:49.720 --> 0:12:54.439 murdered a black communist, after all, but this turned out 0:12:54.480 --> 0:12:57.600 not to be one of them. He told the officer 0:12:57.640 --> 0:12:59.640 that the gun had been given to him by Clive 0:12:59.679 --> 0:13:03.920 Derby Lewis, a sitting member of Parliament in the Conservative Party. 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:07.840 It had also been one of the guns the Ordoborofolk 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:10.400 had stolen from an Air Force base three years earlier. 0:13:12.080 --> 0:13:16.520 When Walous's apartment was searched, officers found a printed list 0:13:16.640 --> 0:13:20.800 of names. Given that Chris Hani's name was on that 0:13:20.920 --> 0:13:24.280 list and he'd just been shot to death, it appears 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:28.320 to have been a hit list, but Walous almost certainly 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:33.640 didn't write that list himself. It was mostly high profile 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:37.440 political figures like Nelson Mandela, Chris Hani, and Communist Party 0:13:37.520 --> 0:13:40.720 chair Jo Slovo, but there were also the names of 0:13:40.760 --> 0:13:45.200 several journalists, most of whom published only in Afrikaans, which 0:13:45.200 --> 0:13:49.160 Walous could not read. The same list of names was 0:13:49.200 --> 0:13:52.480 later found in the personal papers of Clive Derby Lewis's wife, 0:13:52.559 --> 0:13:56.920 gay but white supremacist journalist Arthur Kemp would later testify 0:13:57.000 --> 0:14:00.559 that he'd been the original author of the list. As 0:14:00.600 --> 0:14:04.040 far as the official record goes, Camp was not involved, 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:07.560 he was not charged, and he claimed he'd had no 0:14:07.640 --> 0:14:12.439 idea the list would be used in any murders. Within 0:14:12.480 --> 0:14:16.480 hours of Haney's murder, Nelson Mandela gave a televised address 0:14:17.240 --> 0:14:18.120 urging con. 0:14:20.960 --> 0:14:27.600 Chris Honey championder the cause of peace, trudging to every 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:32.000 corner of South Africa, calling for a spirit of tolerance 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:38.280 among all our people. We are a nation in mourning. 0:14:39.840 --> 0:14:44.520 Our pain and anger is real. Yet we must not 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:49.200 permit ourselves to be provoked by those who seek to 0:14:49.280 --> 0:14:54.680 deny us. They're very afraidom Chris Haney gave his life. 0:14:57.640 --> 0:15:02.520 Hani's murder didn't have the desire effect. It didn't provoke 0:15:02.640 --> 0:15:07.400 violent reprisals from anti apartheid groups. It didn't disrupt the 0:15:07.440 --> 0:15:12.040 ongoing negotiations. It didn't make the African National Congress less 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:17.320 willing to compromise during those negotiations. If anything, it had 0:15:17.360 --> 0:15:21.120 the opposite effect. Mendela's public addresses in the days that 0:15:21.200 --> 0:15:26.480 followed were calm, reasonable, and committed to peace, and the 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:29.800 ruling National Party had nothing to celebrate in Hani's death either. 0:15:31.240 --> 0:15:34.600 It only served to demonstrate the extreme right wing's willingness 0:15:34.600 --> 0:15:39.000 to disrupt the process by any means necessary. They understood 0:15:39.040 --> 0:15:41.440 that they were just as likely to find themselves in 0:15:41.480 --> 0:15:43.920 a Nazi's crosshairs as the men on the other side 0:15:43.920 --> 0:15:48.600 of the negotiating table. It wasn't long after Hani's murder 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:52.960 that it was announced that they'd set a date the 0:15:53.000 --> 0:15:57.120 elections would go forward, taking place in April of nineteen 0:15:57.200 --> 0:16:15.120 ninety four. In June of nineteen ninety three, around the 0:16:15.160 --> 0:16:19.040 time the election date was announced, negotiations about what that 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:23.440 government would look like were still ongoing, and they were 0:16:23.440 --> 0:16:27.680 held at the Kempton Park World Trade Center. On June 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:33.000 twenty fifth, nineteen ninety three, thousands of armed Africaner nationalists 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:37.080 showed up outside the World Trade Center. The newly formed 0:16:37.080 --> 0:16:41.640 Africaner Folksfront, an umbrella organization of right wing groups, staged 0:16:41.640 --> 0:16:45.200 a protest outside earlier in the morning, harassing delegates as 0:16:45.240 --> 0:16:49.000 they arrived. As the day wore on, the crowd began 0:16:49.080 --> 0:16:53.120 to grow restless, particularly among the ranks of the AWB. 0:16:54.600 --> 0:16:57.880 On orders from Eugene Tareblanche, an AWB member, drove an 0:16:58.000 --> 0:17:01.200 armored car through the front of the building, and the 0:17:01.240 --> 0:17:08.160 crowd easily overcame the police and swarmed inside. 0:17:08.800 --> 0:17:13.160 All of a sudden, I saw the security people running out, 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:17.920 and I said, what's up, and they said, they've broken through, 0:17:17.960 --> 0:17:23.960 and they coming, And then my own security men simply 0:17:24.080 --> 0:17:25.800 grabbed hold of me and ran. 0:17:32.359 --> 0:17:37.240 Pandemonium just broke out in the entire building. Many people 0:17:37.960 --> 0:17:41.119 on the AMC side from the government side all huddled 0:17:41.720 --> 0:17:43.240 into the government offices. 0:17:46.240 --> 0:17:49.800 Officials on both sides of the negotiating table fled, fearing 0:17:49.840 --> 0:17:53.560 they'd be shot and killed by the armed men. For 0:17:53.600 --> 0:17:58.160 two hours, the AWB occupied the World Trade Center, smashing 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:02.240 windows and furniture. They took over the conference room where 0:18:02.240 --> 0:18:05.800 the negotiations had been going on, and spray painted separate 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:11.240 as slogans on the walls. Now, the only photos I 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:15.560 have that I know are of Monica Huggett. We're taken 0:18:15.560 --> 0:18:18.960 in twenty twelve, and she was nearly seventy years old then, 0:18:20.280 --> 0:18:22.679 so it was impossible for me to try to find 0:18:22.720 --> 0:18:26.720 her in old photos. But I do know she was there. 0:18:27.920 --> 0:18:32.439 She said so herself in this wistful reminiscence about that 0:18:32.560 --> 0:18:35.320 day in an interview she did in twenty nineteen. 0:18:38.400 --> 0:18:43.360 They did the negotiations at the World Trade Center at 0:18:43.720 --> 0:18:48.320 the airport in Joannasloo. It's not far from where I live, 0:18:48.560 --> 0:18:52.360 and we went there one day when the awb Ad 0:18:53.080 --> 0:18:55.560 made a sort of a ponzard of argon and went 0:18:55.680 --> 0:19:00.880 through the glass. They clearly smashed the glass. Oh my goodness, 0:19:00.920 --> 0:19:04.000 it just came down like diamonds. And then we would 0:19:04.760 --> 0:19:09.200 about maybe two thousand and three thousand people they're protesting. 0:19:12.280 --> 0:19:15.560 There's quite a bit of actual video of this event, 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:24.200 and it looks really familiar. It looks unsettlingly like footage 0:19:24.200 --> 0:19:27.440 of the protesters storming the Congressional chambers at the US 0:19:27.560 --> 0:19:33.320 Capitol on January sixth. And I don't just mean visually, 0:19:33.359 --> 0:19:37.960 although the visual similarities are striking, but there's that same 0:19:38.160 --> 0:19:45.600 sort of unnerving mix of bloodlust and lighthearted adventurism. In 0:19:45.680 --> 0:19:49.480 both cases. There were reports of protesters pissing and shitting 0:19:49.560 --> 0:19:53.679 on office furniture on the floors, and some of the 0:19:53.720 --> 0:19:57.119 protesters just look like they're along for the ride, they're 0:19:57.160 --> 0:20:01.600 just enjoying the chaos. They're just smash things and wandering around, 0:20:02.800 --> 0:20:06.440 but there are also clear leaders and more militant elements 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:11.600 that are obviously focused on a mission. History really does rhyme, 0:20:12.119 --> 0:20:16.560 I guess. But just like the assassination of Chris Hani, 0:20:17.440 --> 0:20:23.280 this attempt to derail the negotiations backfired badly. Here's a 0:20:23.400 --> 0:20:27.560 and C negotiator and present day South African President Cyril 0:20:27.640 --> 0:20:30.440 Ramaposa in an interview in nineteen ninety five. 0:20:32.840 --> 0:20:36.320 I was able to discuss the events with some of 0:20:36.359 --> 0:20:41.800 the National Party ministers and they, in the end, I think, 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:47.600 drove them more and more away from having any form 0:20:47.640 --> 0:20:51.160 of understanding or even sympathy with the right wingers. 0:20:54.240 --> 0:20:57.119 This kind of stunt only made the far right look 0:20:57.600 --> 0:21:02.520 more unreasonable, more unstable, and less viable as any kind 0:21:02.520 --> 0:21:07.040 of political partner. The adults were at the negotiating table 0:21:07.720 --> 0:21:11.119 and these hooligans were driving trucks through windows and pissing 0:21:11.119 --> 0:21:16.040 on the floor. Any remaining hope of effectively disrupting the 0:21:16.080 --> 0:21:20.440 political process was fading quickly, and while opinions on the 0:21:20.480 --> 0:21:23.639 extreme right varied widely as to what the most effective 0:21:23.720 --> 0:21:28.000 course of action might be, most extremists had their sights 0:21:28.119 --> 0:21:32.000 set on a folk shot a white South African state, 0:21:33.720 --> 0:21:36.160 if they couldn't stop what was coming for the nation 0:21:36.280 --> 0:21:39.280 of South Africa, they'd have to find a way to 0:21:39.320 --> 0:21:45.080 secure a nation of their own, and to do that well, 0:21:45.119 --> 0:21:51.160 they'd need an army. Something very strange happened in March 0:21:51.200 --> 0:21:56.480 of nineteen ninety four, a white Africaner nationalist militia took 0:21:56.560 --> 0:22:01.800 up arms to keep a black man in power. Let's 0:22:01.840 --> 0:22:04.440 back up for a second. This is a bit of 0:22:04.520 --> 0:22:08.320 history I was admittedly unfamiliar with, so maybe you'd also 0:22:08.359 --> 0:22:13.600 benefit from a brief explanation of apartheid South Africa's semi 0:22:13.600 --> 0:22:20.359 sovereign bantustans. Under apartheid, South Africa established what they called 0:22:21.160 --> 0:22:26.639 native reserves. These were territories set aside for the forcible 0:22:26.640 --> 0:22:33.119 resettlement of black South Africans. They were allegedly meant to 0:22:33.160 --> 0:22:38.520 be homelands for particular ethnic groups, So the Bantustan of 0:22:38.560 --> 0:22:42.280 Quasulu was meant for the Zulu people, frans Ke and 0:22:42.320 --> 0:22:45.919 Siske were for the Kosa people, both with Atswana for 0:22:46.000 --> 0:22:51.399 the Swana people, and so on. In practice, though, it 0:22:51.440 --> 0:22:56.680 was pretty arbitrary, and more importantly, they functioned to strip 0:22:56.800 --> 0:23:01.240 black South Africans of their citizenship. Laws passed in the 0:23:01.320 --> 0:23:05.280 nineteen seventies designated all black South Africans as citizens only 0:23:05.320 --> 0:23:09.439 of their home land, that is, the Bantustan they'd been 0:23:09.440 --> 0:23:13.679 assigned to, and not a citizen of the country of 0:23:13.720 --> 0:23:19.120 South Africa. Of the ten Bantustans, four were recognized as 0:23:19.240 --> 0:23:23.760 independent states by the Government of South Africa. No one 0:23:23.760 --> 0:23:28.040 else in the world recognized these as sovereign nations. But 0:23:28.080 --> 0:23:31.919 in nineteen ninety four, Lucas Mangope was the president of 0:23:32.000 --> 0:23:37.240 Bothu Tatswana and he wanted to remain the president after 0:23:37.240 --> 0:23:40.280 the upcoming elections, though all of the Bantustans would be 0:23:40.320 --> 0:23:45.240 reincorporated into South Africa and all South Africans, black and white, 0:23:45.280 --> 0:23:48.040 would be full citizens of the nation. 0:23:47.960 --> 0:23:48.760 Of South Africa. 0:23:50.359 --> 0:23:53.119 Black South Africans were preparing to cast their ballots in 0:23:53.160 --> 0:23:56.920 a national election for the first time, and that would 0:23:56.920 --> 0:24:01.240 mean an end to the Mangope presidency because his country 0:24:01.240 --> 0:24:05.720 wouldn't exist anymore. In early March of nineteen ninety four, 0:24:05.920 --> 0:24:10.760 Mangope announced that both Withatswana or BOP for short, that's 0:24:10.800 --> 0:24:13.480 not just me shortening it, that is apparently what people 0:24:13.520 --> 0:24:16.679 call it. But he announced that BOB would not be 0:24:16.800 --> 0:24:21.879 participating in the election at all. But with the potential 0:24:22.280 --> 0:24:27.439 disestablishment of their country on the horizon, civil servants wanted 0:24:27.480 --> 0:24:31.600 assurances that their pensions would be paid, and the president 0:24:31.640 --> 0:24:37.720 ignored them. Strikes and civil unrest quickly devolved into a 0:24:37.760 --> 0:24:40.960 bit of a situation when the police joined the protest. 0:24:43.760 --> 0:24:47.240 This is an incredibly strange bit of history, and I'm 0:24:47.280 --> 0:24:50.439 speeding through it here because we've got other places to 0:24:50.480 --> 0:24:53.680 go today. But if you're interested in a bit more 0:24:53.720 --> 0:24:57.840 about the Boufu Tatswana crisis, the podcast Lions Led by 0:24:57.880 --> 0:25:00.880 Donkeys did an episode about it in December of twenty 0:25:00.920 --> 0:25:06.240 twenty one, and it's a fun listen. Mengobe was no 0:25:06.320 --> 0:25:12.320 stranger to unrest. This wasn't even his first coup. He'd 0:25:12.320 --> 0:25:14.800 put down an attempted coup in nineteen ninety and he 0:25:14.840 --> 0:25:18.280 was briefly deposed by his own military in nineteen eighty eight, 0:25:19.320 --> 0:25:23.199 but the South African government intervened, sending in troops to 0:25:23.240 --> 0:25:27.679 restore him to power. This time, though it wasn't the 0:25:27.720 --> 0:25:32.000 South African government he turned to for help was a 0:25:32.040 --> 0:25:37.560 man named Constant Villiun. Villiune had retired as a general 0:25:37.840 --> 0:25:41.640 nearly a decade earlier, and in nineteen ninety three, he 0:25:41.680 --> 0:25:46.000 and three other retired generals formed the Africaner Folksfront, an 0:25:46.040 --> 0:25:49.520 attempt to unite the disparate elements of the white extreme 0:25:49.600 --> 0:25:54.960 right wing. As a former general, Villiune was confident that 0:25:55.000 --> 0:25:57.800 if he ever went to war, a good chunk of 0:25:57.800 --> 0:26:01.280 the military would follow him. 0:26:01.600 --> 0:26:04.960 I also had forces available, I would say from what 0:26:05.000 --> 0:26:07.359 would split off from the Defense Force, Because had I 0:26:07.600 --> 0:26:10.359 really taken a military action, there was a real danger 0:26:10.400 --> 0:26:13.480 of polarization within the Defense Force. It would certainly have 0:26:13.520 --> 0:26:16.720 been a substantial number of people that would have split 0:26:16.840 --> 0:26:20.320 it from the Defense Force and would have joined me 0:26:20.560 --> 0:26:23.879 in fighting for the liberation of the Africana people. 0:26:27.880 --> 0:26:31.159 By nineteen ninety four, Villyun claimed to have over fifty 0:26:31.200 --> 0:26:37.480 thousand men under his command, trained paramilitaries, military reservists, and 0:26:37.640 --> 0:26:41.280 sympathetic members of the military who would follow his orders. 0:26:42.720 --> 0:26:47.560 It all sounds a bit odd, why would African or 0:26:47.680 --> 0:26:53.199 nationalists lift a finger to help any black person? But 0:26:53.240 --> 0:26:57.600 it's a little more complicated than black and white. If 0:26:57.640 --> 0:27:01.560 Bob could successfully refuse to participate in the election, maybe 0:27:01.600 --> 0:27:06.080 other Bantustans would follow suit, making the election less legitimate 0:27:06.200 --> 0:27:10.520 and weakening the state. And if this African or militia 0:27:11.040 --> 0:27:14.639 could keep Mangope in power, they would have access to 0:27:14.760 --> 0:27:20.200 land and weapons in a sovereign nation within South Africa's borders. 0:27:21.040 --> 0:27:24.159 It could be a stronghold from which to launch more attacks. 0:27:25.480 --> 0:27:29.040 And perhaps they hoped to eventually negotiate with Mangope for 0:27:29.119 --> 0:27:32.160 a bit of land of their own within his territory 0:27:32.720 --> 0:27:36.800 so they could start their own white ethno state. But 0:27:36.960 --> 0:27:43.120 perhaps most importantly, Millyun was taking a calculated risk. If 0:27:43.119 --> 0:27:47.000 his Folks Front militia came to Mangope's aid, the South 0:27:47.040 --> 0:27:50.640 African government might send in the military to restore order. 0:27:52.119 --> 0:27:55.760 And there was a widespread belief on the right and 0:27:55.840 --> 0:28:00.359 a profound fear within the government that the military would 0:28:00.359 --> 0:28:05.560 refuse those orders that they would not fire on a 0:28:05.560 --> 0:28:10.560 white militia. If the military were to refuse those orders, 0:28:11.400 --> 0:28:14.200 it would embold in white right wingers around the country 0:28:14.320 --> 0:28:17.720 to take up arms. After all, who was going to 0:28:17.720 --> 0:28:22.679 stop them. And if the military refused orders to fire 0:28:22.720 --> 0:28:27.840 on his militia, Villyun could potentially take control of a 0:28:27.920 --> 0:28:30.960 significant portion of the military and maybe they could topple 0:28:31.000 --> 0:28:35.920 the entire government. Here's South African Communist Party chair and 0:28:36.040 --> 0:28:39.400 ANC negotiator Joe Slovo, describing that fear. 0:28:42.280 --> 0:28:45.600 Some of my colleagues and I feared very much that 0:28:46.120 --> 0:28:50.360 the echelons of the army might see this as the 0:28:50.440 --> 0:28:56.320 opportunity to try to prevent the transformation. We weren't certain 0:28:56.560 --> 0:29:01.920 of the degree of loyalty that we could attract from 0:29:02.000 --> 0:29:07.240 the upper echulance of the army, So. 0:29:07.160 --> 0:29:10.040 In March of nineteen ninety four, the government took a 0:29:10.080 --> 0:29:13.920 sort of wait and see approach to the whole affair 0:29:14.000 --> 0:29:18.480 and bop They couldn't risk a massed affection within the military, 0:29:19.960 --> 0:29:23.840 and maybe things would have been different if Eugene terre 0:29:23.880 --> 0:29:27.760 Blanche was more of a team player. We'll never know. 0:29:29.600 --> 0:29:35.320