Speaker 1: Col Zone media.
Speaker 2: On December sixteenth, nineteen fifty six, all over South Africa,
Speaker 2: people gathered in city squares and event halls. Children's choirs performed,
Speaker 2: congregations gathered to sing hymns, and whole towns turned out
Speaker 2: to hear speeches from civic leaders and church elders. They
Speaker 2: barbecued and picnicked. They made a whole weekend of it,
Speaker 2: with parades led by mounted police and festivals headlined by
Speaker 2: government officials. All over the country, people attending events in
Speaker 2: their own towns tuned in to hear the Prime Minister's speech.
Speaker 2: In Krugersdorp, a judge addressing the crowd in Jermyston urged
Speaker 2: Africaners not to forsake God by tolerating communism, saying quote,
Speaker 2: everywhere is the cry for equality of whites and non whites,
Speaker 2: and everywhere it is fanned by communism. In Freddorp, a
Speaker 2: speaker waxed poetic on the noble character of their Dutch
Speaker 2: pioneer forefathers, saying quote, they were neither conquerors nor oppressors.
Speaker 2: They always followed a determined policy towards the barbarians. In Vadfal,
Speaker 2: a member of parliament gave a speech about the importance
Speaker 2: of apartheid, that it was in fact a kindness allowing
Speaker 2: the races to live and let live, retaining their racial
Speaker 2: identities by avoiding race mixing. That speaker mc botha would
Speaker 2: later help design and implement the administration of the Bantustans,
Speaker 2: and that day he told the crowd that apartheid had
Speaker 2: a far more positive outlook than something like segregation. In
Speaker 2: Kempton Park, theologian Petras Dreyer warned that there could be
Speaker 2: no middle ground. Economic integration inevitably leads to social integration,
Speaker 2: which always ends in blood mixing. Apartheid was still young
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty six, the system was still being constructed.
Speaker 2: Dryer predicted a complete disappearance of the white race if
Speaker 2: the country failed to quickly adopt total and complete apartheid.
Speaker 2: That celebration, the one in Kempton Park, was presided over
Speaker 2: by festival chair William Henry Huggett. He'd been the mayor
Speaker 2: of the city for several years in the early fifties,
Speaker 2: and he was on the board of his local branch
Speaker 2: of the National Party. The newspaper write up about the
Speaker 2: event mentions him only briefly, I couldn't even tell you
Speaker 2: if mister Huggett gave a speech, But I'm willing to
Speaker 2: bet that they're in the audience listening to those warnings
Speaker 2: of impending racial annihilation. Was his daughter, a twelve year
Speaker 2: old Monica Huggett Hunger And this it's weird, little guys.
Speaker 2: This is a story about religious fervor. It's about myth
Speaker 2: and legend and racial holy war. It's a story of
Speaker 2: very modern bombings and treason convictions and planned assassinations. But
Speaker 2: it's a story rooted in history. So first, if you'll
Speaker 2: indulge me a bit of history. December sixteenth is a
Speaker 2: significant day for South Africans. Today it's celebrated as Reconciliation Day,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't always a day of peace. In nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty one, the newly formed paramilitary Arm of the African
Speaker 2: National Congress and Konto Wi Sizwey announced their existence with
Speaker 2: a series of bomb blasts and leaflets declaring quote, the
Speaker 2: time comes in the life of any nation where there
Speaker 2: remains only two choices, submit or fight. That time has
Speaker 2: now come to South Africa. We shall not submit, and
Speaker 2: we have no choice but to hit back by all
Speaker 2: means within our power in defense of our people. In
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty, the South African Communist Party held a nationwide
Speaker 2: protest encouraging black South Africans to publicly burn their past books,
Speaker 2: the internal passports black people were required to carry at
Speaker 2: all times. At a passbook burning rally in Durban, police
Speaker 2: attacked demonstrators, killing A and C organizer Johannes and Kosi.
Speaker 1: In twenty twelve, a.
Speaker 2: Series of police raids were carried out, rounding up four
Speaker 2: men accused of treason and a plot to assassinate President Jacobsuma.
Speaker 2: And the reason that all of these things happened on
Speaker 2: December sixteenth is the same. It's the same reason those
Speaker 2: crowds gathered in city squares all over the country in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty six. Until the holiday was repurposed as Reconciliation
Speaker 2: Day in nineteen ninety five, it was celebrated as the
Speaker 2: Day of the Vow. The holiday occupies a place of
Speaker 2: great importance in the political ideology of the africaner nationalist.
Speaker 2: In the eighteen thirties, Dutch speaking settlers in the British
Speaker 2: controlled colony at the Cape of Good Hope began migrating
Speaker 2: north away from British rule of course, the land north
Speaker 2: of the British Colony wasn't empty, and these exploratory missions
Speaker 2: often came into conflict with the African people whose land
Speaker 2: they wanted to settle on. In eighteen thirty seven, one
Speaker 2: of those bands of Dutch pioneers, known as the Fore Trekkers,
Speaker 2: set their sights on a bit of land in what
Speaker 2: is now Quasulu Natal. They approached the Zulu king Dingane
Speaker 2: an attempt to negotiate, stating a desire to live in
Speaker 2: peace with the Zulu, but noting that they had been
Speaker 2: victorious in prior conflicts with Zulu warriors. The negotiations did
Speaker 2: not go well. Dingane was understandably cautious in dealing with
Speaker 2: the Fort Trekkers. Earlier treks north had brought the settlers
Speaker 2: into violent conflict with the indigenous people they encountered, and
Speaker 2: their proposal just wasn't consistent with.
Speaker 1: The way the Zulu lived.
Speaker 2: The Fort Trekers wanted a written contract for ownership of
Speaker 2: the land in perpetuity. Neither of these things were possible
Speaker 2: in Zulu society. Theirs was an oral culture. There were
Speaker 2: no written treaties or contracts, and their customs and laws
Speaker 2: didn't allow for the permanent transfer of ownership of land
Speaker 2: held by the king. In February of eighteen thirty eight,
Speaker 2: a four treker delegation led by Petretif met with Dinghane
Speaker 2: to sign the treaty. There are conflicting accounts as to
Speaker 2: whether this treaty was actually signed, but ding Ghane clearly
Speaker 2: had no intention of giving the Dutch settlers any land.
Speaker 2: The entire delegation was led to a nearby hillside and killed.
Speaker 2: There were retaliatory attacks and skirmishes throughout the year, but
Speaker 2: the settlers spent most of eighteen thirty eight regrouping. Farmers
Speaker 2: from the Cape Colony were called up as reinforcements, and
Speaker 2: the bit of history that matters here came at the
Speaker 2: end of the year, the Battle of Blood River. In
Speaker 2: December of eighteen thirty eight, Andres Pretorius led a caravan
Speaker 2: of fifty seven ox carts and four hundred and sixty
Speaker 2: four trekker men into Zulu territory. The four trekkers were
Speaker 2: armed with guns, and the caravan had several cannons. The
Speaker 2: battle began at dawn on December sixteenth. A surviving member
Speaker 2: of the Zulu forces said their first charge was mown
Speaker 2: down like grass by the musket fire. The Zulu had
Speaker 2: an overwhelming numerical advantage, accounts very widely putting the number
Speaker 2: at at least nine thousand, with some estimates ranging as
Speaker 2: high as thirty thousand, but the Fort Trekkers had a
Speaker 2: strong defensive position and they had artillery. By noon, three
Speaker 2: thousand Zulu warriors were dead. The Fort Trekkers had not
Speaker 2: lost a single man in the Battle of Blood River.
Speaker 2: There is, of course, no river with such a hideous name.
Speaker 2: The battle was fought on the banks of the Encome River,
Speaker 2: but on the day three thousand Zulu men were slain
Speaker 2: in a matter of hours. The river is said to
Speaker 2: have run red with their blood.
Speaker 1: That much is true.
Speaker 2: The Battle of Blood River was fought on December sixteenth,
Speaker 2: eighteen thirty eight. The Day of the Vow, however, celebrates
Speaker 2: a possibly apocryphal vow sworn by Andres Pretorius that if
Speaker 2: God would deliver them a victory against the Zulu, their
Speaker 2: descendants would forever keep that day as a holy sabbath.
Speaker 2: They didn't, not until many decades later, anyway. Leonard Thompson,
Speaker 2: an English historian who led Yale's Southern African Research program,
Speaker 2: posits that the Day of the Vow is political mythology,
Speaker 2: a piece of history that was resurrected and embellished when
Speaker 2: it was politically expedient. There is some kernel of truth.
Speaker 2: There is a contemporary account in the journals of Pretorius's secretary,
Speaker 2: General Jan Bantis, that one week before the battle, Pretorius
Speaker 2: called his senior officers to his tent and asked them
Speaker 2: to pray to God for victory. And he promised that
Speaker 2: if they were victorious, he would build a church to
Speaker 2: commemorate it. And they did win, and he did build
Speaker 2: that church, thus fulfilling the only portion of that promise
Speaker 2: that we have any record of. For decades, white South
Speaker 2: Africans did not keep December sixteenth as a holy sabbath.
Speaker 2: An eighteen seventy seven text by a South African nationalist theologian,
Speaker 2: contains a history of the battle, but it makes no
Speaker 2: mention at all of any vow or of divine intervention.
Speaker 2: The story re emerged in the late eighteen hundreds amidst
Speaker 2: the Boer Wars, and in eighteen eighty a ceremony was
Speaker 2: held to renew the covenant, and in this ceremony they
Speaker 2: tied the story of the four treker victory over Black
Speaker 2: Africans to the present struggle for national identity against the
Speaker 2: British Empire. There were sporadic celebrations of the holiday in
Speaker 2: the last few decades of the nineteenth century, and the
Speaker 2: story was evolving as a sort of founding myth. God
Speaker 2: wanted the Africaner to have the land. God wanted whites
Speaker 2: to conquer Black Africans. God gave the Afrikaaner of this
Speaker 2: land because they were God's chosen people. When South Africa
Speaker 2: gained independence in nineteen ten, one of the first acts
Speaker 2: of Parliament was to make the Day of the Covenant
Speaker 2: a national holiday. In nineteen thirty eight, at the celebration
Speaker 2: of the one hundred year anniversary of the Battle of
Speaker 2: Blood River, nationalist politician D. F. Milan addressed the crowd.
Speaker 2: He said Blood River had decided the future of South Africa,
Speaker 2: that it was to be a civilized Christian nation under
Speaker 2: the authority of the white race. And now, in that
Speaker 2: moment in nineteen thirty eight, they were standing on the
Speaker 2: banks of their own Blood River quote, seeing the dark
Speaker 2: masses gathering around your isolated white race. A decade later,
Speaker 2: when Milan was elected Prime Minister, he oversaw the implementation
Speaker 2: of apartheid. You might be wondering at this point, why
Speaker 2: am I telling you about this? What does this racist,
Speaker 2: fake holiday have to do with the subject of our story,
Speaker 2: Monica huggets Stone, It has everything to do with her.
Speaker 2: Her belief in the vengeful racist God of Blood River
Speaker 2: is central to the way she has lived her entire life.
Speaker 2: She brings it up in almost every interview I could find.
Speaker 2: In one podcast from twenty twenty one, she describes visiting
Speaker 2: the site with her family as a child. To this day,
Speaker 2: she believes that if the africaner renews that vow, their
Speaker 2: God will guide their hand in slaughtering the enemies of
Speaker 2: the white race, whoever they may be.
Speaker 3: And this is what I'm clinging to, is that the
Speaker 3: God of Blood Lover is not dead. Even if the
Speaker 3: enemy all over the world, and might they not only black,
Speaker 3: the white governments of the waste caused the fall of
Speaker 3: South Africa and Rhodesia and the rist of the white
Speaker 3: colonies in Africa.
Speaker 4: The jew has their hand in there.
Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 2: The constructed mythology around the importance of that day became
Speaker 2: so central to African internationalist ideology and identity that for decades,
Speaker 2: there was no scholarship at all examining its historical roots.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy nine, historian Flores van yarsfeld was presenting
Speaker 2: a conference paper at the University of Pretoria. He had
Speaker 2: begun to question the historicity of the popular cultural narratives
Speaker 2: about Blood River, and just as he approached the lectern
Speaker 2: to present his paper, forty men burst into the lecture
Speaker 2: hall and surrounded the professor, emptied the tin of hot
Speaker 2: tar over him, and coated him in white feathers. Those
Speaker 2: men were members of a group that had up until
Speaker 2: that very moment operated entirely in secret.
Speaker 1: This was their big public debut.
Speaker 2: The leader seized the microphone and announced himself. He was
Speaker 2: Eugene Terreblanche, leader of the Africaner Resistance movement. He called
Speaker 2: vin Yarsfeldt's paper blasphemous, an attack on the sanctity and
Speaker 2: very essence of Africanner identity. Early on, in the process
Speaker 2: of figuring out who Monica huggets Stone was, I saw
Speaker 2: a very strange comment. I was reading a blog post
Speaker 2: about an internal schism within a modern day Africaner nationalist
Speaker 2: group called the Swedelanders. The blog was written by Adrian Snyman.
Speaker 2: We'll get to him in a minute. But in the
Speaker 2: comments under the post, there was one from Monica posted
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty three, and she was so sorry to
Speaker 2: see whites turning on each other instead of focusing on
Speaker 2: the real enemy. And she ends this rather long comment
Speaker 2: by saying, quote, the time is now for the Boer
Speaker 2: people to stand together, to go on their knees and
Speaker 2: beg forgiveness from our creator, the Great Almighty God, who
Speaker 2: created the heavens and the earth. We have turned our
Speaker 2: backs on God and have the mistaken idea that we
Speaker 2: ourselves are the saviors of the Boer people. God has
Speaker 2: not abandoned us. He is waiting patiently for the people
Speaker 2: to call upon him. Just as at Blood River, he
Speaker 2: will answer again and give his children victory. And I
Speaker 2: didn't know what that meant, so I made a note
Speaker 2: of it, and I moved on, And then I saw
Speaker 2: it again in a YouTube.
Speaker 1: Comment just a few months ago.
Speaker 2: She wrote, may the God of Blood River be with
Speaker 2: his children and give us victory against his enemy.
Speaker 1: And then I found a series of.
Speaker 2: Articles she wrote for a rabidly anti Semitic Christian identity
Speaker 2: magazine between twenty eleven and twenty seventeen, and they're all
Speaker 2: very strange. The Bible verses she quotes are from a
Speaker 2: translation I'd never heard of. It's not the King James
Speaker 2: or the New International. It's something else, entirely, something called
Speaker 2: the Ferrari Fentin Bible. He was apparently a British businessman
Speaker 2: who died in nineteen twenty, and his translation is not
Speaker 2: well regarded by biblical scholars. He was also briefly the
Speaker 2: head of the South African diamond mining corporation, the Dedbers Group,
Speaker 2: and he believed that British people were the true Israelites.
Speaker 2: I didn't know the Ferra Fentin Bible was even an option,
Speaker 2: but I guess if you're a racist South African who
Speaker 2: believes white people are the descendants of the lost tribes of.
Speaker 1: Israel, it's the perfect choice.
Speaker 2: In those articles, she predicts a coming race war, and
Speaker 2: she agonizes over what she calls satanic attacks on the
Speaker 2: Aryan race, and there at the end of pages of
Speaker 2: apocalyptic rambling, she calls for a renewal of the vow
Speaker 2: of Blood River.
Speaker 1: And that blog.
Speaker 2: Monica's comment in twenty twenty three on that post about
Speaker 2: internal divisions within a right wing Africannor group preparing for
Speaker 2: a race war. Well, that comment wasn't her only appearance
Speaker 2: on that site. In twenty eleven, the blog's author, Adrian Snyman,
Speaker 2: wrote a post with the title thank you Aryan Nations,
Speaker 2: and the post is a response to Monica Stone. She
Speaker 2: had written privately to Snyman to let him know that
Speaker 2: she would be attending the Aryan Nations World Congress in
Speaker 2: September of twenty eleven, and she'd be giving a speech
Speaker 2: about the white genocide in South Africa. Sneyman's post describes
Speaker 2: Monica as the only female member of the Africaner Resistance
Speaker 2: movement to have ever served time in prison for her
Speaker 2: involvement in the group, and he urges his readers to
Speaker 2: email her their letters of thanks so she can present
Speaker 2: them to the Aryan Nations after her speech. And here's
Speaker 2: where things start to go off the rails. Adrian Snyman,
Speaker 2: the author of that blog.
Speaker 1: Is a prolific writer.
Speaker 2: In his younger years, he worked for a newspaper covering
Speaker 2: horse racing, and for decades he'd cranked out dozens of
Speaker 2: novels under a variety of pseudonyms. But by nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: he'd found his calling interpreting the prophecies of Nicklaus van Rensburg.
Speaker 2: Nicholas van Rensburg was born in eighteen sixty four on
Speaker 2: a farm in what is now South Africa. He never
Speaker 2: learned to write, and he only learned to read by
Speaker 2: sounding out the words of the Bible. He died in
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty six during the Second Boer War. He was
Speaker 2: a close companion of General.
Speaker 1: Coups de la Rey.
Speaker 2: He was also allegedly a prophet of God. I spent
Speaker 2: too much time trying to parse the prophecies. I had
Speaker 2: trouble locating any actual, original written versions of the prophecies.
Speaker 2: I don't want to see interpretations of them. I want
Speaker 2: to see them, and I looked for some original source
Speaker 2: for entirely too long before I realized they don't exist.
Speaker 2: According to Snyman, Van Renzberg's daughter Anna wrote down over
Speaker 2: seven hundred of her father's visions, but the original handwritten
Speaker 2: books were lost. At the time of her death in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty one, the family was not in possession of
Speaker 2: any of those writings. It appears he's based his books
Speaker 2: on a document written in nineteen forty two a man
Speaker 2: who had seen those original written versions of the prophecies
Speaker 2: related them orally to another man who wrote them down
Speaker 2: sixteen years after Van Rensburg died, and even that document
Speaker 2: was lost until Sneiman received it in nineteen ninety. There's
Speaker 2: no explanation of where it was in between or how
Speaker 2: he came to possess it. Very unclear providence on these prophecies.
Speaker 2: There's no chain of custody on the prophecies. Sneiman has
Speaker 2: written so feverishly on the subject for the last thirty
Speaker 2: five years that almost everything I can find about Van
Speaker 2: Rensburg is written by him, and everything else relies on
Speaker 2: his work. There are some contemporary accounts of some of
Speaker 2: Van Rensburgh's visions, but it's worth mentioning that the most
Speaker 2: spectacular examples of his coming to pass aren't ones I
Speaker 2: was able to find written accounts of that date back
Speaker 2: to his lifetime, and the interpretations of those prophecies that
Speaker 2: present possible modern occurrences as their fulfillment are almost universally
Speaker 2: written by fervent race war enthusiasts, people who really really
Speaker 2: want the prophecies to be true. And the problem with
Speaker 2: prophecies that some people really really want to be true
Speaker 2: is that there will sometimes be people who take matters
Speaker 2: into their own hands and try to make them come true.
Speaker 2: Most of his visions are entirely symbolic, things like I
Speaker 2: saw a red bull and AGray bull fighting is interpreted
Speaker 2: by his followers as an accurate prediction of World War One,
Speaker 2: or out of the north, a speckled black ox appears.
Speaker 2: He is looking in our direction. The earth in our
Speaker 2: country becomes desolate, but in Europe it becomes pitch dark,
Speaker 2: and that is apparently a prediction of the Great Depression.
Speaker 2: According to Sneimann, Van Rezberg correctly predicted such events as
Speaker 2: every war of the twentieth century, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster Aids,
Speaker 2: the collapse of the Soviet Union, the election of Margaret Thatcher,
Speaker 2: Princess Diana's divorce, Princess Diana's death, and a nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: five earthquake in Japan. As for the prophecies that haven't
Speaker 2: come true, well maybe they just haven't come true yet.
Speaker 5: In nineteen sixteen, he tells his friend boy Mussmann, there
Speaker 5: will come a time when I will be once again
Speaker 5: in the news. In those days, I see we are
Speaker 5: still fighting amongst ourselves, and it is over, and we
Speaker 5: will have a black government. It is then that the
Speaker 5: Afrikaan is final and fist struggle will begin.
Speaker 2: According to Snyman's books, Ben Ronzburg had a vision in
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty five, six months before his death.
Speaker 1: The actual text of.
Speaker 2: This prophecy is word slid, something about a goose coming
Speaker 2: out of a man's mouth, but it's interpreted to mean
Speaker 2: that Van Rensburg predicted that in the distant future a
Speaker 2: black man will be released from prison and that man
Speaker 2: will attain power, and under his rule the country will
Speaker 2: be thrown into chaos, and at some point that man
Speaker 2: will die a violent death, and on the eighth day
Speaker 2: after his death, the day he is buried, a civil
Speaker 2: war will begin. By his own account, Snyman started interpreting
Speaker 2: the prophecies in nineteen ninety He published his first book
Speaker 2: on them in nineteen ninety two, but the earliest writing
Speaker 2: I could actually get my hands on is from nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety five, So I can't tell you if Sneimann always
Speaker 2: believed that this particular prophecy was about Nelson Mandela and
Speaker 2: his release from prison in nineteen ninety and his election
Speaker 2: as president in nineteen ninety four, but that's his interpretation. Now,
Speaker 2: and this particular prophecy has inspired at least two attempts
Speaker 2: to force it to come true. In late two thousand
Speaker 2: and two, a white supremacist terrorist organization calling itself the
Speaker 2: Booramag set off a series of bombs in Soeto, outside
Speaker 2: of Johannesburg. They targeted a mosque, a Buddhist temple, an airport,
Speaker 2: a gas station, and railways, and those bombs went off
Speaker 2: after the first round of arrests earlier that year. After
Speaker 2: the wave of bombing, the group emailed newspapers taking responsibility
Speaker 2: for the attacks. They demanded the release of the Booramag
Speaker 2: members who'd already been arrested, but it warned that it
Speaker 2: wasn't just lower ranking members of the group that people
Speaker 2: should be worried about interfering with the mission of the
Speaker 2: Boramagu was a challenge to the God of the Blood River.
Speaker 2: If their demands weren't met, another wave of bombings would commence.
Speaker 2: On December sixteenth, the day of the vow. Those bombings
Speaker 2: did not come to pass. Police responded to the emails
Speaker 2: by raiding ninety four properties and arresting eleven more Boromac members. Intriguingly,
Speaker 2: some of the homes that were raided that day belonged
Speaker 2: to men we've encountered elsewhere in this story. There were
Speaker 2: police raids at the home of Baron Stredam, the White Wolf,
Speaker 2: who went on a shooting spree in nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 2: and at the home of villem Rata, the former Rhodesian
Speaker 2: military officer who commanded the German mercenaries at Radio Pratoria
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety four. Africana Resistance Movement member Mani Merits
Speaker 2: and Pete Rudolph, the leader of the Order Borofolk at
Speaker 2: one of these homes, though none of the reporting specifies
Speaker 2: whose police found a list of names of the detectives
Speaker 2: who had been investigating the Borromac. The trials took over
Speaker 2: a decade, with testimony from over two hundred people. In
Speaker 2: the end, twenty three members of the group received prison
Speaker 2: sentences of varying lengths between five and thirty five years.
Speaker 2: The ring leader, Mike Detoy, was the first South African
Speaker 2: to be convicted of treason by the post apartheid government,
Speaker 2: and because the cases spent eleven years in court, we
Speaker 2: know a lot about them. At the group's first meeting,
Speaker 2: members took the vow of blood River. They carried copies
Speaker 2: of the vow pasted into a little book at all times,
Speaker 2: and they gave each other code names like Rottweiler and motherfucker.
Speaker 2: After they swore their allegiance to God and each other,
Speaker 2: the leader of the group gave each man a single
Speaker 2: nine millimeter bullet. In later testimony, a member said quote
Speaker 2: he said, there was no turning back now. Anyone turning
Speaker 2: back will be shot, and if you knew somebody would
Speaker 2: betray you, you had to make sure he was shot.
Speaker 2: In October of two thousand and two, former President Nelson
Speaker 2: Mandela was scheduled to travel to Limpopo for a ceremony
Speaker 2: opening a new school. Boromag members placed a large bomb
Speaker 2: on the side of the road they knew he would
Speaker 2: have to travel to get there, and.
Speaker 1: Stretched a trip wire across it.
Speaker 2: They were hiding in the bushes waiting to watch the
Speaker 2: former president get blown to bits when they heard the helicopter.
Speaker 1: They'd failed.
Speaker 2: Had Mandela not taken a helicopter at the last minute
Speaker 2: instead of traveling the final leg of his journey by car,
Speaker 2: the bomb almost certainly would have killed him, and this,
Speaker 2: they believed would trigger Van Rensberg's prophecies of a race war.
Speaker 2: Both their own testimony and documents recovered in the police
Speaker 2: raids show their dedication to the Van Rensburg prophecies. A
Speaker 2: lot of their planning documents just don't make sense at
Speaker 2: all without the context of the prophecies. One plan presupposes,
Speaker 2: without explanation, that the violence will simply begin when a
Speaker 2: mob of black people engage in violent midnight attacks in Johannesburg.
Speaker 2: That's an extremely unlikely and unexplained scenario in the real world,
Speaker 2: but it is something that does incite an unstoppable wave
Speaker 2: of violence. In some of Sneyman's interpretations of the prophecies,
Speaker 2: their planning doctor humans also fixate on the idea of
Speaker 2: amassing their forces in a small town called Prisca. There's
Speaker 2: no political or tactical advantage to being in Prisca, but
Speaker 2: the town is mentioned more than twenty times in one
Speaker 2: of Snyman's books. Van Rensburg had a vision that a
Speaker 2: miracle would occur in Prisca, that in their hour of need,
Speaker 2: the Boers would receive much needed help from abroad. In
Speaker 2: the prophecies, the white africaner is armed for the final
Speaker 2: struggle in Prisca when German guns arrive. It's very important
Speaker 2: in the prophecies, these German guns. The guns must come
Speaker 2: from Germany, and that's so interesting. I mean, the prophecies
Speaker 2: are a jumbled mess and a lot of it doesn't
Speaker 2: mean anything. They're mostly about bulls fighting and white horses
Speaker 2: on hillsides and chickens running east. But the German guns
Speaker 2: are quite concrete. And I wonder if that was on
Speaker 2: anyone's mind in nineteen ninety three when Monica Huggett started
Speaker 2: hosting German mercenaries in her home. Maybe it's a coincidence
Speaker 2: that those Germans were the ones smuggling in the guns
Speaker 2: they hoped to use in the race war back then.
Speaker 1: Hard to say.
Speaker 2: Over the course of the Boromag trials, witnesses testified to
Speaker 2: almost unbelievable plots that the group never had a chance
Speaker 2: to carry out. Members testified that they'd considered stoking racial
Speaker 2: tension by carrying out terrorist attacks intended to appear as
Speaker 2: though the perpetrators had been Jewish or Muslim. One early
Speaker 2: plan involved shooting down an American passenger plane, but that
Speaker 2: was scrapped because it was likely to kill white people.
Speaker 2: A police informant who'd infiltrated. The group testified that one
Speaker 2: member claimed his American contacts in the coup klux Klan
Speaker 2: could help them create a poison to put in the
Speaker 2: water supply. Another member sat on the stand that they'd
Speaker 2: plan to poison oranges and then leave them on the
Speaker 2: streets of Soweto where black people might pick them up
Speaker 2: and eat them. When the guilty verdicts were read, Pete
Speaker 2: Rudolph stood up in the gallery and yelled in Afrikaans,
Speaker 2: we shall overcome. How odd to see Pete Rudolph misbehaving
Speaker 2: in the gallery twice, so many years apart. It was
Speaker 2: a few episodes ago now, but thirty three years before this,
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty it was Pete Rudolph who stood and
Speaker 2: applauded as the VIC Commando bombers were led into the
Speaker 2: court room. But during the trials, thirteen of those defendants
Speaker 2: took a unorthodox approach to their defense. They challenged the
Speaker 2: court's jurisdiction to even try them at all, claiming that
Speaker 2: due to irregularities in the nineteen ninety two referendum and
Speaker 2: then I ninety four election, the current government was illegitimate
Speaker 2: and the post nineteen ninety four constitution was not binding.
Speaker 2: The government's position was, of course, that the nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: two referendum had authorized the government to negotiate a new constitution.
Speaker 2: That referendum, for the record, asked the question, do you
Speaker 2: support continuation of the reform process which the state president
Speaker 2: began on two February nineteen ninety and which has aimed
Speaker 2: at a new constitution through negotiation, and that referendum passed
Speaker 2: with sixty nine percent of voters saying yes. Here's Monica's
Speaker 2: memory of that election, just for fun.
Speaker 4: I mean, I remember my niece was about three four
Speaker 4: years old. We walked into the welting booth and she
Speaker 4: little as she was, it's the Nazi salute, and she said,
Speaker 4: my daddy is voting No.
Speaker 2: The Boramag defendants were unsuccessful, obviously, but they did try
Speaker 2: to subpoena South Africa's last apartheid president, FW de Clerk,
Speaker 2: I guess, in an attempt to prove that the government
Speaker 2: didn't legally exist, and after the verdicts were in some
Speaker 2: right wingers blamed to Clerk. If he hadn't ended apartheid,
Speaker 2: none of this would have happened in the first place.
Speaker 2: A press release from Andres Breidenbach, leader of the far
Speaker 2: right party HNP and chairman of a group called the
Speaker 2: Afrikaner Folksrad attacked to Clerk. The press release read, in part,
Speaker 2: each of those sentences is yours personally, because you are
Speaker 2: the real trader who subjugated our people to a hostile
Speaker 2: power with cunning in deceit. And further down the page
Speaker 2: he continues that you have not created any git through
Speaker 2: which the Boer, African or people can escape from this
Speaker 2: dispensation in a constitutional manner, shows your evil intent against
Speaker 2: our people. News reports at the time say the press
Speaker 2: release was issued via his Facebook page.
Speaker 1: But I couldn't dig it up there.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, I found it on Stormfront. I can't believe I'd
Speaker 2: never noticed before, but the internet's oldest running Nazi message
Speaker 2: board has an entire subsection where all the posts are
Speaker 2: in Afrikaans.
Speaker 1: In a two thousand and.
Speaker 2: Nine dissertation by Inez Mary Stephanie at the University of
Speaker 2: the Vitvatersrand, the author makes a claim that I believe
Speaker 2: but I can't find anywhere else. She writes that in
Speaker 2: the mid nineties, the Africaner resistance movement didn't have their
Speaker 2: own website. I mean, it was the nineties, how many
Speaker 2: people knew how to make a website. But instead of
Speaker 2: the group just not having a website, American clansman Don Black,
Speaker 2: Stormfront's webmaster posted their online presence for them. What a
Speaker 2: strange and fascinating intersection. But back to the press release,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have bothered to tell you Andreas Breytenbach's name
Speaker 2: if that was his only appearance in this story. There's
Speaker 2: already too many guys I know, but it's not no
Speaker 2: because he had friends overseas two and he was in Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. In September of twenty twelve. I can't blame
Speaker 2: you if you've forgotten why. That's interesting. It's been a
Speaker 2: long story. It was in September of twenty twelve that
Speaker 2: Monica Huggett Stone led that tiny gaggle of Aryan Nations
Speaker 2: members on a march through DC. It was her second
Speaker 2: attempt at getting public attention for her South Africa project,
Speaker 2: raising awareness for the white genocide.
Speaker 1: Of the africaner. But what if it was something else?
Speaker 2: A month before that rally, the front page story in
Speaker 2: d Africaner, the newspaper for the far right party HNP,
Speaker 2: said that their chairman Andres Breitenbach had decided that there
Speaker 2: would be a march in America the following month, quote,
Speaker 2: a march will be held in America next month. This
Speaker 2: action stop genocide was initiated by the HNP. So maybe
Speaker 2: there was some other march against white genocide somewhere in
Speaker 2: the United States in September of twenty twelve, as possible,
Speaker 2: I guess, but this was the only one in Washington, DC,
Speaker 2: and that's where Andres Breidenbach was the week of Monica's
Speaker 2: Arian Nation's rally at the Capitol. I can't find him
Speaker 2: in any of the photos, but that same party newspaper
Speaker 2: uses a photo of Monica at her rally to illustrate
Speaker 2: their story about Breidenbach delivering a letter to the ambassador
Speaker 2: in Washington that same week. Maybe something is lost in
Speaker 2: translation here, but the article appears to conclude with this statement.
Speaker 2: The group of local protesters was also encouraged by the
Speaker 2: fact that their spokesman, mister Andres Breitenbach, gave an interview
Speaker 2: to the media at the embassy, and Monica obviously saw
Speaker 2: and had no issue with the wording of this article
Speaker 2: because it was proudly posted to the Aryan Nation's website,
Speaker 2: which is where I found it. But it gets even stranger.
Speaker 2: Breitenbach wasn't the only South African who paid a visit
Speaker 2: to the Aryan Nations in September of twenty twelve. That
Speaker 2: same month, a man named Hein Bunsier took a trip
Speaker 2: to the United States. When he was arrested for treason
Speaker 2: three months later, it was revealed in court that he'd
Speaker 2: been trying to secure funding from the Aryan Nations and
Speaker 2: the ku Klux Klan. Buonsire and three others, Johann Printslou,
Speaker 2: John Martin Kievy, and Mark Trollop were arrested on December sixteenth,
Speaker 2: twenty twelve, the day of the vow and the day
Speaker 2: they had planned to assassinate South African President Jacob Zuma.
Speaker 2: The charges against Boonsire were dropped in August of twenty thirteen,
Speaker 2: and after a psychiatric evaluation, John Martin Kievy was committed
Speaker 2: to a state hospital. Mark Tarlot pled guilty to conspiracy
Speaker 2: and Johann Princeleu was found guilty of treason after a trial.
Speaker 2: So legally, can I tell you that Hein Buonsier was
Speaker 2: soliciting funding for terrorism?
Speaker 1: No I can't.
Speaker 2: He wasn't convicted of any crime in connection to the plot,
Speaker 2: but the plot was real. It was real enough that
Speaker 2: Johann Princelou was convicted of treason and Boonsire did make
Speaker 2: two trips to the United States to connect with right
Speaker 2: wing groups, one just months before his arrest. Early reporting
Speaker 2: about his arrest explicitly states that the twenty twelve trip
Speaker 2: had been an effort to secure financial backing from American
Speaker 2: extremist groups. But I was puzzled about the economics of
Speaker 2: such a trip. I mean, guns aren't cheap, sure, but
Speaker 2: what's the return on investment in terms of ammunition when
Speaker 2: you're looking at booking international travel. But it's possible they
Speaker 2: needed money for more than just weapons. Buonsire was buying land,
Speaker 2: a lot of it in Prisca. There is a post
Speaker 2: from the year before his arrest on a website for
Speaker 2: believers in the Free Afrikaner movement. It's a collection of
Speaker 2: white South Africans who want an independent state, and the
Speaker 2: post names Bunsire's real estate company, Hausenberg Development Cooperative, is
Speaker 2: one of two companies allowing people to purchase shares in
Speaker 2: a large tract of land. Illitate white resettlement. Later, reporting
Speaker 2: from investigative journalism outlet I'mapunghani says Boonsire's company website was
Speaker 2: in twenty twelve quote in the process of purchasing thirty
Speaker 2: thousand hectares of farmland in Prisca, but I can't find
Speaker 2: any follow up as to whether or not he ever
Speaker 2: successfully purchased the land for his white enclave. During his
Speaker 2: trip to the United States in twenty twelve, he appeared
Speaker 2: on six episodes of one right wing podcast and made
Speaker 2: a single appearance on a wildly fringe anti Semitic conspiracy
Speaker 2: theory show. I spent the better part of the day
Speaker 2: trying to dig up audio of any of those episodes,
Speaker 2: but they seem to be lost a time. I'm Apungane
Speaker 2: in twenty twelve that in one episode, Buonsire said, I
Speaker 2: think we can assume that within the next six to
Speaker 2: eight months, I wouldn't be surprised if we had a
Speaker 2: full scale civil war in South Africa. It's a low
Speaker 2: level war that's being waged against us, and at some
Speaker 2: point any group of people or a nation would stand
Speaker 2: up and say enough is enough. In the reporting about
Speaker 2: Boonsiro's American connections, It's mentioned that he'd visited once before,
Speaker 2: but no details are provided. It seemed like that first
Speaker 2: trip might remain a mystery until I found an open
Speaker 2: letter Boonsire himself wrote in twenty thirteen after his charges
Speaker 2: were dropped. In that letter, he reveals that he'd been
Speaker 2: publishing online for years under the pseudonym Heinrich Zeman, and
Speaker 2: there is a bit of writing online in Afrikaans under
Speaker 2: that name, much of it published by the Pro African
Speaker 2: or Action Group. But I found one essay in English.
Speaker 2: The piece tells the almost entirely fictional story of the
Speaker 2: author's grandparent and its falling victim to the ongoing white
Speaker 2: genocide in South Africa. They are victims of these infamous
Speaker 2: farm murders, hacked to death in their beds by machete
Speaker 2: wielding black men, and he writes in gory detail about
Speaker 2: the couple's beloved dog, dismembered by the attackers as he
Speaker 2: gave his life trying to protect his masters. It's gruesome,
Speaker 2: it's almost pornographic in its description of the author discovering
Speaker 2: that the dog's final act was tearing the throat out
Speaker 2: of one of the black attackers. It was published in
Speaker 2: twenty eleven by American Renaissance, the white supremacist magazine run
Speaker 2: by Jared Taylor. Taylor's website notes that the author attended
Speaker 2: the American Renaissance Conference in twenty ten, an event that
Speaker 2: was headlined by a speaker from the Belgian fascist group
Speaker 2: flams Belang, the successor organization to Flams Block, the neo
Speaker 2: Nazi organization that coordinated the movement of stolen go uns
Speaker 2: and mercenaries to South Africa in the nineties. Bundsaire's piece
Speaker 2: was included in a collection of essays published by American
Speaker 2: Restaurants in twenty twenty, and the book has a forward
Speaker 2: by Jared Taylor himself. I will do some episodes on
Speaker 2: Jared Taylor one of these days. He's had an enormous
Speaker 2: influence on American white supremacist thought over the last forty years.
Speaker 2: His annual conference has for decades now been a real
Speaker 2: who's who of the international extreme right.
Speaker 1: I went once years ago.
Speaker 2: I mean I couldn't get inside, obviously, I just stood
Speaker 2: outside in a park somewhere in Tennessee, and all I
Speaker 2: got from my trouble was pepper sprayed and trampled by
Speaker 2: some cops for the average person. I would guess the
Speaker 2: only time you've encountered Jared Taylor's name in the news
Speaker 2: was back in twenty fifteen. He was the spokesman for
Speaker 2: the Council of Conservative Citizens. They had to make a
Speaker 2: series of public statements after the Charleston church shooting. Dylan
Speaker 2: Roof's manifesto made it quite clear that he'd been radicalized
Speaker 2: by the Council of Conservative Citizens, specifically their publications on
Speaker 2: black crime, and that's what convinced him that white people
Speaker 2: were being treated unfairly. Their website set him down the
Speaker 2: path that ended the lives of nine people whose only
Speaker 2: crime was welcoming a stranger into their Bible study. Like
Speaker 2: I said, Boonsire's charges were dropped when he was arrested.
Speaker 2: In twenty twelve, he was removed as the head of
Speaker 2: a newly formed political party, the Federal Freedom Party, after
Speaker 2: its founder was arrested for treason. It obviously struggled a bit,
Speaker 2: and it rebranded as Front National in twenty thirteen, and
Speaker 2: then rebranded again as the Africaner Self Determination Party in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty. I can't tell if Boonsire is still active
Speaker 2: and the party he started seems like it would be
Speaker 2: kind of hard to go back to canvassing for elections
Speaker 2: when you've already considered triggering a prophecy by blowing up
Speaker 2: the president. But people can change, I don't know. In
Speaker 2: September of twenty twelve, Monica huggets Stone was in touch
Speaker 2: with the leader of the far right party HNP and
Speaker 2: a man accused of treason. She led a tiny Arian
Speaker 2: nation's rally at the United States Capital and then she left.
Speaker 2: She'd been living in the United States since two thousand
Speaker 2: after marrying Jim Stone, a retired sports news broadcaster living
Speaker 2: just outside New Orleans. Federal Election Commission filings show that
Speaker 2: Jim Stone was on the payroll for David Duke's nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety six Senate run, but the campaign didn't amount to much.
Speaker 2: Jim was apparently the campaign press secretary and director of
Speaker 2: media relations, but the only news story I can find
Speaker 2: that looks like it was placed by a press secretary
Speaker 2: is the one announcing he'd been hired for the position,
Speaker 2: So maybe he wasn't very good at it. Jimstone passed
Speaker 2: away in early twenty twelve, and in twenty thirteen, the
Speaker 2: now widowed Monica Stone sold their home in Mandeville, Louisiana,
Speaker 2: and returned to her hometown of Kempton Park in South Africa.
Speaker 2: Back in South Africa, she operates a charitable organization called
Speaker 2: the Living Waters Foundation, and interviews in recent years always
Speaker 2: include a request for donations. She helps orphans, you see,
Speaker 2: but only white ones. She's quite meticulous about it. In
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, a fellow South African neo Nazi recommended donating
Speaker 2: to Monica's charity, writing on his blog quote, She's a
Speaker 2: hardcore national socialist. She only gives money to white children.
Speaker 2: If she gives money to someone and she later sees
Speaker 2: them helping non whites, then she cuts off the monies.
Speaker 2: I went with her in twenty fifteen to visit an
Speaker 2: orphanage in Pretoria, the only one run by a white
Speaker 2: woman who was doing it only for white children. But
Speaker 2: when Monica later found out that the woman was also
Speaker 2: helping blacks, she cut off.
Speaker 1: All donations, which I agree with.
Speaker 2: Batman Ian Lamprecht was arrested in twenty twenty one for
Speaker 2: violating a court order to stop harassing a Jewish professor.
Speaker 2: But that's neither here nor there. I can't quite nail
Speaker 2: down the specifics, but it seems Yan and Monica had
Speaker 2: a falling out some time after twenty fifteen, but for
Speaker 2: the most part in a movement constantly ripped apart by
Speaker 2: personal feuds and power struggles and accusations of betrayal, I
Speaker 2: can't find a single bad word about Monica Huggetstone. I
Speaker 2: scraped together every existing record of her involvement in white
Speaker 2: supremacist groups from nineteen seventy nine, when she first met
Speaker 2: Eugene tare Blanche, through the present day, covering nearly fifty years,
Speaker 2: intersecting with multiple bombing campaigns, international arms smuggling rings, and
Speaker 2: attempted coups. She turned State's witness against her own boyfriend
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty And I dug through dozens of ancient
Speaker 2: blogs in multiple languages, and I can't find a single
Speaker 2: Nazi with a bad word to say about her. And
Speaker 2: I think that's a first. There's always beef somewhere. I
Speaker 2: will have to circle back at some point to talk
Speaker 2: about the Swede Lenders, maybe another time. They are more
Speaker 2: recent African nationalist group founded in the early two thousands,
Speaker 2: and they publicly shy away from being associated with obvious
Speaker 2: neo Nazi imagery, but the group is explicitly and completely
Speaker 2: centered around the Van Rensburg prophecies. They exist to prepare
Speaker 2: their members for the coming race war and spoiler alert
Speaker 2: in case I don't get back to the Swede Lenders
Speaker 2: anytime soon. Their spokesman, Simon Roche, spent most of the
Speaker 2: summer of twenty seventeen ling in the United States, including
Speaker 2: attending the Unite the Right rally here in Charlottesville, and
Speaker 2: back in that time period, they got into a little
Speaker 2: bit of hot water in the movement. There were allegations
Speaker 2: that Simon Roch had been pocketing donations from other white nationalists.
Speaker 2: It was a bit of a scandal, and in twenty
Speaker 2: eighteen he appeared on an American neo Nazi podcast to
Speaker 2: address the issue, and at some point during the show
Speaker 2: he was ambushed by Jan Lamprecht, who is a rival
Speaker 2: of his, and it got a little heated and it
Speaker 2: was a very lengthy, uncomfortable interview. But at the end
Speaker 2: of all that, Simon Roche still spoke glowingly of Monica,
Speaker 2: calling her someone with an impeccable reputation and recommending that
Speaker 2: if after all of this, you are still not comfortable
Speaker 2: donating to the Swedelanders, you should donate to Monica.
Speaker 6: Let me ask you this, are there other groups that
Speaker 6: you think are reputable that are doing good work in
Speaker 6: South Africa that if anybody has questions about the If
Speaker 6: there are people who have questions about the integrity of Sidelanders,
Speaker 6: who would they want to support instead of you?
Speaker 7: I would recommend that they support somebody like Monica Stone,
Speaker 7: a very distinguished, decent lady who has fought for white nationalism.
Speaker 7: She's probably a bit too right wing for me, but
Speaker 7: she's a marvelous human being.
Speaker 2: So she's a bit two right wing for the race
Speaker 2: war guy, but she's a marvelous human being.
Speaker 1: He says.
Speaker 2: She's eighty one years old now, and she spent her
Speaker 2: entire life in the orbit of assassins and mercenaries and
Speaker 2: war criminals and bombers and rapists and torturers and terrorists
Speaker 2: and death squad leaders, and just one of the mill
Speaker 2: neo Nazis with fantasies of racial holy war. Her religion
Speaker 2: is quite literally one of blood. Her god is the
Speaker 2: vengeful God of blood River.
Speaker 1: This story is over the part of.
Speaker 2: It that was in the past anyway, but I can't
Speaker 2: move on without making the consequences clear. This is still happening.
Speaker 2: We'll leave Monica huggets Stone behind at long last, because
Speaker 2: she was just the backstory.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: Now we live in a world where these once fringe
Speaker 2: ideas are front page news at outlets with White House
Speaker 2: Press credentials. Now in twenty twenty five, the President of
Speaker 2: the United States wants to welcome as refugees these people
Speaker 2: with their apocalyptic visions of race war and mass extermination,
Speaker 2: These people who worship the god of the Blood River.
Speaker 2: Weird Little Guys is the production of Cool Soo Media
Speaker 2: and iHeartRadio. It's researched, written and recorded by me, Molly Conker.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Sophy Letterman and Robert Evans. The
Speaker 2: show is edited by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The
Speaker 2: theme music was composed by Brad Dickert. You can email
Speaker 2: me at Weird Little Guys podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2: I will definitely read it, but I probably won't answer it.
Speaker 2: It's nothing personal. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the
Speaker 2: show with other listeners on the Weird Little Guys separated it,
Speaker 2: but as always, don't post anything that's going to make
Speaker 2: you one of my weird little guys,