The Observation Post will be taking the circuit lecture and talk on the history of the Torch Commando to Simonstown next. It will be hosted by the Naval Officers’ Association of Southern Africa at the Seven Seas Club in Simonstown. It is a closed session for members of the Seven Seas and Naval Officers’ fraternity, their partners and invited guests.
Peter Dickens – B Soc.Sc. (Rhodes) PG Dip (UNISA) – will be presenting the lecture on the Rise and Fall of the Torch Commando, he will be joined by fellow discussant Capt (SAN) Graeme Plint – MMM MMil. (Stell). Graeme’s 2021 Masters thesis “The influence of Second World War military service on prominent White South African veterans in opposition politics 1939 – 1961” will add significant gravitas to the discussion on The Torch Commando and Sailor Malan, the South African war-time Battle of Britain ace.
Titled ‘An inconvenient truth’ it is an in-depth look at The Torch Commando, South Africa’s first mass Anti-Apartheid protest movement and the politics of returning South African WW2 veterans.
Topics to be covered include:
The Nazification of the Afrikaner Right
TheReturning War Veterans Action Committee
SailorMalan
The Steel Commando
The rise and fall of The Torch Commando
The smoking gun to the ‘white’ struggle against Apartheid
Date: 14th May 2024
Venue: Seven Seas Club, Simonstown.
Time: 11:30 am start.
Who: Naval Officers’ Association members, their partners and invited guests.
This is the Afrikaans text version of the landmark WW1 poem “In Flanders Fields” written by Lt Col John McCrae as translated into Afrikaans for the 100 year anniversary of The Battle of Delville Wood and the Somme Offensive in July 2016.
As the Battle of Delville Wood involved South Africans of both British and Afrikaner origin, and it was the battle which forged the young Union of South Africa’s identity, it was felt that it would be appropriate to translate ‘In Flanders Fields’ into Afrikaans and read it at the centenary ceremony. The poem up to that point had already been translated into a variety of languages, but not Afrikaans.
This Afrikaans translation is the result of a dedicated collaborative effort.
In Vlaandere se Velde – Deur Lt. Kol John McCrae
In Vlaand’re wieg papawers sag Tussen kruise, grag op grag, As bakens; en deur dit alles deur Die lewerikke tjilpend in dapper vlug, Skaars hoorbaar bo die grofgeskut van kanonne.
Ons is die Dooies. Dae gelede het ons geleef die dagbreek en sonsondergloed beleef. Was bemind en was verlief, nou lê ons in Vlaandere se velde.
Veg voort my Kind met alle mag; neem uit my hand die lig, met krag moet jul die fakkel dra, met eer. Wie durf Ons dood verloën, onteer – ons sal steeds dwaal, ons sal nie slaap, solank papawers groei in Vlaandere se velde.
The original English version, composed by Colonel McCrae after he buried Alexis Helmer, a close friend, who was killed during the battle of Ypres. McCrae performed the burial service himself, at which time he noted how poppies quickly grew around the graves of those who died. The next day, he composed the poem while sitting in the back of an ambulance at an Advanced Dressing Station just outside the town of Ypres. This location is today known as the John McCrae Memorial Site.
Here’s what he wrote:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.
The poem was kindly translated into Afrikaans by Hendrik Neethling and Walter E. Vice as a collaboration on behalf of the South African Legion and The Royal British Legion. It was arranged and read by Karen Dickens at the Legion’s Centenary Service of the South African sacrifice on the Somme and the Battle of Delville Wood. This landmark occasion was held at the Thiepval Memorial to the missing in France on 10th July 2016.
Posted in memory of the co-author of this translation – Hendrik Neethling, may he Rest in Peace.
Written by Peter Dickens
My thanks to Theo Fernandes for the image and my wife Karen Dickens for her dedication in translating ‘In Flanders Field’ into her Mother Tongue.
Related Links and Work
Springbok Valour Some 100 dedication – Thiepval Memorial
Recently, a Boer War historian, Chris Ash published some interesting works on Breaker Morant on his blog, and it’s not what you may think of this hero to some and villain to others, ultimately executed for the murder of unarmed Boers during the South African War 1899 – 1902. It was not his trial, or the murders he committed or controversy around his execution by the British, nor the controversy of nationalists making a hero of him in latter years – simply because they saw him as a British scapegoat. It was also not the repeated attempts by current Australian social activists trying to embolden Morant as a National Australian Hero and their repeated and unsuccessful attempts to get the British government to issue a “pardon” for him and apologise for shooting him. Nah! None of that … turns out Breaker Morant was an accomplished poet – and Chris Ash simply published some of his poems.
I wrote to Chris Ash on one of the published poems and stated that it remained ironic, for all the hullabaloo over Breaker Morant and calls for his reinterment on Australian soil as a National Australian hero .. his grave in Pretoria was in fact empty, there’s nothing in it. This came as a surprise to him – and to others I’m sure as its a very little known fact.
Lt. Harry “The Breaker” Harbord Morant
Empty! Huh – no Morant, what happened and where the hell is Breaker? Well, here again there’s a little more controversy to this very controversial man.
A while back in early February 2024 I published an Observation Post on the Boer War 2 titled ‘War is Cruelty’ War is Cruelty – a very esteemed Australian based historian, Gordon Mackinlay wrote some of the content and he wrote to me to say, according to his research, Breaker Morant was gone – so too Hancock buried with him, the result of a grave robbery in the 80’s – the grave site near the hallowed acre of Afrikaner heroes in Pretoria had been tampered with – detectives found no bodies, so they put it down to a grave robbery for African “Muti” purposes. The conclusion that the bones of men executed held mystical powers and of value to practitioners of traditional African “Muti” medicine. The Australian government sponsored a nice new slab for the grave in the knowledge that neither Morant or Hancock are in it.1
On the Observation Post’s scuttlebutt Facebook group, this question was again raised, along with Danie Theron, the famous Boer Scout, whose grave was also robbed. A good friend, fellow historian and regular contributor to the Observation Post, Johann Hamman gave us some fresh insight.
Johann is a leading Afrikaans battlefield historian and I generally sit up and listen to him. The feedback as follows:
The remains of Danie Theron had indeed been stolen from his grave. 2He had been taken by two Afrikaner Weerstandsbewegin (Afrikaner Resistance Movement – AWB) members from Carltonville, but his remains had since been recovered. He was re-buried and the site was re-secured at Eikenhof. The AWB men robbed the grave of his remains because they did not want their ‘white’ Boer hero to lie among the ‘Black’ Africans buried in the same cemetery from the nearby modern township.
On Breaker Morant – he is most certainly not present in his grave anymore, however, according to Johann it is not because of any Muti-theft in the 80’s – the detectives are mistaken. When Morant was buried they poured two bags of unslaked lime on top of him, and what they buried there is no longer there as a result. There is nothing to steal.3
Johann Hamman and Gerald Leach among others, researched Morant as thoroughly as possible, and they blocked an attempt to have him pardoned as an Australian hero by Queen Elizabeth twice.
The argument was that Morant, Handcock and Taylor had been responsible for the murder of at least 36 people, of whom the youngest were Boer children of 11 years, they were murderous and their execution justified. Morant himself admitted to 12 killings at his court-martial, one was the Reverend Heese, who was the great-grandfather of Johan’s friend – the late Hendrik Neethling.4
Just to note, the British poured unslaked lime on everyone they executed in Boer War 2, Cape Rebels and Boers wearing British Khaki uniform included. There has been some research on whether unslaked lime speeds up decomposition or in fact aids preservation of the corpse, however even here school is out, some medical journals and specialists specify preservation others demonstrate the opposite – rapid decomposition.
Now, I’m pretty sure that the case on Morant is forever open to endless debate, especially in Australia, but the general conclusion most historians come to is regardless of legalise, and whether Morant was even an Australian – he was by all accounts a maverick from the get-go, his execution an inevitability and for very justifiable reasons (many in fact just conclude that ‘he had it coming’). There are countless Australian heroes from their statutory forces over the years, and to be honest they can find amongst them far more suitable candidates to honour than Morant.
Either way we cut it, whether the bones were stolen, whether they are completely destroyed by unslaked lime – or not – Breaker Morant is not there, the grave is empty.
Lately, and especially in my little town of Hermanus is a complete storm in a teacup over a very likeable young man by the name of Benjamin Rattle – Ben to his mates. I’m in the beer brewing game, so too is the Rattle family so we interact with them often as part of the three main ‘local’ beer suppliers to Hermanus.
Now, Ben finished high school not long ago and was pretty much part of the young millennial crowd in Hermanus, well liked in the surfer circles, working briefly for his Dad’s brewing company, he – like many of his age set out to discover the world and being Jewish figured a good start would be to resolve his Israeli citizenship and do his national service in the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). An option open to Jews the world over and perfectly legal and perfectly legitimate in a recognised statutory defence force abiding by all the international conventions – which whether some believe it or not the IDF falls part.
Whist performing his national service, he – like other dual national Jewish South Africans in a similar situation with commitments in the IDF, suddenly found his country under attack and he was deployed to Gaza for counter offensive operations. All good so far, he’s not some religious nut-job whose bolted to the Middle East to exterminate Arabs in some fanatical sense of wiping them off the planet … he’s a simple national serviceman performing his duties, and whilst in service his circumstances changed and have led him to war.
Like any national servicemen, and many of us in South Africa who have military experience as being National Servicemen will know – pride in service is central, so too family in support, and Ben’s Dad served in the South African Army as a conscript, and like all military vets he knows the importance of this – so like thousands of national servicemen before him, Ben took to a couple of photos of himself on duty and some with his folks whilst he’s in uniform (his parents obviously proud and concerned for their son at the same time) and put these images up on his social media accounts.1
Now, back in his ‘Old Country’ in South Africa a small muslim action group named the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) enamoured with the South African government’s open sympathy with Palestine and armed movements like Hamas whose stated intention is the annihilation of jews, took to pressing charges of genocide and illegally serving in a foreign army against Ben Rattle at a local Cape Town Police station … using his Instagram and social media pictures in the public space as ‘proof’ positive of his “crime”. 2
This in turn pricked journalists to get hold of Ben, who allegedly told them to hop it, as a Jew in defence of his country he’s doing nothing wrong and that the South African government should focus on its own problem of millions of its own destitute Africans living in shacks in similar if not worse conditions than Palestinians, and should stop meddling in affairs that don’t really concern them 3 Ben’s alleged position no different from that of the Israeli government – so nothing new here.
All this, and a silly petition calling for South African soldiers in the IDF to be prosecuted with only 1,200 signatures – spun our very partisan African National Congress government into action, and Nadeli Pandor, our Minister of International Relations and Cooperation for South Africa, who was in the USA urgently trying to convince them not to sanction South Africa for its “covert” but very overt sympathies and support of Russia and other rogue and terrorist states and organisations – and for the Americans this also includes Hamas and Iran.4
Pandor’s line with the Americans is that South Africa is just a leader in human rights and supports arbitration and negotiation for conflict resolution, our Mandela magic ethos and we are ‘neutral’ that’s all – and the Americans aren’t buying it, and she can’t figure out why. However a few weeks earlier in March, she declares all South Africans who are on dual national status serving in the Israeli Defence Force (and that includes Ben) will be arrested the minute they re-enter South Africa – on the basis that there is legislation outlawing South Africans from serving in “foreign” armies without “permission”. 5
Nadeli Pandor, our Minister of International Relations and Cooperation for South Africa nailing her colours to the mast.
Somehow the ANC thinks that’s the morally good thing to do, leaving their senses again as they fail to recognise that by our shared history and perfectly legitimately, there are literally hundreds of thousands of South Africans who have held dual British and South African citizenships and have served in the British Armed Forces and many of her Allied forces from 1910 – through two world wars and continue to do so to this day. There are thousands of South Africans of Jewish decent who have served in the Israeli Defence Force from its inception, over 500 WW2 military veteran South Africans were recruited to fight in the Israel War of Independence in 1948 alone 6 and Jewish South Africans continued to serve in the IDF and still do so to this day.
Not even by birthright mind, there are even thousands of South Africans who have obtained dual citizen status after serving in the British Armed Forces (BAF) under the Commonwealth agreement after 1994 and South Africa’s re-admittance to the Commonwealth, many recently serving in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars – and many still in service in His Majesty’s Armed Forces. Most of them serving in the BAF because it simply offered better career growth opportunities for someone seeking a military career than the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) could ever offer, and I can almost guarantee none of them got permission from the ANC government to serve in the BAF.
There are entire groupings of South African’s in the current British Armed Forces, they even have a honour roll of South Africans who died in action in British uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan and there are current South Africans who have received high accolades and British bravery decorations – their families very proud of them.
As the President of the South African Legion of Military Veterans in the UK, I personally know of five close friends of mine who served in both the South African and British militaries, and not just Britain, I’ve a close friend who served in the South African Navy and is now an Admiral in the Royal Australian Navy and as to the diaspora of South Africans the world over – one of my Australian nephews is currently in the Australian Navy serving as a Ensign with the very Aussie surname of “van der Merwe”.
Over and above that the French Foreign Legion which has seen South Africans join it over the years to obtain French and EU citizenship and even in the USA, there are many dual National South Africans currently serving in their armed forces.
So, somehow the ANC and the hapless Nadeli Pandor have just managed to put thousands of South Africans world over in statute and legitimate forces under threat of arrest if they visit or emigrate back to South Africa based on some obscure and previously ignored legislation – and knowing military veterans and their families – to a man they will in all likelihood stand behind a fellow statutory force military brother like Ben Rattle and tell the ANC and Nadeli Pandor to ‘hop it’ (its a military thing – a value we all share).
What the ANC, and Nadeli Pandor did by bringing genocide accusations against a legitimate and mandated statute military is they “took a side” and stepped away from the ANC’s only real legitimacy as the worlds even handed “reconciler” and peacemaker – a reputation reached by Nelson Mandela in 1994 when he stood up and accused F.W. De Klerk and the National Party of been in an “illegitimate and internationally discredited government”, and this reputation of Mandela is now utterly in tatters in 2024, with an ANC heading up a corrupt kleptocracy and becoming more “discredited” in the international community by the day – certainly in all the “western” European democracies and NATO countries.
So what happened next, to demonstrate just what thin ice Nadeli Pandor is on, the United States of America’s government turned around to her and her cronies and warned South Africa that if they so much as arrested one South African serving in a legitimate foreign statute force and specifically in the Isreali Defence Force, South Africa would face sanctions and severe “consequences”. 7 This coming from one of South Africa’s largest trading partners, it’s as if the ANC just have no conception on how an economy works and besides electricity we can afford yet another significant assault on it – so much for addressing poverty, unemployment and wealth gap issues which beset the economy and are critical issues crippling the country.
On a personal level, the ANC and their Muslim cabal are acting like a bullies, taking on simple soldier like Ben Rattle, a man who does not even hold a commission or non-comm warrant and plays no part whatsoever in the IDF’s military planning – strategic or operational, he’s merely doing his duty on a tactical level and what is commanded of him – and he has no moral quandary with that, it’s his ‘religion’, his ‘people’ and his ‘country’. In addition he plays no part in Isreali politics and yet finds himself thrust into the limelight. Unhinged individuals living in his hometown of Hermanus have even taken to targeting his Dad’s brewery business calling for boycotting it and its product.
Unhinged, because many years ago Germany’s elected government decided to blame Jews for the world’s woes, and the result was that their ‘mass’ population took to targeting Jews and Jewish business – because the government tacitly agreed with their actions and supported them – suitably empowered this eventually led to a proper genocide, millions of Jews murdered by ordinary Germans who had completely lost touch with their perfectly reasonable religious values and adopted state sponsored socialist ones instead. Our ANC government does not seem to understand the sweep of history very well – and as socialists themselves they are empowering our ‘masses’ to so the same – same as the Nazis did, no different – and its starts with accusing normal law abiding Jews of committing crimes against ‘society’ as they define it – which is exactly what has just happened.
As to the sweep of history – the ANC seems to have lost its senses completely, Jews in South Africa, as a persecuted peoples under Afrikaner Nationalism, played a key role in ridding the country of Apartheid – from within the ANC and external to the ANC, and their involvement is much bigger than you think.
As South African Jewish World War 2 military veterans – Joe Slovo, Wolfie Kodesh and Rusty Bernstein even founded umkhonto we sizwe (MK) – Joe Slovo becoming MK’s Commander in Chief, other South African WW2 Jewish veterans became Zionists and actively resisted Apartheid, Leo Kowarsky (a founder of the Torch Commando and then the Progressive Party – the modern day Democratic Alliance), Cecil Margo (Margo a WW2 SAAF bomber pilot goes on to become a founder of the Israeli Air Force and returns to South Africa eventually to become a Supreme Court Justice), Gerald Gordon, Leo Lovell, Jock Isacowitz – who becomes a founder of the Torch Commando and then the Liberal Party of South Africa along with fellow Jew, military veteran and liberal – Leslie Rubin.8
Not just military veterans, as a result of the Police raid on Liliesleaf farm in Rivonia in 1963, alongside Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and Ahmed Kathrada – also arrested are two predominate Jewish MK members Dennis Goldberg (a “mensch” to his people) and Arthur Goldreich – Goldreich a devout Zionist in addition. They both land up in the dock and eventually in prison alongside Nelson Mandela charged with High Treason.9
Other Jews are also key anti-apartheid activists, Jews like Ronnie Kasrils, Hymie and Esther Barsel, Eli Weinberg, Yetta Barenblatt, Ray Alexander Simons, Hilda Bernstein, Ruth First, Ronald Segal, Norma Kitson, Baruch Hirson, Brian Bunting, Harry Schwarz, Sam Kahn, Isie Maisels, Arthur Chaskalson, Sidney Kentridge, Joel Joffe, Shulamith Muller, Denis Kuny, Jules Browde, Ray Alexander, Benny Weinbren, Solly Sachs, Leon Levy, Harold Wolpe, Ben Turok, Paul Trewhela, David Bruce, Pauline Podbrey, Raymond Suttner and even the die hard life long anti-apartheid democrat and campaigner that was Helen Suzman.10
SAJBD President Gerald Leissner and Chairman Mervyn Smith (pictured here with ANC President Nelson Mandela, SAJBD National Congress, 1993) were instrumental in the Board’s taking a decisive stance against apartheid during the 1980’s. Reference SA Jews under Apartheid – A very old debate resisted by David Saks.
According to the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) – Jews made up just 2 percent of the white population of apartheid-era South Africa, but they constituted at least half of the country’s white anti-apartheid activists. Given this extraordinary history, the ANC have really not only lost a sense of their own history but also a sense of who has traditionally supported them and the South African history of the “struggle” completely.
It is absolutely disgraceful that South African Jews and their children, who have a long and proud ‘struggle’ history in South Africa, now find themselves a marginalised and targeted group in South Africa again – even by our own ‘democratic’ government.
Regardless what we think of the current Palestinian and Isreali war and our individual politics – regardless whether we support Muslims or Jews in our personal lives, we must stand by our values as the world’s miracle nation – the reconcilers and peacemakers, and to do that we need to lead by example and we cannot “take a side”. With that in mind we as South Africans, and even as military veterans, can do a lot better than the current ANC, its cabal and especially its hapless, conceited, ignorant and frankly dangerous foreign minister.
Written by Peter Dickens
Footnotes
Middle East Eye: South African activists file criminal complaint against citizen accused of fighting for Israel – PSC submitted 13 images from what they claim to be Benjamin Rattle’s Instagram accounts (MEE/Instagram) ↩︎
Naledi Pandor: “South Africans fighting for Israel will be arrested” Africa News – on-line reader 14 March 2024↩︎
The influence of Second World War military service on prominent White South African veterans in opposition politics 1939 – 1961. A Masters submission to Stellenbosch University – 2021 by Graeme Wesley Plint ↩︎
Daily Maverick: US legislators threaten ‘consequences’ if SA arrests citizens for serving in Israeli army – By Peter Fabricius 17 April 2024 ↩︎
The influence of Second World War military service on prominent White South African veterans in opposition politics 1939 – 1961. A Masters submission to Stellenbosch University – 2021 by Graeme Wesley Plint ↩︎
A current overview of changing Israeli fighting doctrine in Gaza
20 April 2024
By: David Brock Katz
Overtaking the headlines on 8 April, which stated that Israel had pulled all its ground troops out of southern Gaza for “tactical reasons”, was the report of a massive Iranian strike of over 300 drones and missiles directed at Israel from Iranian territory. Iran’s “retaliatory” bombardment signified a significant strategic departure for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Instead of using its proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah or the Houthis, Iran attacked Israel directly for the first time in its history. In a similar fashion to the world’s initial reaction to 8 October, the attack garnered immediate condemnation from many quarters, thereby buying Israel a short respite from the constant media attacks surrounding the conduct of its war in Gaza. Despite Iran’s deadly intent, the missile attack leaves a massive credibility gap in the Iranian capability to inflict harm on Israel via the air. All but a few of the 300 missiles were either shot down or crashed on their own accord, inflicting minimal damage. Israel can claim a massive victory for its Iron Dome system and celebrate the fact that the Jordanians and Saudi Arabians accounted for several of the Iranian missile losses. However, it seems that the USA has again restricted any Israeli counterattack, which squanders a rare opportunity to neutralise some Iranian military assets.
Quite simply, Biden and his administration have put the brakes on Israeli military actions. Israel has lost the ability to deploy its military at the operational and strategic level of war without the USA’s permission. Losing this independence of action poses a significant problem for Israel’s successful execution of the war in Gaza. The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) in Gaza deployed 18 brigades in December 2023 (about 90,000 troops) and then trimmed down to 5 brigades at the end of March. The IDF now fields a single brigade in Gaza, leaving Khan Younis and Gaza City unoccupied. Undoubtedly, the decision behind the IDF’s hasty withdrawal is not for any sound military reason. Instead, the IDF has succumbed to European and belated pressure from the USA to drastically change its tactics as world opinion has turned decidedly against the Israelis. The original IDF plan of occupying Gaza in its entirety and eliminating Hamas as a military and political force lies in tatters.
Initially, Israel adopted a persisting strategy, placing a large number of boots on the ground, deliberately advancing at a slow, careful pace into the heart of Gaza. The IDF skilfully concentrated its forces using combined arms teams down to the lowest tactical level. They carefully accumulated overwhelming firepower at the focal points, sometimes only advancing mere meters in a given day. With great tactical skill and impeccable doctrine, the IDF produced innovative tactics to overcome most of the attacker’s disadvantages in dense urban areas. The Urban environment overwhelmingly favours Hamas. New IDF tactics are under tight wraps, but Israel’s allies are watching closely and will undoubtedly incorporate these combat innovations into their urban warfare doctrine. At least up to December, the Israelis made slow but significant progress in defeating Hamas in the field as well as destroying vast tracts of the tunnel system. The IDF badly mauled Hamas at a relatively low casualty cost, inflicting an estimated 30-50% loss on its fighting power before forcing them to withdraw to Rafah to conduct what would have been their last stand before destruction.
Despite registering significant gains at the tactical and operational levels, Israel IS steadily losing the propaganda war. The world’s outrage at the atrocities committed by Hamas on 7 October began to recede almost immediately. If Israel ever had a chance to strike using a persisting strategy (occupy territory and boots on the ground), it would have had to execute with lightning speed. A cautious approach led to it being caught offside by the capricious support it had initially garnered on 7 October. Israel chose to minimise IDF and civilian casualties, and the sands of time have run out. The media’s constant barrage of civilian casualty figures, as reported by Hamas, has alienated many of Israel’s USA and European backers. The breathtaking hypocrisy of mainstream media has drowned out lone voices of reason, such as Douglas Murray. A discredited Norman Finkelstein, sidelined even by the Palestinians and now comparing Gaza to a concentration camp, has found new vigour and appreciative audiences. Rochdale in the United Kingdom has elected George Galloway, long consigned to the looney left fringes, as Member of Parliament on a pro-Hamas and virulently anti-Israel ticket. Friends, it would seem, are few.
Israel has to contend with an increasingly frayed relationship with the USA. Support among younger Americans for Israel is rapidly fading. President Biden has insinuated that if the Israelis do not curtail operations in Gaza, then the supply of American arms will come under threat. There are lessons to be learned by those desirous of conducting an independent foreign policy free from American influence. A homegrown defence industry that supplies the lion’s share of one’s military needs is a fundamental prerequisite. Surely, Israel regrets abandoning the Israeli Airforce Industries Lavi Jet Fighter program in favour of the USA’s F-16? The USA no doubt had a significant role in eliminating the Lavi as a possible competitor in the lucrative arms trade industry. Israel cannot independently conduct its operations in Gaza without the USA’s implicit or explicit approval. That is the price of dependence on the USA for the supply of essential arms and munitions. Ukraine faces a similar dilemma of relying on the West to supply essential military equipment for survival. When the time comes, Ukraine will have little choice but to comply with the West’s version of a peace settlement. Israel has withdrawn from the south of Gaza and significantly reduced its troop numbers there, not of its own choice, but on instruction from the USA.
So where to from here? The IDF has abandoned a highly successful persisting strategy, where it placed boots on the ground, occupied territory, and advanced methodically and innovatively by using combined arms warfare to eliminate Hamas’s fighting power in the north of Gaza. The military endgame was in sight. All that remained was to capture Rafah and remove Hamas in its entirety. Israel, succumbing to American pressure, now has no option but to resort to a raiding strategy. The IDF will attempt to remove Hamas targets through precision ground and air strikes surgically. The danger of this strategy can already be seen, with close to 2,000 Hamas fighters infiltrating their way back into Gaza City in the absence of Israeli ground forces. History has shown that wars cannot be won using a raiding strategy exclusively. Targeting Iranian, Hezbollah and Hamas operatives outside of Gaza to weaken the terrorist superstructure is also not a strategy which will eliminate Hamas. The hope of a more friendly future US government is uncertain and, at best, many months away. The release of hostages, if any are alive, seems remote. An emboldened Hamas continued to hold out for the best terms for a ceasefire. The Israeli retaliation for the Iranian attack was a very measured and even-handed response and an extensive counter-attack currently remains off the cards. Israel faces tough months ahead.
The police raid on Liliesleaf on 11 July 1963 is understood to be the result of informants within the liberation movements either breaking down in detention or “selling out” and providing information about the farm with its safe house and its people. This paper, while acknowledging that there were informants inside the liberation movements, maintains that this was only a fragment of a kaleidoscope of events culminating in the raid and subsequent Rivonia Trial. Rather it was a covert investigation undertaken since 1962 that resulted in the blow delivered by the combined security agencies, that shattered the underground networks opposing the apartheid state. It was an investigation which relied extensively on the principles of the mythological Greek Trojan horse; it used persons and technology that aimed to undermine and overthrow their opponent, to subvert and defeat it from within, while appearing non threatening. This paper identifies three Trojan horses. A human spy concealed behind the innocent look of a child who fronted for sinister forces. Electronic warfare deployed by the military and linked to an innocuous caravan park; and finally a laundry van to deliver the surgical knockout strike. Yet all this subterfuge has eluded the narrative for 53 years.
The build-up, 1963
By June 1963 the state crackdown was relentless. Political organisations, such as the African National Congress (ANC), the South African Communist Party (SACP) and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), together with their activists were under banning orders, restricted from almost all social and political contact with others, rendered incommunicado, detained, driven into exile, or serving prison sentences. The PAC’s resistance had been neutralised, numerous political trials were underway and of the various methods exhibited by a growing security police state, one was increasing brutality.
It became increasingly difficult for the members of the underground to operate. Informants were rumoured to be everywhere and the pressure of living beneath the radar became unbearable. At some point a fatal mistake might be made or the sheer weight of the security apparatus might find a leak in the dyke, bursting through to flood into the underground networks.
Dennis Goldberg recalled that there were two sides to operating in the underground.
“It really was as exciting as I imagined it would be. I was a fulltime revolutionary. I felt invincible: on the brink of something great. There was a constant rush of adrenaline”.1
However this came with a price. Goldberg recalled living under this terrible strain:
“What happens when you are working underground is that you’re constantly working under the pressure of discovery; you’re constantly having to think about it. It becomes a terrible anxiety. The pressure of being underground, it was wearing and wearing … and you’re forced into making mistakes. This is what the pressure does, it forces you into mistakes. I am talking about the way the security forces pressure you.2
And this is the lesson to be learnt from it, there is always too much to do, you’re always in a hurry, the revolution must happen today, if not tonight, and so you make mistakes. What it plays on is that eventually you become so lonely, you give yourself away … It’s like a boil. That is part of the psychology. That might not necessarily be the whole thing. But we don’t train our people for this, you only learn it when it’s too damn late.3
Lionel ‘Rusty’ Bernstein – mugshot
There was a nuance of change taking place; one that the movement was slow to detect. Some members had become complacent, lulled by a false sense of security, which appeared to be presented by the façade of the safe house. After all, once inside the perceived guerrilla zone, the hostile world lay beyond its boundaries. Rusty Bernstein saw it as “evident that the ‘safe house’ syndrome was at work. Liliesleaf farm seemed to be the easy option for every hard choice. It was after all safe.”4
Kathrada recalled his emotions when he arrived at Liliesleaf:
“I’m living in another world. The comrades here were completely divorced, Soweto was just a few miles from here, they were completely divorced from reality. And drawing up very fancy documents. They had even forgotten that when MK was formed, no one had the idea that MK was going to overthrow the government. At the very most MK was going to be a pressure group. The goal remained that MK would be one of the pressure groups together with the political struggle, together with the international pressures, to force the enemy to the negotiation table.”5
In 2006, according to Vivien Ezra who owned the front company, Navian Ltd, established by the SACP to purchase Liliesleaf, there were no internal security arrangements within the cells to resist infiltration. 6 Structures just did not exist whereby suspicions could be reported. In short, there was no structured counter intelligence mechanism in use by the underground. 7 Naïve is a persistent word that crept through all the interviews conducted by the author in the period from 2004 to 2006.
Nothing illustrates this better than the fact that although Mandela was captured in August 1962, Liliesleaf continued to be used by the allied organisations, including the SACP, the ANC, MK, members of the Congress Alliance, South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) and members of the Indian political organisations, right up until the raid, eleven months later.
Liliesleaf farm – aerial photo taken after the raid, note the thatch roof room top left connected to rear farm quarters and buildings – this room was used by Nelson Mandela. Brenthurst Library.
One would have thought that once South Africa’s most wanted fugitive was captured, these organisations would have tried to put as much distance as possible between themselves and Liliesleaf, given that Mandela had used the farm as his base of operations. He had travelled throughout Africa and the United Kingdom, yet it would appear that no one considered the possibility that his movements might be tracked back to Liliesleaf, or that had he been under surveillance, which he was, thus compromising the farm around August 1962 when captured. Mandela claimed that he concealed a revolver and notebook within the upholstery of the front seat of Cecil Williams’s car before being arrested and taken into custody.8 The hypothesis is that the police found this notebook, which enabled them to investigate his activities in South Africa after his return from Ethiopia. The impending danger was that by using this information the security branch could hone in on Liliesleaf. In fact, it appears that that the underground activities and the use of Liliesleaf by the liberation movement actually increased after August 1962 and continued to do so until the 1963 raid. It is possible that more leaders of the underground and operatives sought shelter at Liliesleaf after August 1962, than at any other time in its history before this date. Walter Sisulu, Raymond Mhlaba, Wilton Mkwai, Andrew Mlangeni, Govan Mbeki and Ahmed Kathrada certainly did, to name but a few. Meetings of MK’s high command, the Secretariat and the SACP’s central committee were held there, and quite possibly also the ANC’s NEC and various MK committees such as those dealing with intelligence, logistics, transport and housing.
Police searching the living room at Liliesleaf farm – main house, police photograph.
It is widely understood that the meeting of the Secretariat on the day of the raid was the last meeting held at Liliesleaf and that thereafter other venues would be used. Some had serious reservations about returning there believing the farm to be compromised. Bernstein was vehemently opposed to returning to Liliesleaf. 9 Other senior leaders, such as Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba and Wilton Mkwai no longer stayed there, having moved to Trevallyn, a smallholding near Krugersdorp, purchased shortly before by Denis Goldberg under a fictitious name. Meanwhile, Liliesleaf was to be used solely for accommodating the MK high command and those immediately involved in its functioning.10 However this was not the case for that one fateful meeting. The Logistics Committee was due to meet the night of 11 July 1963. So in fact two meetings were intended at Liliesleaf on the day of the raid. All of those captured during the raid concur that because an alternative venue couldn’t be found, it was agreed to meet at Liliesleaf one last time.
Yet other parallel activities were occurring, such as a scheduled Logistics Committee meeting, planned to take place inside the main house after the Secretariat concluded its business in the thatched cottage. One of its members, Denis Goldberg was already seated in the lounge reading a book when the veranda door swung open to initiate his capture. Another member, Arthur Goldreich, drove home into the raid with a copy of Operation Mayibuye concealed behind his vehicle’s hubcap. A third, Hilliard Festenstein, walked into the house punctually that night to attend the meeting which never happened – straight into the arms of the police. The chairman of the Logistics Committee, Wilton Mkwai, narrowly avoided capture when approaching the farm as scheduled and saw the raid already in progress. A fifth member, Ian David Kitson, escaped due to a bout of flu which had kept him in bed; while the reasons for Lionel Gay’s non-show remain unknown.
All those at Liliesleaf that day were arrested. The exceptions were six children, three black and three white. Together with other members of the liberation movement who were serving jail sentences or who were arrested elsewhere, those arrested stood trial in what became a watershed moment in South African history. Rivonia.
Leakage
Liliesleaf was leaking. A few weeks before the raid some MK members had visited the farm and were arrested. It was a matter of time before the security branch broke them. By July 1963, there were numerous security lapses so it was inevitable that if the police hadn’t already done so, they would soon find the farm. Apart from which, “we were total amateurs. You cannot cross both worlds, indefinitely”.11
The concept of security had broken down. Too many people were using Liliesleaf. Its numerous visitors included people who were known to the security branch and foreign intelligence agencies, such as Joe Slovo, Ruth First, Jack Hodgson, Bram Fischer, Lionel Bernstein, Harold Wolpe and many others. Lionel (Rusty) Bernstein described this osmosis from the safe house:
“Later people who had been overseas for military training would arrive back in Bechuanaland without any proper planning. The first thing we would know was that they were in Bechuanaland and wanted come back. So we’d bring them back and they would stay for a few nights … Rivonia came into sudden use in a way that had not been foreseen.
So this place became a sort of centre, if you like because Sisulu and Mbeki were the two senior ANC people at large at that time. [Since] both of them were [also]participating on the high command, they began to use it for MK high command activities, both for keeping documents and holding meetings, and they were bringing people to their meetings who were not in the high command, not living underground and so on. So the place really changed from being a really closely kept secret to being something of a centre.”12
Even Thomas Mashifane, the foreman, could sense the inherent danger building up. “What are you folks doing? The way motor cars are coming in and out, the next thing the police are going to come.”13 No one was prepared to listen. The question is, where others listening with a more sinister intent? Had those with a little more intellect than ascribed to them, applied themselves as opposed to the thuggery displayed by the police? Had the proverbial Mr Plod finally caught up?
Rear view aerial image of Liliesleaf farm – Police photograph post raid, Brenthurst Library.
The central thread that runs through the literature is that the security branch experienced a lucky break when they raided Liliesleaf farm. Starting in 1965, Strydom has it that an informant offered to tell what he knew about activities at the farm, yet had only a vague idea where it was. Accompanied by a detective and after driving about the area for some time, he eventually recognised the property.14 Frankel has it that Lt. Van Wyk who led the raid was advised by a colleague that he had an informant with information to sell. Apparently he knew where to find Walter Sisulu and half a dozen other important leaders of the Umkhonto high command. For a large payment he would take the lieutenant there.15 According to Frankel the informant took Van Wyk to Liliesleaf, enabling him to plan the raid which he sprung the following day. After the raid the informant received R6 000.16 More recent works, for example that by Smith, have the security branch depicted as a proverbial Mr Plod staffed with bumbling policemen who eventually caught up with the activists.17 If so, who was listening in besides the SAP and its security branch?
This paper will show that at least three parallel lines of investigation by three separate security agencies took place between 1962 and the day of the raid. There could have been other agencies but these remain unidentified. The three agencies were the SAP’s security branch, using its methods of informer recruitment and information collected; Republican Intelligence (RI), using informants and information trading with foreign intelligence organisations (later better known as the National Intelligence Service or NIS); and the South African Communications Security Agency which was linked to the South African Defence Force (SADF).
Investigating Liliesleaf, 1962-1963
There is no doubt that captured operatives gave the police information. Examples include Bruno Mtolo, Patrick Mthembu and Bartholomew Hlapane.18 However, this paper will identify one informer whose role the author uncovered in 2005 by locating this informant’s 1963 statement to the SAP. A copy was provided by the author to the Liliesleaf Trust in 2005 and is included in an unpublished research report to the Trust in 2007.19 All subsequent references to this informant are drawn from the author’s prior work. Within weeks of Nelson Mandela’s capture on 5 August 1962, the security branch had a ten-year-old informant who had access to the farm. His name is George Mellis. His parents owned the Rivonia Caravan Park directly across the road from Liliesleaf. He was the perfect Trojan horse. He could literally breach the sanctity of the safe house undetected, much like the mythical Trojan horse parked outside the gates of Troy. No one gave the boy so much as a second glance when he arrived to play with his friends Nicholas and Paul Goldreich, or wandered around near the outbuildings while covert meetings were underway.
On 5 August 1963, George Mellis made a sworn statement to Sergeant Fourie who commanded the Rivonia police station.
“About a year ago, one day when I was playing in the yard of the Goldreichs’ place, I saw a number of white and Bantu males together in the thatch-roof building next to the main house. These people were talking and I saw some shaking hands with each other. This seemed strange to me and I told my parents about it. On some occasions that I went there I saw a lot of cars parked in the yard and one occasion, I took the registration numbers of all the cars parked in the Goldreich yard and handed the numbers I had written down, to the police at Rivonia.” 20
Sergeant Fourie forwarded Mellis’s number plate list and his information to the security branch. Mellis tried to elicit further information from his Goldreich playmates whom he joined inside the main house for lunch. On one occasion, he said, “I asked Nicholas about the persons on the premises but Nicholas said that he was not allowed to tell me anything”. 21
In his 1963 statement Mellis identified Walter Sisulu Raymond Mhlaba, Denis Goldberg and Ahmed Kathrada from police photographs. His Goldberg reference is pertinent in that Goldberg first visited Liliesleaf in May 1963. This means that Mellis was spying on Liliesleaf from the time of his first report (about a year before the raidand soon after Mandela’s capture), through to when Goldberg visited Liliesleaf between May and July 1963. Mellis spied right up until the raid.
Photo of Nicholas and Paul Goldreich who befriended George Mellis, this photograph was taken at Liliesleaf farm and is in the private collection of Arthur Goldreich and shared with the author.
Sergeant Fourie assisted the security branch too. In December 1962, Fourie received a summons for a parking offence from the Alberton magistrate’s court which he had to serve on Arthur Goldreich. Fourie held back.
“Aangesien ek bang was dat dit met die ondersoek mag inmeng het ek die lasbrief nie laat uitvoer nie maar het die agterwee gehou [Because I was afraid that it might interfere with the investigation, I did not serve the summons but held it back.]”.22
Fourie instructed his policemen that any action against anyone at Liliesleaf, for example serving a summons, should first be cleared with him. No policeman was to go onto Liliesleaf for any reason without prior authorisation, because an investigation was underway. The farm was sanitised from any official physical interruption.
On 14 January 1963, Colonel Hendrik van den Bergh was appointed head of the security branch of the South African Police. His orders were to reorganise the South African security establishment and it was he who created the first national intelligence service, originally known as Republican Intelligence (RI). The government needed an intelligence organisation that could function along the lines of America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). The RI, together with the security branch, were instructed to smash all organised resistance to the minority regime.
According to Gerhard Ludi the RI’s primary focus was the South African Communist Party (SACP). Ludi, one of RI’s first agents, has suggested that the RI identified the SACP as the primary problem confronting the apartheid regime. Ludi has said that the CIA assisted RI and provided intelligence about financial assistance that Russia provided to the liberation movements. The CIA also indicated who the KGB operatives in South Africa might be and pointed out some of the local communists to the RI.23 RI fed intelligence to both the CIA and the SIS on a weekly basis and these agencies reciprocated. This foreign intelligence feed also included information about Operation Mayibuye and Radio Freedom, both implicitly connected to Liliesleaf.24
Ludi related that RI took the approach that, “if one learned about the cores of the Communist Party, one would learn about the why and where and the role the Soviets were playing in this”.25 Persons of interest who formed their intelligence target were Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Michael Harmel, Lionel Bernstein, Hilda Watts, Harold Wolpe and Ahmed Kathrada. Ludi said that Mhlaba, Bernstein and Harmel would be of particular focus for RI.
Liaison between the apartheid regime and other regimes in Southern Rhodesia and the Portuguese colonies was improved and intelligence sharing became the established modus operandi. Cooperation with the Portuguese extended into their Angola and Mozambique colonies and surveillance reports were provided to government about the movements of known South African communists such as Ruth First, Hillary Plegg, Ben Turok, V.W. Mkwai, Moses Mabida, Julius Baker and P. Beyleveldt who were travelling through Portuguese controlled territories.26 The Portuguese assisted the SIS in monitoring MK activities. In 1961 Portuguese Naval Intelligence transmitted an intelligence report to SIS that Ghana was recruiting South Africans for political, military and sabotage training and supplying funds to SouthAfrican anti-government groups.27
Documents photographed at Liliesleaf in one of the out buildings – Police photograph
Ludi claimed that RI was, “instrumental in pin pointing Rivonia through the radio”. 28 This was the radio transmitter linked to Walter Sisulu’s Freedom Day, Radio Freedom broadcast on 26 June 1963. It is important to note that this broadcast did not occur at Liliesleaf although the radio equipment was tested there. Ludi claims that one of his agents was an electrical engineer; he was connected to the SACP transport manager who knew someone who ran a dry cleaning operation and whose vans were used to transport underground operatives around the country. This link to a dry cleaning van is another Trojan horse. Someone connected to the underground structures used a vehicle like this one, and inside the van lurked an RI agent. This also shows that the routines at the farm were already under surveillance. They were understood, mapped and logged; a Trojan horse disguised as an innocuous laundry van was the modus operandi when the knockout blow was delivered.
The agent met the go between at a bus terminus where he was tied up and blindfolded inside the van. Driven to Liliesleaf he was shown the radio and commented, “This is the most antiquated piece of rubbish I’ve seen in my life.” He couldn’t do anything with it, but the information assisted RI who now knew that somewhere in that area:
“There was a place where things were happening and I believe that after we fed that information to the police that they then started driving … patterns in that area looking for something they thought must be happening there and that’s how they actually found Rivonia, plus of course somebody also gave them information.”29
Who gave the police information is a moot point – informants or another process? While the role of the security branch and RI is known, what is not known is the role of the SADF and its electronic warfare capabilities in locating Liliesleaf. Research and development into electronic warfare began in the early 1950s in response to SACP underground radio broadcasts. By the early 1960s their direction finding technology was on par with the British and Americans.
In about 1955/56, the Radio Section of the engineers’ section of the general post office (GPO) was tasked to assist the SAP to locate the source of Radio Freedom broadcasts that transmitted on short-wave wavelengths. The SACP transmitted on Sunday evenings at 20h00 for 15 minutes. The Radio Act No. 3 of 1952 stipulated that a conviction could only result if the police caught the perpetrators in the act of broadcasting. 30 As the SAP and the Union Defence Force (later the SADF) had no direction-finding capability to comply with this stipulation of the Act they turned to the GPO. The Derdepoort Radio Station based at Hartebeesfontein farm near Pretoria was given the task. Having no direction finding equipment they then developed their own.31
Transmissions were identified as coming from Natal. They then built a mobile direction finding facility and installed it in GPO vans and undertook the search. After nine months the operation halted without success. During early 1956 the transmissions resurfaced in the Johannesburg/Pretoria area. Each transmission came from a different location thus requiring greater mobility. Derdepoort’s technicians developed man-pack equipment which could be carried while walking. The SAP flying squad drove these operators (known then as chase teams). Three vehicle mounted direction finding units and five man-pack units were deployed. Included in the chase teams were technicians from Derdepoort station. The security branch supported the operation. 32 On Sunday 12 August 1956, they identified 363 Berea Street Muckleneuk, Pretoria and raided the house, seizing the transmitter and other equipment along with a pre-recorded taped broadcast. The four accused were convicted of violating the Radio Act No.3of 1952, a relatively minor offence, and sentenced to a fine of ₤50 or six months in jail. 33
Following this the engineers’ section acquired more sophisticated equipment to facilitate their direction finding methods. In 1958, they imported the Adcock System from the USA, the most advanced of its kind at the time. Located at Derdepoort, this static system included an all-round direction finding capability. 34 Cooperation on direction finding operations between the GPO and SAP was not unusual for this era. Britain’s Security Service MI5, used British post office technology in its counter intelligence operations, both in the United Kingdom against Soviet agents and operations, and also during military operations against independence movements in its colonies, such as in Cyprus.35
The role of the SADF and South African Communications Security Agency
In 1960/1961 the SADF established an overarching telecommunication function, the South African Communications Security Agency (SACSA). SACSA fell under the directorate of telecommunications, and its director was accountable to the prime minister at the time, H.F. Verwoerd. SACSA’s duties were enabling secure and un-compromised communications between all government departments. This included all arms of the SADF, the Department of Foreign Affairs, military attaches abroad, and between the SAP and its agents. 36
During 1963, SACSA played a key role in locating and spying on Liliesleaf. On 1 April 1963, Captain Martiens Botha was transferred to defence headquarters Pretoria to work for the chief telecommunications officer. Included in this small team was Captain Mike Venter of the South African Air Force (SAAF) who was proficient in Morse code. One of his duties was monitoring radio transmissions that the authorities deemed as subversive. Venter detected suspicious Morse code messages inside the country and showed them to Botha. Venter’s information was reported to the security branch and to RI. 37
SACSA borrowed a direction finding vehicle from the post office telecommunications section and pinpointed the location to within a few blocks of where the transmitter was located. This was enabled because, according to Captain Venter, the Morse code transmitter burst its signals more than once from Liliesleaf. SACSA then searched for visibly suspicious equipment such as antennas on properties in the area. Liliesleaf had two lightning conductors next to the main house. 38
SACSA observed and noted all these activities. Mary Russell and her husband lived in the Rivonia Caravan Park directly opposite the Rietfontein Road entrance into Liliesleaf. After the 1963 raid, Russell later shared her observations with her family, saying that, she “knew something was going on across the road”.39 In 2005, Russell’s nephew, Gavin Olivier, shared this account with the author. According to Olivier, Russell was an avid birdwatcher and used binoculars to observe the birdlife from her veranda. Prior to the raid, she saw postal workers standing on ladders erected against telephone poles along Rietfontein Road, working on the telephone lines. For Russell, it was odd that they stood atop for long periods of time and used binoculars. Russell recalled what she described as “mysterious bread delivery vans” parked inside the caravan park several times a week for the entire day. Strange, she said, “we don’t have a shop that sells bread in the caravan park.”40 Yet there they were opposite the driveway into Liliesleaf. Paul Goldreich also recollected men working on telephone cables outside the farm.41
The view of Liliesleaf farm in the valley to the left taken from the caravan park by Mary Russel (photographing a shrike) and the road and telephone lines on which the bakery van operated.
July 1963 was a cold winter, yet shortly before the raid, from at least May 1963, Denis Goldberg recalled there being a single caravan inside the park. Its presence made him feel uneasy.
“There was only one caravan there most of the time, and this area was so far out of Jo’burg, it was deep countryside … And there was this caravan park, which was bare red earth with what I remember as one caravan. A very sleepy police station around the corner. I believe they said they watched the place, this is what I am basing it on … it would have been the obvious thing.” 42
The Trojan horse was literally across the road, parked inside a caravan park owned by the Mellis family, who were actively assisting this investigation. There is other evidence of electronic surveillance activity, all intersecting towards July 1963. In 2005 the author interviewed an individual who wished to remain anonymous. This person claimed that in 1963 he had supplied the security branch with RM 401 hearing aid microphones together with long life batteries which lasted about a month. The microphones and their batteries fitted into a human ear, making them ideal for covert listening. These bugs could be disguised and planted anywhere and were small enough to be inserted into a pen and worn by an informant during a conversation; three or four such devices fitted into a matchbox. The microphone and transmitter worked at low frequencies, and the range was as much as 1⁄2 km to a listening station located within a line of sight.
The receiver for these devices was very powerful. The signal did not need to be very strong and the microphone did not require a large opening, a pin hole would suffice, as in a standard hearing aid. The listening station required a sizable aerial, about one metre in length. It could be erected in a tree; run along telephone wires; concealed inside a roof; or tucked out of sight inside a caravan. It could even masquerade as a car aerial if parked nearby.
If inserted inside a building then transmission distanced would be reduced and to compensate for this, some type of aerial would have to be attached to boost the transmission. An option was a shortwave radio, working at 10 MHz, providing there was a good receiver on the receiving end. If the transmitter was outdoors the range would increase and the only limitations would be caused by background noise. These transmitters picked up sound in an entire room, and the next room as well. The bug could be concealed in a light switch and fitted by an electrician or plumber. It could be hidden beneath a car or anywhere else and camouflaged to resemble any type of contextual object. Lightning or electrical activity did not affect its performance.
Police purchases began with a phone call to check for available stock; followed by a visit from two plainclothes policemen. Payment with was cash and no receipt was required. Prior to the raid, as many as 1 000 units may have been supplied. When news of the Liliesleaf raid broke, the salesperson thought, “So that’s where all our microphones were going! Damn sure in my own mind – bloody hell, so that’s where our microphones went!” 43
Surveyor General map of Rivonia
In 2004 the author uncovered additional tangible evidence of a surveillance operation. In 1961 the surveyor general updated the cadastral maps and the Rivonia area was aerially re-photographed to produce maps in 1962. Each photographic contact sheet covers a vast area and nothing distinguishes a particular property from the next unless the sheets are significantly enlarged. The next photographic series dates to 1964. The author scanned the sheets depicting Liliesleaf in the 1961 and 1964 mapping process in high resolution. One of these sheets revealed a trace of the SACSA direction finding andelectronic warfare operation. (None of the 1964 photographs reflect any tampering). Three microscopic red dots and a pencil cross (x) emerged when a high resolution electronic scanner was used. Two red dots are on a neighbouring property. One red dot marks the approximate centre of Liliesleaf farm and the pencil cross on the sheet marks the dirt driveway leading into Liliesleaf, directly across the road from the caravan park. 44
Tampering on the surveyor general cadastral map of the Rivonia area to show sophisticated electronic triangulation intelligence and X marks the spot on the Liliesleaf driveway.
Someone involved in this investigation examined this contact sheet and made the markings before returning the sheet assuming that the microscopic tampering would remain invisible. Not only was the SADF proficient in electronic warfare. The technical skills of the SAAF, the second oldest air force in the world, were on par with its international counterparts. In combat operations in Africa, Madagascar and Europe during the Second World War, the SAAF made extensive use of aerial photo reconnaissance. Nor were their skills of electronic warfare neglected in the post-war years.
In 1957, the SAAF acquired the Avro Shackleton MR Mk3 which it used for long range maritime patrolling and naval surveillance operations. 45 Between 1962 and 1964 the SAAF acquired 16 Mirage IIIC fighter aircraft from France, followed by four Mirage RZ fighter reconnaissance aircraft. 46 In late 1963, SAAF took delivery of the Canberra B (I) Mk 12 heavy bomber and photo reconnaissance aircraft from Britain. It was adding to and upgrading its technological capacity. Consequently, in 1962 to 1963 the only agency with the technical skills capable of identifying targets from aerial photographs of Liliesleaf was the SAAF.47
Thursday 11 July 1963
A meeting on Saturday 6 July 1963 to discuss Operation Mayibuye at Liliesleaf deadlocked. The plan was not approved and it created deep divisions within the Secretariat and amongst members of the SACP’s Central Committee. The plan had to be either approved by the political structures, which did not happen, or be sent back for further work. However, the next part of the problem was a practical one: where could the Secretariat meet and when? The matter had to be speedily resolved, yet the issue of a venue was becoming contentious and downright dangerous.
Denis Goldberg’s mugshot after his arrest and one his drawings on the working of a grenade recovered from Liliesleaf farm, evidence used in his trial.
There were a number of people who did not want to return to Liliesleaf. According to Goldberg:
“They had earlier taken the decision not to bring people who were not living underground to the place where others were living in hiding. Too many people had been to Liliesleaf farm. The security risks were great. We urgently needed a different place and the task of buying somewhere new was given to me because I could legally buy property.” 48
A number of the senior leaders, such as Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba and Wilton Mkwai no longer stayed at the farm, having moved to Trevallyn, a smallholding near Krugersdorp, recently purchased by Goldberg under a fictitious name and which was to be used solely for accommodating members of the MK high command and those immediately involved in its functioning. 49 Goldberg later wrote that “the last meeting of the High Command at Liliesleaf was one too many”.50 Goldberg remembered:
“They didn’t have time to arrange a new venue, so we had to come back here, knowing that it was dangerous to come here. The decision had been taken, no more meetings at Rivonia. Yet we had one more, because of the pressure of Rusty’s house arrest.”51
Kathrada recalled:
Ahmed Kathrada after his arrest – JHB Fort.
“A number of us started feeling uneasy about the continued use of the Rivonia farm. We were well aware that the need-to-know principle had not applied to Liliesleaf for some time, and that far too many people – one of whom was Bruno Mtolo, a saboteur from Durban and leader of the Natal branch, had visited the farm. But there was no avoiding one final meeting in Rivonia. In the days leading up to this crucial gathering, I became more agitated and afraid. The only person who I could share my views with was Walter Sisulu, whose views coincided with my own.”52
As for Bernstein, he was not in favour of holding the meeting there. He had lost faith in Liliesleaf as an uncompromised venue:
“I don’t even remember who convened the meeting. I know I didn’t want to go to it. I was afraid of the place. It was Hepple who persuaded me. [He said] “Okay, you don’t want to go to this place, just this one last time”. Famous last words.53
The next issue was the timing of the meeting. Which day might be appropriate? Thursdays were delivery days. Produce from the butcher and grocer were delivered; dry cleaning collected and dropped off; cars came and went – these goings-on were an established routine. Because these activities had doubled up as a screen for meetings before, Thursday it would be. However, these routines were known and identified, all watched and listened to inside the Trojan horse parked innocently in the caravan park.
Nothing untoward happened during the day except for Bob Hepple’s encounter with an unidentified individual which alludes to a covert investigation.
“On the morning of the 11th July, a man came to my chambers. He was an Indian. I had never met him before. And he said to me, “I have got a message for Cedric from Natalie.” Now I knew that I regularly received letters addressed to me at my chambers. Inside was an envelope sealed from Natalie for Cedric. And I knew these were for the leadership and I would deliver them personally to Liliesleaf Farm. And I wondered what was going on because Cedric was the codename for the centre and Natalie was the code name for the Natal district. And I knew these names on letters would come to my chambers addressed me. I would open them …and would take them over. Who was this guy? I had no knowledge of him. I fobbed him off. I said I don’t know what this is about but I’ll look into it and see. So I realised he was bringing some message. But I didn’t know if he was genuine, he could have been a police spy. And I was deeply suspicious. I feigned ignorance and said I have to go out now and sent him away and said come back to me tomorrow morning. My idea being to make enquiries if anyone knew what this was about. So the result, I was very worried and it was one of the things when I did go there that afternoon that I was worried about. So on my route there I was extremely nervous, I kept thinking maybe I am going to be followed.” 54
This encounter unnerved Hepple. According to him there were already suspicions that the CIA had had a hand in Mandela’s capture. For what reason and by whom was this visitor sent? 55 Hepple told Kathrada about his suspicious visitor and Kathrada confirmed that he too had received a garbled message from someone who mentioned Cedric. After ten minutes of exchanging pleasantries, the six took their seats inside the thatched cottage, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Walter Sisulu, Lionel Bernstein, Bob Hepple and Ahmed Kathrada. Their agenda was to discuss the impact of the 90 days arrests and to continue the discussion on Operation Mayibuye.
Walter Sisulu after his arrest – JHB Fort
Bernstein held the Operation Mayibuye document on his lap so that he might refer to it and started his critique. No sooner had he commenced when they observed a dry cleaning van, bearing the logo Trade Steam Pressers through a rear window driving down the driveway. It drove up and parked next to the house. Bernstein looked out the window and exclaimed. “Oh my God, I saw that van opposite the police station this afternoon!”56 The Trojan horse was in position. Perfectly timed and synchronised to the exact moment that the meeting started. Certainly no coincidence. Coordinated by another Trojan horse parked inside the caravan park and listening in. Suddenly the rear doors of the dry cleaning van opened, disgorging the security branch police with their attack dog. While the raiders encircled the main house, Govan Mbeki snatched the Mayibuye plan from Bernstein and tried to burn it but without matches it was useless. Mbeki then shoved the plan into the stovepipe chimney.
Mbeki, Sisulu and Kathrada leapt through a rear window but were immediately caught. The remaining three hoped to bluff their way out. Detective Kennedy opened the door and rushed inside. “Stay where you are. You’re all under arrest!”57
Arthur Goldreich after his arrest – JHB Fort
The three were then escorted outside. Hepple recalled that by this stage the place was piling up with police and dogs. This suggests that the dry cleaner’s van was the initial probe – the Trojan horse. Once it had breached the gates and parked inside, its occupants would disgorge to secure the buildings while the main body, already in position on Rietfontein Road would then swoop in and overwhelm the farm, while securing the perimeter.
Earlier, in the lounge, Goldberg looked up to see Lt Van Wyk swing open the veranda door and step inside, only metres away from where he sat. Goldberg leapt from his chair, grabbed his coat which contained his notes about weapons manufacture and manufacturing quotations which he had received – and made a desperate dash to reach a toilet to flush them away. Intercepted by another policeman entering through the kitchen he was overpowered in the entrance hallway and arrested. “It was a disconcerting moment. Actually what I thought was, oh shit, we’ve been caught.” 58
Govan Mbeki after his arrest – JHB Fort
The suspects and farm labourers were handcuffed inside the dry cleaner’s van. At about 17h50 Arthur Goldreich drove down Rietfontein Road in his Citroen. 59 When he drew level with the entrance gate he noticed two men wearing the hallmark raincoats of plain clothes policemen, standing beneath a tree in the caravan park, talking to each other. It wasn’t raining and they weren’t relieving themselves.
“And my first thought was special branch, and my second thought was I am late. I can’t just drive by. Then the third thought of mine was how come the guy who’s supposed to be guarding the gate is not there … and I came down the driveway, there were trees on either side and from behind the trees came some police and some dogs. And they jumped on the motor car, and the guy with a pistol in his hand put the pistol to my head, and I heard someone shout, “moenie skiet nie!” So I switched off the engine and rolled down and came in towards the garage.” 60
Arthur’s car ground to a halt. He got out, hands raised above his head. 61 At around 18h00 after each captive had been shown the contents of the outbuildings, Bernstein and Hepple joined Mbeki inside the laundry van. Goldberg was then brought out of the house, four policemen climbed into the van and the Trojan horse drove them off. Having breached the gates of the safe house the Trojan horse left with its captives handcuffed inside, facing the horrors ahead, fearing the worst, potentially a death sentence. Passing the solitary caravan parked in the red dirt of the park. Into the dark. The Rivonia Trial followed.
Arthur Goldreich, looking very worried and Detective Warrant Officer Carel Dirker. By law Goldreich had to be made witness to the search.
Conclusion
Colonels Van den Bergh and Klindt arrived after sunset. Arthur Goldreich was taken into the main bedroom for a one-on-one monologue delivered by Van den Bergh. Among other things Van den Bergh said:
“The trouble with you, Goldreich, and the trouble with all of you, is you’re amateurs. You always have and you always will underestimate your enemy. And that’s why you’re in the shit.” 62
Colonel H.J. Van den Bergh
Liliesleaf and all that was linked to it was captured. The Rivonia Trial followed and after that more arrests and trials until the internal networks were neutralised. A blow most certainly, yet not one which was terminal to the forces of liberation. In the 53 years since the raid the focus on what led to the raid has always been on the security branch. These accounts claim that the SAP, assisted by informants from within the movement, were able to raid Liliesleaf and were lucky to have achieved the success that they did. Kathrada later wrote that the police had the farm under surveillance for some hours before the raid. However, according to him the no one had ever found out the truth:
“ … every version that has been bandied about over the years is based on nothing more that speculation.” 63
The author concurs with Kathrada’s statement. Starting with Strydom in 1965 and weaving through into the recent past with Frankel, popular notion has it that an informant or informants “gave up” the farm to the security branch and fed their information to Lt. Van Wyk who, on receiving it, literally sprung the raid the following day. In a massive twist of fate and coincidence, good luck for some and horrific luck for others, in a single swoop the raid netted prominent leaders connected with MK, the ANC and SACP, together with a haul of documentary and other evidence. This smashed the leaders of organised resistance to the apartheid regime in one massive lucky break, all a result of informants. The security branch pulled it off all on their own. So the story goes. This article demonstrates that to be a fallacy.
By means of an inter-agency investigation into Liliesleaf, this paper outlines some of the complex ways in which the combined security services used a range of techniques and tactics in an attempt to destroy armed opposition to apartheid. One agency was the security branch; its investigations commenced weeks after Nelson Mandela was captured, and later in 1963, the RI and the SADF joined the probe, which led eventually to an operation culminating in the raid. The hypothesis is that information in Nelson Mandela’s notebook and other sources enabled the security branch to identify Liliesleaf. Evidence of the investigation by the security branch soon after Mandela’s arrest is seen in the actions of the first Trojan horse, a young boy, George Mellis, who was able to observe events from within. He was the perfect spy; he passed on information to the Rivonia police station; no one gave him so much as a second glance. However, he would have been carefully handled both by his parents and the security branch, given that he was a minor. Additional evidence of a security branch investigation in 1962, assisted by the Rivonia police station, was the matter of holding back a summons to be served on Goldreich. By December 1962 a determined investigation was underway, so much so that the police sanitised the farm and there were instructions that no policemen were to enter the property.
Mellis’s parents owned the caravan park which offered an ideal position from which to conduct surveillance. A caravan was the second Trojan horse, innocuous on the outside yet filled with electronic equipment, it listened into conversations held at Liliesleaf via hearing devices and telephone line interceptions. Operated by SACSA the timing of the raid could be carefully calculated, which indeed it was. In position during the weeks leading up to the raid, they also detected the Radio Freedom transmitter being tested when it was switched on. The predictably of activities on a Thursday were all observed and calculated. This Trojan horse in turn linked to other SADF technologies of direction finding, electronic warfare and aerial reconnaissance. Evidence of this was provided by those who saw the “postal workers” equipped with binoculars working on the telephone lines. Postal vans and bread delivery vans were seen parked in the caravan park. They were being covertly used by the SACSA. The contact sheets in the surveyor general’s office bear evidence of aerial target identification and the only organisation with the requisite skills to undertake this task, was the SAAF.
The final deception was the third Trojan horse, a laundry and dry cleaning van. Prior to the raid at least one RI spy had accessed the premises in a similar van, so the tactic of using a laundry van to breach the safe house was the ideal choice. Like the mythological Trojan horse which breached the gates of Troy, it was driven inside the farm to disgorge the policemen and their dogs.
In conclusion this paper demonstrates that there was far more to the raid than what has been written about it since that fateful day. It was not merely a police strike. Key roles were played by the SAAF and electronic surveillance was carried out by the SACSA in the state’s offensive against MK. This challenges the commonly held view that the military was not involved in the counter-insurgency operations of 1962 1964. In conventional accounts of the period, the South African military only became involved in counter insurgency when P.W. Botha gained political ascendancy and together with General Magnus Malan, made the notion of Total Onslaught the apartheid government’s strategic doctrine. This paper shows just how heavily involved the military and the security agencies were against MK soon after its formation in 1961.
Written and Researched by Dr. Garth Conan Benneyworth
References
Bernstein, L., Memory against Forgetting (Penguin, London, 1999).Dingake, M., Better to Die on One’s Feet (South African History Online, Cape Town, 2015). Ellis, S., External Mission: The ANC in Exile (Johnathan Ball, Johannesburg, 2012). Frankel, G., Rivonia’s Children (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, 1999). Goldberg, D., The Mission: A Life for Freedom in South Africa (STE Publishers, Johannesburg, 2010), Hepple, B., Young Man with the Red Tie: A Memoir of Mandela and the Failed Revolution: 1960-1963 Jacana Media, Johannesburg, 2013). Kathrada, A., Memoirs (Zebra Press, Paarl, 2004). Mandela, N.R., Long Walk to Freedom (Abacus, London, 1994). SADET, The Road to Democracy in South Africa Volume 1 (1960-1970) (Zebra Press, Cape Town, 2004). Smith, D.J., Young Mandela (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2010). Strydom, L., Rivonia Unmasked (Voortrekkerpers, Johannesburg, 1965). Volker, W., Army Signals in South Africa: The Story of the South African Corps of Signals and its Antecedents (Veritas Books, Pretoria, 2010). Volker, W., Signal Units of the South African Corps of Signals and related Services (Veritas Books, Pretoria, 2010). Wright, P., Spy Catcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer (Heinemann, Melbourne, 1987).
Footnotes
D. Goldberg, The Mission: A Life for Freedom in South Africa (STE Publishers, Johannesburg, 2010), p 99. ↩︎
Liliesleaf Archives, Rivonia (hereafter LL), INT 2, Interview with Denis Goldberg, conducted by G. Benneyworth, Liliesleaf, 2004. ↩︎
LL, INT 2, Interview with Denis Goldberg, Liliesleaf, 2004. ↩︎
L. Bernstein, Memory against Forgetting (Penguin, London, 1999), p 249. ↩︎
LL, INT 4, Interview with Ahmed Kathrada, conducted by G. Benneyworth, Liliesleaf, 2005. ↩︎
LL, INT 6, LOT 2 (a-k), Interview with Vivien Ezra, conducted by G. Benneyworth, Liliesleaf, 2006; LL, G. Benneyworth, “Research Report: Rivonia Uncovered”, p 137. ↩︎
N.R. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (Abacus, London, 1994), pp 372–373 ↩︎
National Archives of the United Kingdom (hereafter NAUK), DO 195, 2, SECRET, “Ghana’s Relations with the Union of SA”, 29 July 1960–1962. ↩︎
LL, Benneyworth, “Research Report: Rivonia Uncovered”, Appendix C, Interview with Gerhard Ludi. ↩︎
LL, Benneyworth, “Research Report: Rivonia Uncovered”, Appendix C, Interview with Gerhard Ludi. ↩︎
W. Volker, Army Signals in South Africa: The Story of the South African Corps of Signals and its Antecedents (Veritas Books, Pretoria, 2010), pp 226–227. ↩︎
This website article focuses on Dassault Mirage jet aircraft for Microsoft Flight Simulator and Combat Flight Simulator. At http://www.mirage4fs.com/slides15.html. Accessed 12 December 2016. ↩︎
It’s nice to receive positive news and exposure, Andre Keartland sent his in this morning to The Observation Post and its a great revival of an old OP post “Jackie the Baboon Soldier of World War 1” (see link below) – he said “Now this is quite a feather in the cap for “The Observation Post”. The podcast “The Rest is History” is by far the largest history-focused podcast in Britain, and is one of largest in the world. They have thousands of listens for each episode. In March 2024 they did an episode on “The Greatest Monkeys in History”. One of the featured animals (and they acknowledge he was not a monkey) was Jackie the Baboon.
During the podcast on the “The Rest is History” they reference and give a shout out to “The Observation Post” as their main source on the topic. Here is a link to the YouTube video of this episode. Jackie is mentioned at about 40 minutes in – enjoy.
Some great news. I am honoured and deeply grateful to some fine historians agreeing to come on board The Observation Post as contributors and editors. This been done to open the scope of the website to more new and interesting military history, academic dissertations, opinion peices, reviews and histories.
The hope is to eventually include more of South Africa’s leading military historians so as to give them access to a consumer driven and social platform that allows for effective reach to a targeted and interested audience.
My sincere thanks to Prof. Evert Kleynhans, Dr. David Katz and Dr. Garth Benneyworth for their commitment going forward and I’m sure that four heads are better than one to come up with really great content generation.
I am currently doing some research into Radio Zeesen, the Nazi German foreign service radio station broadcasting worldwide (much the way BBC world service still broadcasts today), and this image cropped up, now imagine – its 20 August 1987, 40 years after the end of World War 2 and in full view of the Nazi holocaust, and here’s Dr. Erich Holm and his supporters happily giving Nazi salutes and draping Nazi flags over a German war memorial, located rather surprisingly, in a cemetery in central Pretoria, South Africa.
Naturally it kicked up a fuss at the time – after all, it’s 1987 – the formal honouring of Nazi Flags and Nazi leaders in a country scarred by the war against Nazism is simply outrageous and insulting to the majority of modern South Africans – especially those whose forebears were lost or who took part in World War 2 or those military veterans who are still alive, most aged around 60 years old then. Not to mention the vast majority of South Africans who see this symbology in light of racial subjugation – rather unsurprisingly in the middle of all of this furore is the leader of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement (Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging) – the AWB .. now what’s going on?
So, here’s a little background to this scandal. During World War 2 (1939-1945), Hitler’s propaganda Minister engaged Radio Zeesen for all outbound broadcasting of Nazi propaganda, a specific market for this was identified in South Africa in the form of far right Afrikaner radicals – a variety of political parties and cultural organs – mainly the ‘Reformed’ or ‘Pure’ National Party, the Ossewabrandwag, the New Order, the Grey Shirts, the Black Shirts, the Boerenasie Party – the list goes on.
Three South African nationals were in Germany at the time World War 2 kicked off – Dr. Sidney Erich Holm, Dr. Jan Adriaan Strauss and Johannes Jacobus Snoek were recruited by the German Propaganda Ministry to run their ‘Afrikaans’ service on Radio Zeesen – which broadcasted worldwide in a variety of languages on short-wave transmissions. The positioning taken by Radio Zeesen with regard South Africa was a suggested National Socialism (Nazi) alliance with Afrikaner Nationalism, it also focussed on subverting the Smuts government and disseminated general anti-British sentiment in South Africa – it used talk, news and cultural programs to forward these aims – using these three Afrikaner broadcasters – all using the alias “Neef” meaning “cousin”, the main Afrikaner broadcaster was Erich Holm – his alias was Neef Holm.1
After the war ended in 1945, Holm, Straus, Pienaar and Snoek were all arrested for high treason on the basis of conducting subversive activities against the Union of South Africa during war-time, voluntarily working with Nazi Germany in forwarding their objectives and endangering South African lives. They were all prosecuted in South Africa, to ‘beat the rope’ or avoid lengthy jail terms their defence revolved around being mere employees of the German state radio service – they did not commit any “hostile intent” against South Africa – the argument used was a common one used in cases like this in South Africa at the time – that there is a difference between a ‘Land Veraaier’ (traitor to your country) and a ‘Volk Veraaier’ (traitor to your people) – they were merely warning South Africans and in their estimation they were still South African patriots – only they had a different view, that’s all.
Regardless of this rather convoluted sense of what constitutes treason, they were all however found guilty of high treason on the legal precedents thereof. Dr. Erich Holm is given a ten year sentence. Fortuitously for all of them, when the National Party walked into power in 1948, one of their first acts was to grant full amnesty to all South Africans convicted of war-time treason – so they all walked out their prosecutions free men, Dr. Holm having served three years of his sentence.2
Farewell Herr Hess
Now, spool on 40 years or so, Rudolf Hess, the only surviving member of Hitler’s inner circle has been sitting in Spandau prison in Germany on a life sentence for crimes against humanity – for all this time on a sentence that really meant ‘Life’. He’s now 93 years old and despite years of campaigning by a small group for release on compassionate grounds of old age, Hess continued to be an unapologetic Nazi and a devout antisemite. On 17 August 1987 he is found dead hanging in the prison grounds from a chord, having committed suicide (some contested that on the basis of his frailty in age).
Saddened by the loss of his old Nazi hero, enter stage left our old South African Radio Zeesen broadcaster, Dr. Erich Holm, emboldened by his National Party amnesty he truly nails his Swastika to the mast – literally. In conduction with some like-minded Nazi German friends who had found South Africa a welcoming home under the Afrikaner Nationalists and some members of Eugène Terre’Blanche’s Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB), Holm decided to arrange a suitable ‘auf Wiedersehen’ (farewell) for Rudolph Hess.
Their Memorial Service for Rudolf Hess is held at a German War Memorial in Pretoria, its a cenotaph to the German Fallen of both war – World War 1: 1914-1918 (written on one side) and World War 2: 1939-1945 (written on the other side), complete with metal wreath and eternal flame with accompanying dish. The cenotaph is strangely enough located in the middle the Pretoria West Cemetery – also known as New Cemetery, Newclare Cemetery, Pretoria West Cemetery – address: 322 Rebecca St, Philip Nel Park, Pretoria. It’s still there.3
German War Cenotaph Pretoria West Cemetery – eGGSA Library, open file.
How a German War Cenotaph finds its way into a Pretoria cemetery is anyone’s guess – it is unusual to find German war cenotaphs in countries who fought against Germany in both the wars commemorated. In any event, on 20 August 1987 (three days after Rudolf Hess passes), in full public view, Dr Eric Holm and his pals light the flame of remembrance, drape the cenotaph in gigantic red, white and black Nazi Swastika flag, hold a service to Rudolf Hess, salute the Cenotaph (and by that way Rudolf Hess) using the Nazi styled strait armed ‘Heil Hitler’ salute and play Nazi German period music over a Public Address system.
The media get wind of this Memorial Service to Rudolf Hess but are uninvited and in fact warned to stay away, a reporter from The Citizen and photo journalist – Neville Petersen are sent out to the memorial service, Petersen climbs over the fence while the reporter stays in the car. He hides behind a large headstone far enough away so as not be seen but close enough to take a photograph. Which he does of one the elderly Nazi attendees saluting Rudolf Hess, the memorial and the Nazi flag – once taken he’s back over the fence and into his awaiting get away car.4
Photo courtesy (and copyright) Neville Petersen with his kind permission.
Unrepentant
The published photo resulted in a media frenzy, driven by investigative journalists of the Sunday Times with the matter later landing up in Parliament, opposition MP’s demanding heads. The journalists, De Wet Potgieter and Jannie Lazarus identified Dr. Erich Holm at the centre of the controversy and interviewed him. What he said to them says just about everything:
Rudolf Hess
Dr. Holm put forward that Rudolf Hess was a man of “peace” (somewhat mentally unhinged Hess parachuted into Britain on 10 May 1941 in the hopes of negotiating surrender terms for a Germany) and “never touched a hair on the head of any Jew (as) it would have been beneath him” .. Holm then accuses the Jews and says “its the jews who have refused to declare peace since the end of the war”.5
So for Erich Holm, the entire Holocaust should just be something the Jews should get over and move on, notwithstanding the fact it’s still in living memory of many Nazi Holocaust survivors in 1987, including many in South Africa
Holm bitterly recalled that the imprisonment of Hess was because “the Jews and the British were afraid of him” and that he “was locked up in an inhuman way” because of it.
On a personal level he once again suggested complete innocence for his role in Radio Zeesen’s Nazi propaganda stating he was never a member of the Nazi Party and merely as “a South African (who) broadcasted news, music and entertainment to South Africa”.6
As a sort of fun throwaway, interest fact, Dr. Erich Holm said that Hitler was in favour of the white Afrikaner nation and a keen admirer of the Guerrilla tactics used by the Boer Republican forces during the South African War (1899-1902) and said:
“In fact Hitler told me personally of his admiration for the way the Boer Generals had fought the British, and singled out General Christiaan de Wet for special mention.” 7
Once again reinforcing his old Radio Zeesen propaganda brief without even giving it a thought, inadvertently and unwittingly linking Afrikaner Nationalism and Boer War “folks-helde” (people’s heroes) to National Socialism and Nazi Germany’s admiration for the white Afrikaner people. Something his defence team in his treason trial tried very hard to prove he did not do. The hard reality – the Leopard never really changed his spots. For more on Hitler and the Boer War follow this link: Hitler’s Boer War
What becomes increasingly clear from Dr. Holm’s comments is there is a fundamental disconnect in how he views Nazism and what Nazism was proven to ultimately be, an almost sociopathic distancing from really understanding and emotionally assimilating the genocide, trauma, death and hurt caused by National Socialism – something in which he was an active and willing participant, and something in hindsight he should have regretted.
Legacy
On celebrating Nazism and here’s the critical difference to how hero worship of Nazi elite was treated in Europe and the Soviet Union/Russia in the 1980’s and 1990’s – as opposed to how it was treated in South Africa.
In Germany, and even in death Rudolph Hess continued to be controversial, unlike his Hitler inner circle colleagues who shot themselves, were shot or hung and were buried in unmarked and unallocated graves or whose mortal remains are untraced to his day, Hess had asked that he be buried with his parents in the Wunsiedel cemetery and his wishes were complied with – making his grave the only real physical connection to formative Nazi leader.
Problem was – as the only real grave marker to a Nazi leader from the inner circle, each year on the anniversary of his death, neo-Nazis far right extremists from all over the world attempted to stage a march to the cemetery and salute the grave and gravestone epitaph “Ich hab’s gewagt” (“I have dared”). This despite court rulings banning it, causing the town to be shut-down with heavy police presence. It became such a menace, that when the graves lease expired 2001, the Hess’ remains were removed and cremated, the headstone removed and destroyed, and Hess’ ashes were scattered at sea by his surviving family.8 A move which was welcomed by the good people of Wunsiedel and just about every civic association and the Jewish German community. Even Spandau prison was demolished entirely to prevent it becoming a Neo-Nazi shrine.
In Afrikaner Nationalist South Africa however, no such police action was afforded to prevent such commemorations and open admiration of Nazism. The Afrikaner Resistance Movements (AWB) continued well into the 1990’s to openly fly Nazi Swastika flags alongside their very similar flags with impunity. Other organisations as well, investigative journalists found their way into commemorations of Hitler’s birthday at the time held by organisations like Koos Vermeulen’s World Apartheid Movement (WAB) and World Preservatist Movement (WPB).
AWB rally at Paul Krugers’ statue in Pretoria – note German Swastika Flag.
Unlike in Germany, Russia and all over Europe, up until 1994, there is something that can most certainly be derived from the tacit approval and lack of real action by the Apartheid state to readily stamp out the use of Nazi symbology, emblems and hero worship. Also, unlike in Germany and Europe, where active steps were taken by the state to educate and expose the entire population to the evils of Nazism by way of sensitivity training, there is also something that can be said of no such steps having ever been really taken place in South Africa by the Apartheid state – and that is evidenced by the sheer arrogance and lack of understanding demonstrated by likes of the Dr Erich Holm.
Here is a rare and very unique display of South Africa’s very own Nazi Party’s shirts, flags and bunting. Of interest, is the use of Orange, Blue and White in the Nazi swastika configuration – this was intentionally done to reflect the national colours of the South African flag at the time, the ‘Oranje-blanje-blou’ (Orange, White and Blue).
These items belong to South Africa’s ‘Greyshirts’, read on for an in-depth chapter in South Africa’s hidden history, here we focus on the SANP – The South African Christian National Socialist Movement also referenced as the South African Gentile National Socialist Movement. More commonly they were also known at the time as the SANP – The South African National Party – ‘Gryshemde’ in Afrikaans and ‘Grey-shirts’ in English.
SANP bunting, flags, armbands and shirts, image courtesy Ulrich Duebe, the current owner of the collection.
South African statute forces had fought a hard war against Italian Fascism and German Nazism, and the same war had been fought on the ‘home-front’ in South Africa itself, as with the USA and the United Kingdom, South Africa also had its own National Socialist (Nazism) parties prior to the war (it had actually been a quite popular doctrine across many “Western” European states prior to the war). During the war the Smuts’ government took severe action against pro-Nazi South African movements on the Afrikaner right-wing political fringe – the SANP (the Grey-shirts), the South African Democratic National Movement – the ‘Black-shirts’, the National Workers Bond – the ‘Brown-shirts’, The ‘New Order’ and the Ossewabrandwag amongst others and jailed some of their leaders for the duration of the war.
Imagine the sheer frustration felt by the South African war veterans returning after winning ‘The War for Freedom’ (as Smuts had called WW2 at the time). This war had been fought with a massive cost in South African lives to rid the world of Nazism and Fascism in the “good fight” – only to come home in 1945 and within three short years in 1948 find South African ‘home grown’ pre-war Nazi and Neo Nazi politicians swept into government. The very men and their philosophy they had gone to war against in the first place. Many of these movement’s leaders and members were folded into National party after the war to one day become South Africa’s political elite (including a Ossawabrandwag General – BJ Vorster who became a future Prime Minister and State President of South Africa).
Louis Theodor Weichardt
One such South African politician was Louis Theodor Weichardt (21 May 1894 – 26 October 1985) and this is his relatively unknown story of South Africa’s very own Nazi Party, the largest and most significant of the Pro-Nazi South African ‘Shirt movements’ – the Grey-shirts .
Louis Theodor Weichardt
Louis Theodor Weichardt was born in Paarl of German extraction on the 23 May 1894, he attended German school in Pretoria and in New Hanover Natal. At the outbreak of World War 1 (1914-1918), Weichardt found himself in Germany. His military service to the German state is shrouded in a little mystery, some accounts point towards three years service in the German Army, others point to non-combatant service in a Labour Corps. As a South African national there is an account that he was arrested after the war for High Treason, however the charges were never brought.
In Germany Louis Weichardt became a rabid antisemite, in travelling Europe he recalled that in the Ottoman Empire that the Turks were being “bled to death by Jewish extortioners and money lenders” and in Germany he said he:
“had the privilege of witnessing the first beginnings of the national German uprising against Jewish domination”. 1
Returning to South Africa in 1923, Louis Weichardt joined Hertzog’s National Party, however he became increasingly disillusioned in the National Party as he was unable to bring fellow members to his vision of National Socialism – he blamed been “checkmated” in his endeavours by external influences he called “powerful financial interests, predominantly Jewish”. When Hertzog merged the National Party with Smuts’ United Party, which was seen as by the ‘pure’ nationalists as underpinned by ‘Anglo-Jewish Capital’ (Oppenheimer) – Weichardt took the opportunity to break away from the National Party altogether and start his own party.
In Cape Town, on 26 October 1933, he founded South Africa’s Nazi party equivalent – The South African Christian National Socialist Movement with a paramilitary ‘security’ or ‘body-guard’ section (modelled on Nazi Germany’s brown-shirted Sturmabteilung) called the ‘Gryshemde’ (Afrikaans) or Grey-shirts (English). In May 1934, it was agreed to combine the ‘Grey-shirts’ with the South African Christian National Socialist Movement and form a new enterprise called ‘The South African National Party’ (SANP) – not to be confused with the National Party. The SANP would all keep with the ‘grey-shirts’ as their dress.
Johannes Von Moltke at this time was Louis Weichardt’s right hand man, the leader of the SANP’s stronghold in the Eastern Cape (his SANP office in Port Elizabeth proudly flying a swastika flag outside it every day). Johannes Von Moltke was of 1820 settler and German heritage, born in Senekal in the OFS he became a firm Republican and Afrikaner Nationalist, working for the Afrikaner Pers Group and the ‘Die Burger’, he met Weichardt in October 1933 and the two decided to collaborate.
Louis Weichardt was very proficient in English and he intended the SANP to appeal to both ‘English’ and ‘Afrikaner’ whites – citing that they were both of “Nordic” races. Some English joined the organisation, but the backbone found itself in rural and ‘poor white’ Afrikaner communities. It must be noted here that Nazism appealed to many Afrikaners as Hitler took an “anti-British” stance and the legacy of the South African War (1899-1902) was still strong within Afrikaner communities by the 1930’s, many within living memory of it. However Nazism was no means the exclusive pursuit of Afrikaners in South Africa, the handful of ‘English’ that supported the SANP were vicious in their anti-Semitic leanings – as were the British fascists at the time, Oswald Mosley a case in point in England. This sentiment can be be seen in the University of Cape Town Law and SANP supporter – Professor Kerr Wylie, who said of Jews in a letter to University of Cape Town Principal Sir Carruthers Beattie:
“Everything point to the fact that the Jews’ game in South Africa is up, and, if they have any sense, they will realise the fact and try to effect compromise. But history shows that the greed for gold and lust for power is so engrained in the Jewish race that they will cling to their gold and power until it is too late”.2
As a movement the SANP also saw themselves as a ‘popular’ movement for National Socialism and initially did not contend by-elections and municipal elections as a political party – choosing instead to put forward their members as “independents” in elections. A future Grey-shirt breakaway called the ‘Black-shirts’ would however put party candidates forward which ironically caused issues for the ‘Pure’ National Party as the support or the Black-shirts split their vote.. Overall, Weichardt saw democracy as an outdated system and an invention of British imperialism and Jews.3
The SANP would eventually contest elections and Louis Weichardt would stand as a MP candidate in Port Elizabeth, he was not very successful and would later try another safer seat without success either – predictably he blamed his election losses on a Jewish conspiracy.
The SANP grew to about 4,000 members in South Africa (with their largest support base in the Eastern Cape – spurred by ‘poor white’ rural and urban issues in the area), central to their cause in the 1930’s where Jewish immigrants escaping Nazi Germany to South Africa, and their numbers were growing significantly over the decade – in response the SANP launched a campaign calling for an end to Jewish migration and even arranged mass protests in Cape Town. Their primary communication mouthpiece was a newspaper called ‘Die Waarheid/The truth’ which was nothing more than a vehicle to spread Nazi doctrine in South Africa – the Nazi emblem emblazoned on the masthead.
Louis Weichardt would spell out his ‘Nordic’ argument and vision in the ‘Die Waarheid/The truth’ and trace South Africa’s problems to one source – the Jews. He claimed Jewish ‘domination’ of the legal, medical, dental, commerce, trading, liquor trade etc. as between 60% to 100%, and he would write:
“We are determined to put the Jew in his place. We are not going to tolerate bootlicking, Gentile South Africans – English or Dutch speaking – are no longer prepared to play second fiddle to these aliens”.4
The main target of the SANP was Hertzog’s old National Party’s inspired Quota Act of 1930 which sought to curtail Jewish immigration. As far as the SANP was concerned the National Party had not gone far enough in their endeavours to clip Jewish immigration specifically. They proposed revoking South African citizenships granted to all Jews entering South Africa after 1918, the prevention of Jews gaining government jobs and the prevention of Jews from owning immovable property and dominating any particular industrial or trade sector. They would however support an immigration policy that brought in whites of ‘nordic’ (aryan) races that would assimilate with a white culture in South Africa sans the “insoluble” element of Jews.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
The nature of the movement was clearly seen in March 1934 when the SANP held a rally in Aberdeen in the Eastern Cape, Harry Victor Inch – one of the Greyshirt leaders – announced that he had in his possession a ‘stolen’ document from a Port Elizabeth synagogue – signed by its Rabbi – which outlined a secret plot by the Jews to destroy the Christian religion and civilisation.
SANP propaganda leaflet accusing Jews of inciting Native (Black) violence against whites.
The Rabbi in question was not in fact a Rabbi, he was a Jewish Reverent, Reverent Abraham Levy, and he took the SANP Grey-shirt leadership in the Eastern Cape to court in Grahamstown in a landmark case. The SANP accused; Johannes von Strauss Moltke who was the Regional SANP leader, Harry Inch, who allegedly ‘stole’ the document and David Olivier, who had printed the document for circulation as the owner and publisher of “Rapport”, another media organ of the ‘shirt’ movements. All now have to account for themselves – the case billed as a mighty ‘Gentile vs. Jew’ showdown and a legal test of the ‘Great Jewish Conspiracy.’ `
The document in question followed the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a pamphlet of some 70 pages purporting to be the actual minutes of 24 speeches made by Jewish leaders during the First Zionist Congress in 1897. The pamphlet detailed a satanic plot by Jewish/Zionist conspirators to conquer the world. Alleging that Jews controlled much of the world’s finance, the media, the educational institutions, the court systems and many of the world’s governments, the Protocols claimed that the Jews indulged in all forms of trickery and deceit to tighten their hold. They deliberately spread diseases and immorality to weaken Gentiles, and did not hesitate to use murder and terrorism to destroy all religions except their own. Jews were striving to establish their own autocracy based on a false Messiah, the “Son of David”, and posed a fiendishly devious omnipresent peril to the rest of mankind.”5
‘Die Waarheid/The truth’ would pick up this ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ and really twist it for a South African audience claiming:
“the disastrous Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902 was deliberately brought about by the Jewish mine magnets who circumvented Rhodes and Kruger alike”.6
In addition, Jews were accused of inciting blacks against whites and controlling the economy, exploiting ordinary Afrikaners as part of an international Jewish conspiracy. The ‘Die Waarheid/The truth’ statements were accompanied by a propaganda leaflet printed by the SANP and distributed in Port Elizabeth.
Left to Right – standing outside the courthouse in Grahamstown in full SANP dress is Johannes von Strauss Moltke, Harry Inch and David Olivier.
The ‘stolen’ document was scrutinised legally, it was found to be based on an entirely discredited antisemitic ‘international Jewish conspiracy’ document called ‘the Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ and given a South African twist by the SANP. The ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ was a composition based on a 1860’s anti-Napoleon III pamphlet and a German antisemitic novel by Herman Gödshe ‘Biarritz’ – used by the Nazi Party in Germany.
In a carefully considered 30,000 word judgement, the court concluded inter alia;
“the protocols are an impudent forgery, obviously published for the purposes of anti-Jewish propaganda”.7
As a result three Greyshirt leaders all were fined, Harry Victor Inch was found guilty of perjury and forging documents defaming the Jewish race and swearing under oath that those documents were genuine – and fined £1,000, later also receiving a short prison sentence.8 David Hermanus Olivier was fined £25 for acting improperly and printing the document and Johannes von Moltke was fined £750 for “playing a leading role in the plot”.
The result has been widely hailed here as a complete vindication of the Jewish people and of Rev. Abraham Levy who brought the lawsuit against the Grey-shirt leaders.
Splits in the Shirts
Later that year, the SANP Grey-shirts would hold their first National Congress in Observatory, Cape Town. Louis Weichardt in his keynote address would dismiss Johannes von Moltke as a “traitor” to the SANP and no longer a member having “misbehaved” in releasing Harry Inch’s anti-Jewish protocols. In fact Johannes von Moltke had broken away from the SANP along with most of his the Eastern Cape SANP supporters and leaders and formed a new organisation called ‘The South African Fascists’ who wore blue trousers and grey shirts.
Other Nazi splinter parties and ‘shirt’ organisations also began to form – ‘The South African National Democratic Movement’ (Nasionale Demokratiese Beweging) which became known as ‘the Black-shirts’ was formed in Johannesburg by Manie Wessels and operated in the Orange Free State and the Transvaal – the Black-shirts themselves would splinter into another Black-shirt movement as an off-shoot called the South African National People’s Movement (Suid Afrikaanse Nasionale Volksbeweging) – based in Johannesburg, started by Chris Havemann and advanced a closer idea of National Socialism – this Blackshirt splinter group by 1937 boasted 265 branches (mainly in the Transvaal), their official mouthpiece was called “The Swastika”9.
The black-shirts by July 1939 were formally incorporated into the Ossewabrandwag focussing on the recruiting of ‘Christian minded National Aryans’ into the Ossewabrandwag infusing it with a “volkisch” Nationalism and took it beyond just being a cultural organ of Afrikanerdom and the National Party. 10
Another ‘Volksbeveging’ (People’s movement) also known as ‘African Gentile Organisation’ was also formed in Cape Town by H.S. Terblanche. The National Workers Union (Bond van Nasionale Werkers) – known as the Brown-shirts was established by Dr. A.J. Bruwer in Pretoria in September 1934. Finally a group called the ‘Orange-shirts’ under Frans Erasmus, who at that stage was the Secretary to the Federal Council of the National Party and the Minister of Parliament for Moorreesburg, Erasmus would go onto become the National Party’s Minister of Defence after 1948.11
In addition, the SANP leader J.H.H. de Waal resigned from the SANP over leadership issues with Weichardt and formed the The ‘Gentile Protection League’ whose sole aim was to:
De Waal’s organisation would focus on the Western Cape, he would also advance a Jewish store boycott in the southern Orange Free State where antisemitism was rife, he was a popular lawyer of political stock and he would eventually claim his organisation as 5,000 members strong. De Waal would comment in his memoir “My Ontwaking” (my awakening) and blame Jan Smuts for promoting the Jewish agenda in South Africa and call him “The King of the Jews”.13
An ‘insoluble’ element
So, where does the ‘purified or reunified’ National Party under Dr. D.F. Malan sit on the ‘Jewish’ question in the mid 1930’s and what influence do these Nazi ‘shirt’ organisations have on it?
Prior to the war and sitting in the wings of the Broederbond was Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd (the Architect of Apartheid), he was a predominant Broederbond member, National Party leader and would become a future Prime Minister of South Africa. Dutch by birth, he honed his studies in sociology and psychology in Germany and there is no doubt he was exposed to German politics and the rise of Nazism at the time. Verwoerd showed his colours early on when, the ‘Black shirts’ held a large rally and protested the arrival of the S.S. Stuttgart in Cape Town on the 27th October 1936 with 600 Jewish refugees on board.
S.S. Stuttgart in Cape Town
The Nationalists joined hands with the Black-shirts in support of their protest and a few days later on 4 November, Dr Theophilus E. Dönges (future NP Acting Prime Minister) and admirer of Nazism would nail the Nationalists colours to the mast and said:
“The Jew is an insoluble element in every national life.”
The Black-shirts were joined by Dr Verwoerd and five fellow professors from Stellenbosch University who all went in deputation to the government to protest against the immigration of Jews from Nazi Germany. Frans Erasmus (the future National Party Minister of Defence) would go further on the matter and even officially thank the Black-shirts on behalf of The National Party for bringing the attention of the;
“Jewish problem to the Afrikaner ‘volk’.”
Dr Verwoerd would forward the National Party’s views on Jews in the Transvaaler where he wrote that there was a “botsing van belange” (clash of interests) between Jew and Afrikaner because the Jew had risen to wealth in key economic sectors whilst protecting themselves as a community, and as guests in the country they had purposefully excluded the Afrikaner (he referenced as the ‘majority’) from taking their rightful place in accessing the country’s wealth. He would outline the Jew as an enemy of Afrikanerdom, he would write:
“This population group (the Jews), which still keeps itself separate and apart within the population, and which is indifferent or even hostile to the national aspirations of Afrikanerdom, is thus regarded as the group which also stands in the way of the Afrikaner’s economic prosperity”.14
Dr. D.F. Malan, the National Party leader would go further and refer to the Jews as a:
“undigested and unabsorbed and unabsorbable minority … that leads to all sorts of difficulties”15
D.F. Malan would however try and sanitise the The National Party to the Jewish Community, but as they were a firmly “Christian” movement in terms of constitution his words carried little weight to the South African Jewish Council who saw the National Party for what it was. The National Party would openly lock-step with the “shirt” movements when it came to demonising Jews and Jewish Capital in the form of “Hoggenheimer” in their mouthpieces “The Transvaaler” (of which Verwoerd was the editor) and “Die Burger” (of which Dr. Malan was a founding editor).
‘Hoggenheimer’ would become a cartoon in the same vein as “the banker” – a Nazi demonisation of Capitalist Jews and ‘the Jewish Conspiracy’ – depicted as fat, cigar smoking, balding and greedy – either pulling the strings or holding onto the money bag . The work of D.C. Boonzaier his caricature was developed specifically for Die Burger – a derogatory figure designed to depict a fat and bloated Jewish capitalist with a play on ‘hog” or pig, the character made a number of appearances and also served to lampoon Ernest Oppenheimer, the German Jewish Mining Industrialist who made South Africa his home. The Nationalists would even go as far as referring to Oppenheimer and Jewish Capital openly in Parliament and in speeches as “Hoggenheimer”.
Hoggenheimer by D.C. Boonzaier – Die Burger
It is undeniable that these “shirt” and antisemite fringe effectively “succeeded in shifting the ‘Jewish Question’ from the political margins of South African public life to its centre” … “Malan, under pressure from the ultra-right Greyshirts, focussed increasingly on the Jew as an explanation for the Afrikaners political misfortunes. It was Hendrik Verwoerd, however, who stood at the vanguard of anti-Jewish agitation”16
This sentiment would be taken up broadly across the Afrikaner Nationalist front – an example is the Nationalist MP for Bethlehem – Roelof van der Merwe, who on a call to boycott Nazi German goods, would warn the Jews:
“They (the Jews) are exploiting our people (the Afrikaners) and are nothing more than parasites.”17
World War 2 Nazi collaboration
During the Second World War, Louis Weichardt would even work in conjunction with the Ossewabrandwag to aid Nazi Germany’s war effort. He would take two Nazi spies under his wing, spies been smuggled by the Ossewabrandwag – the German spies Lothar Sitting and Nils Pashe would present themselves at a house in Stellenbosch and meet Weichardt – he would ensure they be driven and hidden by SANP men on a farm near Barrydale for two days after which one SANP man took them to Pretoria and back into the Ossewabrandwag’s network on 13 June 1940.18
Weichardt was arrested and imprisoned for the remainder of World War II at Koffiefontein detention barracks by the Smuts’ government as an ‘enemy of the state’ – along with all the other far right pro Nazi Germany, anti-British militants.
Merging of interests
With the end of the Nazi regime in Germany in 1945, Nazism became an anathema worldwide, Weichardt subsequently disbanded his SANP Nazi party in 1948. Moving on, Weichardt then gave his full attention and allegiance to D.F. Malan and the ‘Reunited’ National Party (NP) itself. He had a very successful political career with the National Party and went on to become the National Party’s senator from Natal Province from 1956 to 1970. Remaining elements of the Greyshirts distanced themselves from open Nazism and renamed themselves the White Workers Party in 1949. However, by this time most of the membership had been lost to the National Party and so the ‘Greyshirts’ and their reconstituted party faded .
By the early 1950’s the South African National Party government was littered with men, who, prior to the war where strongly sympathetic to the Nazi cause and had actually declared themselves full-blown National Socialists along Nazi political doctrine lines: Men like, B.J. Vorster – Broederdond, Ossewabrandwag – OB – ‘General’ and future NP Prime Minister and President of South Africa, Oswald Pirow – Founder of the New Order – NP Cabinet Minister and future National Prosecutor, Hendrik van den Bergh – Ossewabrandwag – future NP head of State Security, P.O. Sauer – Ossewabrandwag ‘General’ – now NP Cabinet Minister, Frans Erasmus – Ossewabrandwag ‘General’, founder of the ‘Orange Shirts’ – now NP Cabinet Minister, Dr Hendrik Verwoerd – Broederbond and future Prime Minister, C.R. Swart – Ossewabranwag member – future NP State President, P.W. Botha – Broederbond, Ossewabrandwag member – and future President of South Africa, Eric Louw Ossewabrandwag – future NP Cabinet Minister, Dr Nico Diedericks – Broederbond and future NP State President, Jaap Marais – Ossewabrandwag – now NP Cabinet Minister and future co-founder of the ultra-right Herstigte Nasionale Party, Dr Albert Hertzog – now a NP minister and future co-founder of the ultra-right Herstigte Nasionale Party, Piet Meyer – Broederbond, Ossewabrandwag and future head of SABC … to name just a few, and there is no doubt that their brand of far right politics, known collectively as Christian Nationalism (a form of Nazism) was influencing the National Party’s government policy.
By the early to mid 1950’s, this state of affairs led to open Anti-Apartheid protests from the South African military veterans community returning from WW2 – in their hundreds of thousands – in all The Torch Commando would rise to 250,000 members openly protesting the on-set of Nazism in the guise of the National Party, and it also ultimately led to the marginalisation of South African World War 2 veterans and their veteran associations by the ruling party when it was crushed under anti-communist legislation put forward in 1950 by the National Party.
The folding in of key National Socialist organisations, including Louis Weichardt and his SANP, Johannes von Moltke and his South African Fascists into the National Party’s political sphere would have a resounding impact on the future of not only the majority of ‘Black’ South Africans (who were viewed as ‘Inferior’ peoples by these hard liners), but also minority white ethnic groups like South Africa’s very large Jewish community.
The arrogance of this underpinning politics is seen with Louis Weichardt himself, who, on becoming an elected National Party Parliamentarian quickly covered up his dubious history as a full blown card carrying Nazi, and rather infamously declared that he had never been against the ‘Jewish race’ but only against the actions of certain ‘Jewish communists’. Not a single Jew, in his ‘opinion’ had suffered through his actions.19
Johannes Von Moltke the ex SANP and ex SA Fascist leader also later became a National Party Member of Parliament and the National Party’s leader in South West Africa and exhibited the same arrogance, gaslighting and covering up of his antisemitic tracks and blame his old grey-shirt colleague instead. “The (UP) Jewish Minister of Parliament, Morris Kentridge, once recalled with some amusement that Von Moltke frequently buttonholed him in the lobby of the House of Assembly to explain that he had been misled by Inch (his fellow Grey-shirt collaborator) and was a great friend of the State of Israel!”20
Researched and written by Peter Dickens.
My thanks and acknowledgements to Ulrich Duebe, the current owner of the collection as illustrated.
References:
“Echoes of David Irving – The Greyshirt Trial of 1934” by Dr. David M. Scher – December 2004.
A Perfect Storm – Antisemitism in South Africa 1930-1940, Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2015 – By Milton Shain.
National Socialism and Nazism in South Africa: The case of L.T. Weichardt and his Greyshirt movements, 1933-1946: By Werner Bouwer.
Hendrik Verwoerd’s ‘possible solution’ to the Jewish Question in South Africa, 1937 – Die Transvaler, 1 October 1937.
“Hitler’s Spies: Secret Agents and the Intelligence War in South Africa 1939-1945” by Every Kleynhans – Jonathan Ball Publishers 2021
The Rise of the South African Reich by Brian Bunting.
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