WEBVTT - Blood River 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:02.880 Col Zone media. 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:12.480 On December sixteenth, nineteen fifty six, all over South Africa, 0:00:13.119 --> 0:00:18.560 people gathered in city squares and event halls. Children's choirs performed, 0:00:19.600 --> 0:00:23.800 congregations gathered to sing hymns, and whole towns turned out 0:00:23.840 --> 0:00:28.160 to hear speeches from civic leaders and church elders. They 0:00:28.200 --> 0:00:31.880 barbecued and picnicked. They made a whole weekend of it, 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:35.919 with parades led by mounted police and festivals headlined by 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:40.720 government officials. All over the country, people attending events in 0:00:40.760 --> 0:00:44.000 their own towns tuned in to hear the Prime Minister's speech. 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:48.960 In Krugersdorp, a judge addressing the crowd in Jermyston urged 0:00:49.000 --> 0:00:54.360 Africaners not to forsake God by tolerating communism, saying quote, 0:00:55.480 --> 0:00:58.480 everywhere is the cry for equality of whites and non whites, 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:04.880 and everywhere it is fanned by communism. In Freddorp, a 0:01:04.880 --> 0:01:08.120 speaker waxed poetic on the noble character of their Dutch 0:01:08.120 --> 0:01:13.480 pioneer forefathers, saying quote, they were neither conquerors nor oppressors. 0:01:14.120 --> 0:01:19.640 They always followed a determined policy towards the barbarians. In Vadfal, 0:01:19.760 --> 0:01:22.240 a member of parliament gave a speech about the importance 0:01:22.319 --> 0:01:26.560 of apartheid, that it was in fact a kindness allowing 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:29.960 the races to live and let live, retaining their racial 0:01:30.000 --> 0:01:35.600 identities by avoiding race mixing. That speaker mc botha would 0:01:35.680 --> 0:01:39.240 later help design and implement the administration of the Bantustans, 0:01:40.040 --> 0:01:42.400 and that day he told the crowd that apartheid had 0:01:42.440 --> 0:01:47.800 a far more positive outlook than something like segregation. In 0:01:47.920 --> 0:01:51.880 Kempton Park, theologian Petras Dreyer warned that there could be 0:01:51.920 --> 0:01:56.480 no middle ground. Economic integration inevitably leads to social integration, 0:01:57.080 --> 0:02:03.760 which always ends in blood mixing. Apartheid was still young 0:02:03.800 --> 0:02:07.600 in nineteen fifty six, the system was still being constructed. 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:12.799 Dryer predicted a complete disappearance of the white race if 0:02:12.840 --> 0:02:17.280 the country failed to quickly adopt total and complete apartheid. 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:22.480 That celebration, the one in Kempton Park, was presided over 0:02:22.520 --> 0:02:28.360 by festival chair William Henry Huggett. He'd been the mayor 0:02:28.360 --> 0:02:30.800 of the city for several years in the early fifties, 0:02:31.400 --> 0:02:32.960 and he was on the board of his local branch 0:02:33.000 --> 0:02:36.600 of the National Party. The newspaper write up about the 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:40.239 event mentions him only briefly, I couldn't even tell you 0:02:40.280 --> 0:02:43.800 if mister Huggett gave a speech, But I'm willing to 0:02:43.800 --> 0:02:47.959 bet that they're in the audience listening to those warnings 0:02:47.960 --> 0:02:53.839 of impending racial annihilation. Was his daughter, a twelve year 0:02:53.840 --> 0:03:18.040 old Monica Huggett Hunger And this it's weird, little guys. 0:03:20.000 --> 0:03:25.000 This is a story about religious fervor. It's about myth 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:29.680 and legend and racial holy war. It's a story of 0:03:29.760 --> 0:03:35.240 very modern bombings and treason convictions and planned assassinations. But 0:03:35.280 --> 0:03:39.800 it's a story rooted in history. So first, if you'll 0:03:39.800 --> 0:03:45.680 indulge me a bit of history. December sixteenth is a 0:03:45.720 --> 0:03:51.640 significant day for South Africans. Today it's celebrated as Reconciliation Day, 0:03:53.080 --> 0:03:56.560 but it wasn't always a day of peace. In nineteen 0:03:56.600 --> 0:03:59.680 sixty one, the newly formed paramilitary Arm of the African 0:03:59.760 --> 0:04:03.880 National Congress and Konto Wi Sizwey announced their existence with 0:04:03.960 --> 0:04:08.400 a series of bomb blasts and leaflets declaring quote, the 0:04:08.480 --> 0:04:10.560 time comes in the life of any nation where there 0:04:10.600 --> 0:04:15.640 remains only two choices, submit or fight. That time has 0:04:15.680 --> 0:04:18.920 now come to South Africa. We shall not submit, and 0:04:18.960 --> 0:04:20.920 we have no choice but to hit back by all 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:25.159 means within our power in defense of our people. In 0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:28.480 nineteen thirty, the South African Communist Party held a nationwide 0:04:28.520 --> 0:04:32.880 protest encouraging black South Africans to publicly burn their past books, 0:04:33.520 --> 0:04:36.560 the internal passports black people were required to carry at 0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:41.280 all times. At a passbook burning rally in Durban, police 0:04:41.279 --> 0:04:45.760 attacked demonstrators, killing A and C organizer Johannes and Kosi. 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:49.160 In twenty twelve, a. 0:04:49.160 --> 0:04:52.560 Series of police raids were carried out, rounding up four 0:04:52.600 --> 0:04:57.160 men accused of treason and a plot to assassinate President Jacobsuma. 0:04:58.760 --> 0:05:02.080 And the reason that all of these things happened on 0:05:02.200 --> 0:05:07.159 December sixteenth is the same. It's the same reason those 0:05:07.200 --> 0:05:10.240 crowds gathered in city squares all over the country in 0:05:10.320 --> 0:05:15.080 nineteen fifty six. Until the holiday was repurposed as Reconciliation 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:18.800 Day in nineteen ninety five, it was celebrated as the 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:22.960 Day of the Vow. The holiday occupies a place of 0:05:23.240 --> 0:05:28.200 great importance in the political ideology of the africaner nationalist. 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:31.800 In the eighteen thirties, Dutch speaking settlers in the British 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:35.040 controlled colony at the Cape of Good Hope began migrating 0:05:35.080 --> 0:05:40.320 north away from British rule of course, the land north 0:05:40.360 --> 0:05:44.680 of the British Colony wasn't empty, and these exploratory missions 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:47.520 often came into conflict with the African people whose land 0:05:47.560 --> 0:05:51.839 they wanted to settle on. In eighteen thirty seven, one 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:54.840 of those bands of Dutch pioneers, known as the Fore Trekkers, 0:05:55.600 --> 0:05:57.440 set their sights on a bit of land in what 0:05:57.560 --> 0:06:02.279 is now Quasulu Natal. They approached the Zulu king Dingane 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:06.320 an attempt to negotiate, stating a desire to live in 0:06:06.360 --> 0:06:10.200 peace with the Zulu, but noting that they had been 0:06:10.279 --> 0:06:16.360 victorious in prior conflicts with Zulu warriors. The negotiations did 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:20.640 not go well. Dingane was understandably cautious in dealing with 0:06:20.680 --> 0:06:24.320 the Fort Trekkers. Earlier treks north had brought the settlers 0:06:24.360 --> 0:06:28.560 into violent conflict with the indigenous people they encountered, and 0:06:28.600 --> 0:06:31.280 their proposal just wasn't consistent with. 0:06:31.279 --> 0:06:32.920 The way the Zulu lived. 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:36.560 The Fort Trekers wanted a written contract for ownership of 0:06:36.600 --> 0:06:40.560 the land in perpetuity. Neither of these things were possible 0:06:40.560 --> 0:06:44.720 in Zulu society. Theirs was an oral culture. There were 0:06:44.760 --> 0:06:48.880 no written treaties or contracts, and their customs and laws 0:06:48.880 --> 0:06:52.119 didn't allow for the permanent transfer of ownership of land 0:06:52.120 --> 0:06:56.520 held by the king. In February of eighteen thirty eight, 0:06:57.080 --> 0:07:01.080 a four treker delegation led by Petretif met with Dinghane 0:07:01.080 --> 0:07:05.560 to sign the treaty. There are conflicting accounts as to 0:07:05.600 --> 0:07:09.359 whether this treaty was actually signed, but ding Ghane clearly 0:07:09.360 --> 0:07:13.400 had no intention of giving the Dutch settlers any land. 0:07:13.880 --> 0:07:16.800 The entire delegation was led to a nearby hillside and killed. 0:07:18.560 --> 0:07:22.720 There were retaliatory attacks and skirmishes throughout the year, but 0:07:22.800 --> 0:07:26.800 the settlers spent most of eighteen thirty eight regrouping. Farmers 0:07:26.840 --> 0:07:30.560 from the Cape Colony were called up as reinforcements, and 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:33.320 the bit of history that matters here came at the 0:07:33.440 --> 0:07:40.120 end of the year, the Battle of Blood River. In 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:43.960 December of eighteen thirty eight, Andres Pretorius led a caravan 0:07:44.000 --> 0:07:47.120 of fifty seven ox carts and four hundred and sixty 0:07:47.160 --> 0:07:52.400 four trekker men into Zulu territory. The four trekkers were 0:07:52.480 --> 0:07:57.080 armed with guns, and the caravan had several cannons. The 0:07:57.120 --> 0:08:02.080 battle began at dawn on December sixteenth. A surviving member 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:05.000 of the Zulu forces said their first charge was mown 0:08:05.120 --> 0:08:09.720 down like grass by the musket fire. The Zulu had 0:08:09.760 --> 0:08:14.080 an overwhelming numerical advantage, accounts very widely putting the number 0:08:14.120 --> 0:08:16.800 at at least nine thousand, with some estimates ranging as 0:08:16.880 --> 0:08:20.040 high as thirty thousand, but the Fort Trekkers had a 0:08:20.040 --> 0:08:27.320 strong defensive position and they had artillery. By noon, three 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:31.800 thousand Zulu warriors were dead. The Fort Trekkers had not 0:08:31.880 --> 0:08:34.600 lost a single man in the Battle of Blood River. 0:08:36.640 --> 0:08:39.559 There is, of course, no river with such a hideous name. 0:08:40.640 --> 0:08:42.800 The battle was fought on the banks of the Encome River, 0:08:44.040 --> 0:08:46.400 but on the day three thousand Zulu men were slain 0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:49.319 in a matter of hours. The river is said to 0:08:49.360 --> 0:08:51.160 have run red with their blood. 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:54.920 That much is true. 0:08:55.240 --> 0:08:58.320 The Battle of Blood River was fought on December sixteenth, 0:08:58.440 --> 0:09:03.120 eighteen thirty eight. The Day of the Vow, however, celebrates 0:09:03.160 --> 0:09:08.040 a possibly apocryphal vow sworn by Andres Pretorius that if 0:09:08.040 --> 0:09:11.160 God would deliver them a victory against the Zulu, their 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:14.080 descendants would forever keep that day as a holy sabbath. 0:09:15.800 --> 0:09:21.720 They didn't, not until many decades later, anyway. Leonard Thompson, 0:09:21.800 --> 0:09:25.920 an English historian who led Yale's Southern African Research program, 0:09:26.120 --> 0:09:29.920 posits that the Day of the Vow is political mythology, 0:09:30.840 --> 0:09:33.800 a piece of history that was resurrected and embellished when 0:09:33.840 --> 0:09:38.320 it was politically expedient. There is some kernel of truth. 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:42.560 There is a contemporary account in the journals of Pretorius's secretary, 0:09:42.600 --> 0:09:47.400 General Jan Bantis, that one week before the battle, Pretorius 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:50.360 called his senior officers to his tent and asked them 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:53.400 to pray to God for victory. And he promised that 0:09:53.440 --> 0:09:56.320 if they were victorious, he would build a church to 0:09:56.360 --> 0:10:01.080 commemorate it. And they did win, and he did build 0:10:01.120 --> 0:10:04.720 that church, thus fulfilling the only portion of that promise 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:09.360 that we have any record of. For decades, white South 0:10:09.400 --> 0:10:13.080 Africans did not keep December sixteenth as a holy sabbath. 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:17.920 An eighteen seventy seven text by a South African nationalist theologian, 0:10:18.600 --> 0:10:22.000 contains a history of the battle, but it makes no 0:10:22.200 --> 0:10:25.240 mention at all of any vow or of divine intervention. 0:10:28.640 --> 0:10:32.080 The story re emerged in the late eighteen hundreds amidst 0:10:32.120 --> 0:10:35.480 the Boer Wars, and in eighteen eighty a ceremony was 0:10:35.520 --> 0:10:39.120 held to renew the covenant, and in this ceremony they 0:10:39.320 --> 0:10:41.760 tied the story of the four treker victory over Black 0:10:41.800 --> 0:10:45.360 Africans to the present struggle for national identity against the 0:10:45.400 --> 0:10:50.480 British Empire. There were sporadic celebrations of the holiday in 0:10:50.480 --> 0:10:53.840 the last few decades of the nineteenth century, and the 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:58.079 story was evolving as a sort of founding myth. God 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:03.040 wanted the Africaner to have the land. God wanted whites 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:07.040 to conquer Black Africans. God gave the Afrikaaner of this 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:11.600 land because they were God's chosen people. When South Africa 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:14.800 gained independence in nineteen ten, one of the first acts 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:17.280 of Parliament was to make the Day of the Covenant 0:11:17.320 --> 0:11:22.840 a national holiday. In nineteen thirty eight, at the celebration 0:11:22.960 --> 0:11:24.719 of the one hundred year anniversary of the Battle of 0:11:24.720 --> 0:11:28.960 Blood River, nationalist politician D. F. Milan addressed the crowd. 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:33.199 He said Blood River had decided the future of South Africa, 0:11:34.080 --> 0:11:36.480 that it was to be a civilized Christian nation under 0:11:36.480 --> 0:11:40.200 the authority of the white race. And now, in that 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:43.920 moment in nineteen thirty eight, they were standing on the 0:11:43.920 --> 0:11:47.920 banks of their own Blood River quote, seeing the dark 0:11:48.000 --> 0:11:53.720 masses gathering around your isolated white race. A decade later, 0:11:54.120 --> 0:11:58.120 when Milan was elected Prime Minister, he oversaw the implementation 0:11:58.160 --> 0:12:03.439 of apartheid. You might be wondering at this point, why 0:12:03.480 --> 0:12:06.360 am I telling you about this? What does this racist, 0:12:06.400 --> 0:12:08.680 fake holiday have to do with the subject of our story, 0:12:09.400 --> 0:12:15.560 Monica huggets Stone, It has everything to do with her. 0:12:16.880 --> 0:12:20.360 Her belief in the vengeful racist God of Blood River 0:12:21.120 --> 0:12:25.079 is central to the way she has lived her entire life. 0:12:25.240 --> 0:12:28.000 She brings it up in almost every interview I could find. 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:32.319 In one podcast from twenty twenty one, she describes visiting 0:12:32.400 --> 0:12:36.720 the site with her family as a child. To this day, 0:12:37.400 --> 0:12:41.160 she believes that if the africaner renews that vow, their 0:12:41.240 --> 0:12:44.240 God will guide their hand in slaughtering the enemies of 0:12:44.280 --> 0:12:46.880 the white race, whoever they may be. 0:12:49.800 --> 0:12:53.080 And this is what I'm clinging to, is that the 0:12:53.120 --> 0:12:56.480 God of Blood Lover is not dead. Even if the 0:12:56.760 --> 0:13:01.240 enemy all over the world, and might they not only black, 0:13:01.960 --> 0:13:06.240 the white governments of the waste caused the fall of 0:13:06.280 --> 0:13:10.120 South Africa and Rhodesia and the rist of the white 0:13:10.720 --> 0:13:14.520 colonies in Africa. 0:13:14.600 --> 0:13:16.480 The jew has their hand in there. 0:13:16.640 --> 0:13:18.640 Oh, absolutely absolutely. 0:13:22.800 --> 0:13:26.760 The constructed mythology around the importance of that day became 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:32.560 so central to African internationalist ideology and identity that for decades, 0:13:32.600 --> 0:13:36.679 there was no scholarship at all examining its historical roots. 0:13:37.679 --> 0:13:41.720 In nineteen seventy nine, historian Flores van yarsfeld was presenting 0:13:41.800 --> 0:13:45.600 a conference paper at the University of Pretoria. He had 0:13:45.600 --> 0:13:49.040 begun to question the historicity of the popular cultural narratives 0:13:49.040 --> 0:13:52.679 about Blood River, and just as he approached the lectern 0:13:52.800 --> 0:13:56.440 to present his paper, forty men burst into the lecture 0:13:56.440 --> 0:14:00.920 hall and surrounded the professor, emptied the tin of hot 0:14:01.000 --> 0:14:05.800 tar over him, and coated him in white feathers. Those 0:14:05.840 --> 0:14:08.360 men were members of a group that had up until 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:11.240 that very moment operated entirely in secret. 0:14:12.440 --> 0:14:13.960 This was their big public debut. 0:14:15.400 --> 0:14:19.920 The leader seized the microphone and announced himself. He was 0:14:19.960 --> 0:14:26.440 Eugene Terreblanche, leader of the Africaner Resistance movement. He called 0:14:26.520 --> 0:14:30.800 vin Yarsfeldt's paper blasphemous, an attack on the sanctity and 0:14:31.000 --> 0:14:36.840 very essence of Africanner identity. Early on, in the process 0:14:36.960 --> 0:14:42.360 of figuring out who Monica huggets Stone was, I saw 0:14:42.400 --> 0:14:46.120 a very strange comment. I was reading a blog post 0:14:46.160 --> 0:14:49.720 about an internal schism within a modern day Africaner nationalist 0:14:49.720 --> 0:14:53.800 group called the Swedelanders. The blog was written by Adrian Snyman. 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:57.080 We'll get to him in a minute. But in the 0:14:57.120 --> 0:15:01.200 comments under the post, there was one from Monica posted 0:15:01.240 --> 0:15:04.760 in twenty twenty three, and she was so sorry to 0:15:04.800 --> 0:15:07.360 see whites turning on each other instead of focusing on 0:15:07.360 --> 0:15:11.080 the real enemy. And she ends this rather long comment 0:15:11.160 --> 0:15:15.440 by saying, quote, the time is now for the Boer 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:18.560 people to stand together, to go on their knees and 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:21.520 beg forgiveness from our creator, the Great Almighty God, who 0:15:21.520 --> 0:15:24.240 created the heavens and the earth. We have turned our 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:26.720 backs on God and have the mistaken idea that we 0:15:26.800 --> 0:15:30.280 ourselves are the saviors of the Boer people. God has 0:15:30.280 --> 0:15:33.560 not abandoned us. He is waiting patiently for the people 0:15:33.600 --> 0:15:37.800 to call upon him. Just as at Blood River, he 0:15:37.840 --> 0:15:43.640 will answer again and give his children victory. And I 0:15:43.640 --> 0:15:46.400 didn't know what that meant, so I made a note 0:15:46.400 --> 0:15:49.840 of it, and I moved on, And then I saw 0:15:49.880 --> 0:15:51.880 it again in a YouTube. 0:15:51.480 --> 0:15:53.120 Comment just a few months ago. 0:15:53.920 --> 0:15:56.840 She wrote, may the God of Blood River be with 0:15:56.960 --> 0:16:00.240 his children and give us victory against his enemy. 0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:02.160 And then I found a series of. 0:16:02.240 --> 0:16:05.560 Articles she wrote for a rabidly anti Semitic Christian identity 0:16:05.600 --> 0:16:10.040 magazine between twenty eleven and twenty seventeen, and they're all 0:16:10.120 --> 0:16:13.760 very strange. The Bible verses she quotes are from a 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:17.880 translation I'd never heard of. It's not the King James 0:16:17.960 --> 0:16:22.000 or the New International. It's something else, entirely, something called 0:16:22.040 --> 0:16:27.880 the Ferrari Fentin Bible. He was apparently a British businessman 0:16:28.080 --> 0:16:32.360 who died in nineteen twenty, and his translation is not 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:37.240 well regarded by biblical scholars. He was also briefly the 0:16:37.280 --> 0:16:40.640 head of the South African diamond mining corporation, the Dedbers Group, 0:16:41.840 --> 0:16:45.680 and he believed that British people were the true Israelites. 0:16:47.040 --> 0:16:49.320 I didn't know the Ferra Fentin Bible was even an option, 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:53.000 but I guess if you're a racist South African who 0:16:53.000 --> 0:16:55.520 believes white people are the descendants of the lost tribes of. 0:16:55.480 --> 0:16:57.480 Israel, it's the perfect choice. 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:03.720 In those articles, she predicts a coming race war, and 0:17:03.760 --> 0:17:07.240 she agonizes over what she calls satanic attacks on the 0:17:07.400 --> 0:17:11.720 Aryan race, and there at the end of pages of 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:17.119 apocalyptic rambling, she calls for a renewal of the vow 0:17:17.880 --> 0:17:18.840 of Blood River. 0:17:21.400 --> 0:17:22.119 And that blog. 0:17:22.960 --> 0:17:26.119 Monica's comment in twenty twenty three on that post about 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:29.639 internal divisions within a right wing Africannor group preparing for 0:17:29.680 --> 0:17:33.320 a race war. Well, that comment wasn't her only appearance 0:17:33.359 --> 0:17:38.800 on that site. In twenty eleven, the blog's author, Adrian Snyman, 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:43.520 wrote a post with the title thank you Aryan Nations, 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:48.159 and the post is a response to Monica Stone. She 0:17:48.200 --> 0:17:50.320 had written privately to Snyman to let him know that 0:17:50.320 --> 0:17:53.159 she would be attending the Aryan Nations World Congress in 0:17:53.200 --> 0:17:56.200 September of twenty eleven, and she'd be giving a speech 0:17:56.240 --> 0:18:00.440 about the white genocide in South Africa. Sneyman's post describes 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:03.960 Monica as the only female member of the Africaner Resistance 0:18:04.000 --> 0:18:06.560 movement to have ever served time in prison for her 0:18:06.560 --> 0:18:09.879 involvement in the group, and he urges his readers to 0:18:09.920 --> 0:18:12.879 email her their letters of thanks so she can present 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:17.440 them to the Aryan Nations after her speech. And here's 0:18:17.800 --> 0:18:22.040 where things start to go off the rails. Adrian Snyman, 0:18:22.600 --> 0:18:24.000 the author of that blog. 0:18:24.600 --> 0:18:26.280 Is a prolific writer. 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:30.719 In his younger years, he worked for a newspaper covering 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:35.479 horse racing, and for decades he'd cranked out dozens of 0:18:35.600 --> 0:18:40.119 novels under a variety of pseudonyms. But by nineteen ninety 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:46.200 he'd found his calling interpreting the prophecies of Nicklaus van Rensburg. 0:18:48.600 --> 0:18:51.879 Nicholas van Rensburg was born in eighteen sixty four on 0:18:51.960 --> 0:18:56.000 a farm in what is now South Africa. He never 0:18:56.080 --> 0:18:58.480 learned to write, and he only learned to read by 0:18:58.560 --> 0:19:02.000 sounding out the words of the Bible. He died in 0:19:02.080 --> 0:19:06.119 nineteen twenty six during the Second Boer War. He was 0:19:06.160 --> 0:19:08.480 a close companion of General. 0:19:08.200 --> 0:19:09.800 Coups de la Rey. 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:16.960 He was also allegedly a prophet of God. I spent 0:19:17.840 --> 0:19:22.480 too much time trying to parse the prophecies. I had 0:19:22.480 --> 0:19:27.639 trouble locating any actual, original written versions of the prophecies. 0:19:27.760 --> 0:19:31.160 I don't want to see interpretations of them. I want 0:19:31.160 --> 0:19:34.719 to see them, and I looked for some original source 0:19:34.880 --> 0:19:40.120 for entirely too long before I realized they don't exist. 0:19:41.480 --> 0:19:45.480 According to Snyman, Van Renzberg's daughter Anna wrote down over 0:19:45.560 --> 0:19:49.520 seven hundred of her father's visions, but the original handwritten 0:19:49.560 --> 0:19:52.560 books were lost. At the time of her death in 0:19:52.640 --> 0:19:55.320 nineteen eighty one, the family was not in possession of 0:19:55.359 --> 0:19:59.880 any of those writings. It appears he's based his books 0:20:00.359 --> 0:20:05.400 on a document written in nineteen forty two a man 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:08.400 who had seen those original written versions of the prophecies 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:12.720 related them orally to another man who wrote them down 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:19.280 sixteen years after Van Rensburg died, and even that document 0:20:19.359 --> 0:20:23.960 was lost until Sneiman received it in nineteen ninety. There's 0:20:24.000 --> 0:20:27.360 no explanation of where it was in between or how 0:20:27.400 --> 0:20:31.520 he came to possess it. Very unclear providence on these prophecies. 0:20:31.520 --> 0:20:35.919 There's no chain of custody on the prophecies. Sneiman has 0:20:35.920 --> 0:20:38.920 written so feverishly on the subject for the last thirty 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:43.000 five years that almost everything I can find about Van 0:20:43.080 --> 0:20:48.800 Rensburg is written by him, and everything else relies on 0:20:48.880 --> 0:20:54.159 his work. There are some contemporary accounts of some of 0:20:54.240 --> 0:20:57.960 Van Rensburgh's visions, but it's worth mentioning that the most 0:20:58.000 --> 0:21:03.199 spectacular examples of his coming to pass aren't ones I 0:21:03.280 --> 0:21:06.040 was able to find written accounts of that date back 0:21:06.080 --> 0:21:09.960 to his lifetime, and the interpretations of those prophecies that 0:21:10.320 --> 0:21:15.639 present possible modern occurrences as their fulfillment are almost universally 0:21:15.640 --> 0:21:21.400 written by fervent race war enthusiasts, people who really really 0:21:21.560 --> 0:21:26.280 want the prophecies to be true. And the problem with 0:21:26.359 --> 0:21:31.040 prophecies that some people really really want to be true 0:21:32.200 --> 0:21:35.800 is that there will sometimes be people who take matters 0:21:35.800 --> 0:21:41.240 into their own hands and try to make them come true. 0:21:41.359 --> 0:21:45.840 Most of his visions are entirely symbolic, things like I 0:21:45.880 --> 0:21:49.480 saw a red bull and AGray bull fighting is interpreted 0:21:49.680 --> 0:21:52.760 by his followers as an accurate prediction of World War One, 0:21:54.040 --> 0:21:57.879 or out of the north, a speckled black ox appears. 0:21:58.240 --> 0:22:00.800 He is looking in our direction. The earth in our 0:22:00.840 --> 0:22:03.720 country becomes desolate, but in Europe it becomes pitch dark, 0:22:05.040 --> 0:22:07.760 and that is apparently a prediction of the Great Depression. 0:22:09.720 --> 0:22:13.919 According to Sneimann, Van Rezberg correctly predicted such events as 0:22:14.520 --> 0:22:19.240 every war of the twentieth century, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster Aids, 0:22:19.640 --> 0:22:22.639 the collapse of the Soviet Union, the election of Margaret Thatcher, 0:22:23.119 --> 0:22:27.760 Princess Diana's divorce, Princess Diana's death, and a nineteen ninety 0:22:27.760 --> 0:22:32.719 five earthquake in Japan. As for the prophecies that haven't 0:22:32.720 --> 0:22:36.399 come true, well maybe they just haven't come true yet. 0:22:39.400 --> 0:22:43.679 In nineteen sixteen, he tells his friend boy Mussmann, there 0:22:43.720 --> 0:22:45.960 will come a time when I will be once again 0:22:46.040 --> 0:22:49.679 in the news. In those days, I see we are 0:22:49.720 --> 0:22:54.760 still fighting amongst ourselves, and it is over, and we 0:22:54.800 --> 0:22:58.359 will have a black government. It is then that the 0:22:58.359 --> 0:23:01.160 Afrikaan is final and fist struggle will begin. 0:23:09.520 --> 0:23:12.480 According to Snyman's books, Ben Ronzburg had a vision in 0:23:12.560 --> 0:23:15.639 nineteen twenty five, six months before his death. 0:23:17.440 --> 0:23:18.840 The actual text of. 0:23:18.800 --> 0:23:22.720 This prophecy is word slid, something about a goose coming 0:23:22.720 --> 0:23:26.160 out of a man's mouth, but it's interpreted to mean 0:23:26.200 --> 0:23:30.199 that Van Rensburg predicted that in the distant future a 0:23:30.240 --> 0:23:33.520 black man will be released from prison and that man 0:23:33.560 --> 0:23:36.560 will attain power, and under his rule the country will 0:23:36.600 --> 0:23:40.480 be thrown into chaos, and at some point that man 0:23:40.520 --> 0:23:43.600 will die a violent death, and on the eighth day 0:23:43.600 --> 0:23:47.240 after his death, the day he is buried, a civil 0:23:47.280 --> 0:23:53.000 war will begin. By his own account, Snyman started interpreting 0:23:53.040 --> 0:23:56.760 the prophecies in nineteen ninety He published his first book 0:23:56.800 --> 0:24:00.160 on them in nineteen ninety two, but the earliest writing 0:24:00.280 --> 0:24:02.480 I could actually get my hands on is from nineteen 0:24:02.520 --> 0:24:06.120 ninety five, So I can't tell you if Sneimann always 0:24:06.160 --> 0:24:09.439 believed that this particular prophecy was about Nelson Mandela and 0:24:09.520 --> 0:24:12.240 his release from prison in nineteen ninety and his election 0:24:12.320 --> 0:24:16.080 as president in nineteen ninety four, but that's his interpretation. Now, 0:24:17.400 --> 0:24:21.280 and this particular prophecy has inspired at least two attempts 0:24:21.960 --> 0:24:26.000 to force it to come true. In late two thousand 0:24:26.040 --> 0:24:30.159 and two, a white supremacist terrorist organization calling itself the 0:24:30.200 --> 0:24:34.119 Booramag set off a series of bombs in Soeto, outside 0:24:34.160 --> 0:24:39.920 of Johannesburg. They targeted a mosque, a Buddhist temple, an airport, 0:24:40.080 --> 0:24:44.639 a gas station, and railways, and those bombs went off 0:24:44.840 --> 0:24:50.240 after the first round of arrests earlier that year. After 0:24:50.280 --> 0:24:54.560 the wave of bombing, the group emailed newspapers taking responsibility 0:24:54.600 --> 0:24:58.119 for the attacks. They demanded the release of the Booramag 0:24:58.200 --> 0:25:01.760 members who'd already been arrested, but it warned that it 0:25:01.800 --> 0:25:04.639 wasn't just lower ranking members of the group that people 0:25:04.640 --> 0:25:08.480 should be worried about interfering with the mission of the 0:25:08.480 --> 0:25:12.000 Boramagu was a challenge to the God of the Blood River. 0:25:13.280 --> 0:25:16.960 If their demands weren't met, another wave of bombings would commence. 0:25:17.960 --> 0:25:36.040 On December sixteenth, the day of the vow. Those bombings 0:25:36.080 --> 0:25:39.720 did not come to pass. Police responded to the emails 0:25:39.760 --> 0:25:45.800 by raiding ninety four properties and arresting eleven more Boromac members. Intriguingly, 0:25:46.480 --> 0:25:49.480 some of the homes that were raided that day belonged 0:25:49.520 --> 0:25:53.199 to men we've encountered elsewhere in this story. There were 0:25:53.240 --> 0:25:56.639 police raids at the home of Baron Stredam, the White Wolf, 0:25:56.680 --> 0:25:58.720 who went on a shooting spree in nineteen eighty eight, 0:26:00.040 --> 0:26:02.840 and at the home of villem Rata, the former Rhodesian 0:26:02.880 --> 0:26:06.120 military officer who commanded the German mercenaries at Radio Pratoria 0:26:06.119 --> 0:26:10.680 in nineteen ninety four. Africana Resistance Movement member Mani Merits 0:26:11.840 --> 0:26:16.960 and Pete Rudolph, the leader of the Order Borofolk at 0:26:16.960 --> 0:26:20.159 one of these homes, though none of the reporting specifies 0:26:20.240 --> 0:26:24.160 whose police found a list of names of the detectives 0:26:24.600 --> 0:26:29.320 who had been investigating the Borromac. The trials took over 0:26:29.359 --> 0:26:34.159 a decade, with testimony from over two hundred people. In 0:26:34.200 --> 0:26:37.240 the end, twenty three members of the group received prison 0:26:37.280 --> 0:26:41.159 sentences of varying lengths between five and thirty five years. 0:26:42.480 --> 0:26:45.359 The ring leader, Mike Detoy, was the first South African 0:26:45.400 --> 0:26:48.120 to be convicted of treason by the post apartheid government, 0:26:49.520 --> 0:26:53.080 and because the cases spent eleven years in court, we 0:26:53.200 --> 0:26:57.159 know a lot about them. At the group's first meeting, 0:26:58.040 --> 0:27:02.040 members took the vow of blood River. They carried copies 0:27:02.080 --> 0:27:04.640 of the vow pasted into a little book at all times, 0:27:05.560 --> 0:27:09.760 and they gave each other code names like Rottweiler and motherfucker. 0:27:11.280 --> 0:27:13.520 After they swore their allegiance to God and each other, 0:27:14.440 --> 0:27:16.439 the leader of the group gave each man a single 0:27:16.560 --> 0:27:21.720 nine millimeter bullet. In later testimony, a member said quote 0:27:22.119 --> 0:27:25.160 he said, there was no turning back now. Anyone turning 0:27:25.160 --> 0:27:27.600 back will be shot, and if you knew somebody would 0:27:27.640 --> 0:27:30.320 betray you, you had to make sure he was shot. 0:27:33.400 --> 0:27:36.639 In October of two thousand and two, former President Nelson 0:27:36.640 --> 0:27:40.280 Mandela was scheduled to travel to Limpopo for a ceremony 0:27:40.320 --> 0:27:44.399 opening a new school. Boromag members placed a large bomb 0:27:44.400 --> 0:27:45.880 on the side of the road they knew he would 0:27:45.880 --> 0:27:47.680 have to travel to get there, and. 0:27:47.680 --> 0:27:49.199 Stretched a trip wire across it. 0:27:50.840 --> 0:27:53.600 They were hiding in the bushes waiting to watch the 0:27:53.720 --> 0:27:57.679 former president get blown to bits when they heard the helicopter. 0:27:58.880 --> 0:27:59.520