This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.
07 Aug 1992: Terre'Blanche, Eugene
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POM. Sorry - you're having a rally here tomorrow?
ET. Yes.
POM. It's just a year ago since I last saw you.
ET. The membership, the commandos and I, we will have a march from the Trim Park to the City Hall through the street where de Klerk's police shot our men and then we will put up a monument in memory of them. But the fact is I'm terribly busy arranging all these things so if I can help you as quickly as possible I'll be very, very glad.
POM. If I can have three quarters of an hour of your time. I've come a long way, I see you once a year. Mr Terre'Blanche, it's just been a little over a year since I was last here to see you and a lot has happened during that year and in many respects it would seem it hasn't been a very good year for the right. I'd like you to talk a bit about the whites' only referendum that took place in March, (i) why the Conservative Party agreed to take part in it at all and (ii) the campaign itself and (iii) the result and how you interpret the result.
ET. Well firstly I want to say that I warned the Conservative Party not to take part in the referendum. I made a public statement that the AWB will not go for the referendum. I was so sure that the CP will not accept the so-called challenge because of lack of time, because it was impossible to fight the referendum in three weeks time. Never in the history of democracy a thing like that happens, I don't know, even in the world. When a candidate is proposed they give him at least five or six months for his election campaign. But suddenly de Klerk announced the referendum in three weeks time, that was the one thing. It is impossible to visit your electorate. The idea in any referendum or election is that the opposition and all the parties must have the time to state his case and to put forward his programme of principles, his alternatives to each member of the electorate. And in South Africa we used to visit such voters at home one by one with your people who are working in that campaign. In three weeks' time there wasn't even enough time to print your placards and to announce your public meetings. That was unbelievable. That was the one thing. The other thing was that Mr de Klerk wasn't honest in even his question in the referendum. He did not tell the people the truth. He did not ask them: do you want a new government or do you want an interim government this year which will work on a new constitution for a one man one vote election? He never said that. He only asked, "Must I go on with my reform actions as started on 2nd February?" Even that wasn't fair.
. Three weeks ago one of these companies who was trying to find out the opinion of the electorate, of the people, and where they stand in politics and their different views, they published and they even said it on television that 68% of all the people whom they questioned, that is in the country and the cities, said that they want majority rule in the government by the white man. So the blimming fools did not understand the referendum and the question. They said yes for peace and prosperity and for negotiations to bring peace to South Africa. That was the question. Even on the letter where they have to say yes, the question was as long as that. Do you say yes, what is your answer to the announcement of the State President of the 2nd February to go on with his negotiation programme to bring peace to South Africa?
. But in fact I am satisfied with the result of the referendum. It was nearly a million votes. It was one third of the electorate. That means that if you look out of the window and you see three people in the front of my office, in the street in any place in South Africa, one of the three said no. So one third, although there wasn't time for campaigning, although the State President wasn't honest, one out of three people that time said no. I can assure you we are far more than one million people right now and I believe in a month or two's time we will be in the end in the majority but nobody will know that. It is impossible to show it to the world.
POM. Why do you say in a month or two?
ET. Because our country is totally, as I said in the past, you remember I told you people we are heading for a revolution, I told you people that the ANC and uMkhonto weSizwe can never share power with the Zulus of Inkatha. It's impossible. The war between the two groups, it has lasted for more than two years. But nowadays they are killing each other in hundreds per week. The government is not releasing the right numbers you can be sure of that. I made a non-aggressive pact with Inkatha in the Transvaal. Buthelezi tried to shoot it down under the pressure of your government, of the Bush administration. I know that because I spoke to some other leaders who are very near to Buthelezi. That night the Americans, the State Department, phoned Buthelezi and put some pressure on him. The fact is my non-aggressive pact is still standing between at least Inkatha in the Transvaal. I spoke and negotiated two times with Oupa Gqozo of the Ciskei. I visited him two weeks ago. I visited in the meantime, since I've seen you, Lucas Mangope, President Mangope of Bophuthatswana. At least the three groups, Inkatha in the Transvaal who are many, many thousands, hundreds of thousands, a million or more, the Ciskei, Bophuthatswana and the AWB are stating it very clearly and openly that we will not accept a communist government. What will happen in the near future is that my government, as I said in the past, will capitulate, will hand over the power to the ANC, he will break down under the pressures and the claims of Mr Mandela I'm sure, the interim government will come. The majority of the interim government, I'm sure, will be ANC/SACP, South African Communist Party, COSATU, all of them are communist inspired, even communist financed people. They will be, even in the interim government, in the majority. The fact is Mr de Klerk already committed himself to a one man one vote election where the winner definitely takes all because Mandela said he's not (sic) interested in majority rule and to defend the rights of minorities in South Africa, he wants the majority and if he has the majority then he will implement his political system. It's as simple as that.
POM. So when whites were voting yes in the referendum, what do you think they were voting yes for?
ET. Yes for peace and for negotiations, not for giving away all the political power of their own nation and their own rights to a different nation and a different race. They really voted for democracy but we will not have democracy. These blimming communists are only using democracy to come to power and then they will destroy democracy because Mr Mandela must stick to what he promised his supporters and that is to nationalise our banks, to confiscate our farms. If he will not do that the more radical part of his support, people like Chris Hani and even Winnie Mandela will take the fattest Firestone tyre in South Africa and put it around his neck and necklace him, I'm sure of that. They will kill him, they will just push him out when he comes to power. He promised millions of hungry people, people who the communists brought from their national states, their so-called homelands, from the farms to squatter camps in a military action. They shifted, they moved their terrorist bases from Moscow and Peking and New York and Lusaka to the squatter camps around each town. They are waiting to have, to receive what Mandela promised them, and that is money my good friend. To tell these people we will nationalise the banks, they think, millions of them think, it will be cash in their hands.
POM. When you said that the opposition, like the Conservative Party, did not have time to present their alternatives, do you think that that's one of the problems with the Conservative Party, like this crisis it's going through now is that it doesn't spell out a defined alternative that people can say, yes I understand that, I see it in my head therefore it's real?
ET. That's definitely a reason, but there's one that I think is the biggest reason why they are not today where they ought to be. The first thing is that lack to work together with the other right wing party, the HNP. In the former election I said that I would willingly be a candidate for the Conservative Party or an independent candidate but then they must give Jaap Marais one seat or they must work together so that we can have unity. So they don't want to listen to me and they said, no in that case they will fight me in the election in Rustenburg, so I pulled out and I said, "OK I'll go back, I know now you people don't want to work together, you can never win an election. I'm going back and I will prepare myself for the oncoming revolution" So I really went back and I started to change my movement into the commando system and here we are today. They have lost 19 seats because of the fact that they couldn't have agreement with the HNP. Those 19 seats would have given them the majority of the seats in the Transvaal. If they could have done that that time ...
POM. What year was that, Mr Terre'Blanche?
ET. Well it was the former election, 1989. Then after that, you are quite right, they did not spell out an understandable policy like we did. What is very, very interesting is that I am the father of the people's state or the volkstaat idea. I started it years and years ago. I even registered the AWB fifteen years ago as the People's Party, the volkstaat in Afrikaans, it was the bloc, the Volkstaat Party, the white people's party. And I went to them many times, I addressed their caucus, told them, "Please you have to share something. You don't want to share power, I don't want to share power but I'm willing to share land. We have to give these upcoming nations more land. We must share land."
ET. With the blacks yes. You cannot protect yourself as a minority with laws ad infinitum. That is impossible. You must defend your people with borders. I think I said it to you also. Now a hell of a lot of them they changed to my idea of a people's state or a volkstaat.
POM. So do you find yourself, as the current crisis is going on in the CP, more in sympathy with the direction that Mr Andries Beyers wants to go?
ET. You know, ironically, that is my idea that I tried to sell for many years to them. Now they are taking this idea like a fish, but unluckily they want to negotiate for the land with my idea at CODESA or a body like CODESA. In other words they want to negotiate with the ANC to claim part of this land and that is not my idea. I think that the ANC is not legal, they are not representing any nation. I made my point of view very clear in the past. I always say that I am willing to talk to the leaders of nations like the men I told you about, Oupa Gqozo and Lucas Mangope, etc. I even spoke to the Minister of Qwa-Qwa, Mpedi(?) and I believe that the leaders of nations can come together, the real leaders of nations, and work out a solution around the idea of a kind of a federation where each nation has a right to rule and to govern himself in his own country and then work together through other ways.
. I don't believe in power sharing. I don't believe in a one man one vote system. The fact is, who the hell is Mandela representing? Which nation? He's representing a political pressure group what is more a communist political pressure group. He's not even representing the Xhosas. Now leaders of nations must accept the fact that he will decide over the future of other nations. That's why I say that they are not legal. The moment you go to the negotiation table and you ask, please understand my point of view, according to international law I have a rightful claim, a just claim for part of this land. When you ask it to them then you must realise that you have to accept their answer because you give them the power then to decide. If they ask you, please give me your pen, may I have your pen, then I must realise you may say no. Then I must accept it. I cannot ask from Mandela to give me what is mine. There are certain parts in this country which are mine, as I said in the past.
. So my problem is I cannot join or even support the group of Beyers. If he says that he wants his People's State, his volkstaat, but he will ask Mr Mandela and Mr Joe Slovo or the South African Communist Party to give it to him, because I know they will never give it to him. My problem is if he goes in and he asks them, then he must accept the answer and if they say no that means that we are out of a country, then we will not have a country.
POM. Where does that leave them, the right wing white voters, who to vote for? If the Conservative Party can't spell out any vision of what it is, what it wants, so people can specifically identify with it and this continuing splintering goes on, how do you put together an effective alliance of the right?
ET. Firstly I think the Conservative Party did not do the blimming housework in the past. They started too late to see the volkstaat idea as an alternative. Really they are now where I was nineteen years ago. My problem is time. I don't think they will inspire their people even with the volkstaat idea now, it's too late. To say at this stage to certain Afrikaners, hundreds of thousands of them, you will not be part of the new People's State because we will claim only this part and this part, it is too late. My people accept it, my members of the AWB. I built up my organisation through the years and they know that we will never give away the two Boer Republics and we will not give away Northern Natal and around that idea, the idea bigger than ourselves, the idea for which 27,000 women and children died, the idea for which we fought the British at three different times, the idea for which we fought the blacks in thirteen wars is part of the movement and we have grown with that movement and we are preparing ourselves over the years to defend this part of land and history now shows that we were right all the time. There will not be power sharing. The ANC is not interested in power sharing, they want the whole of South Africa. They want a united South Africa where the majority will rule through an election where they surely will intimidate people like they did this past week and they will win that blimming election.
POM. I was going to ask you about that. Two years ago when I was here, when the ANC would have a march or something, there would be a much more visible AWB presence there and there seemed, what I either didn't hear about or didn't know of, there seemed to be an absence of AWB reaction to the ANC's mass campaign last week. Mandela spoke from the steps of the Union Buildings and it seems to be that's something you wouldn't have tolerated two years ago.
ET. No, no. The even got to the statue of Paul Kruger two years ago. That is not the point. The point is that we decided, the general staff and executive of the movement decided, let the people see, don't hinder them, don't stop them, give them the opportunity to do what they are doing right now. They want to burn these blimming left wingers houses, I will support them with the bloody matches. Write it down. They must see, let the revolution come. I warned the people a revolution is coming. Let them see, let them be aware of it. The more they are aware of it the bigger my movement is growing, the bigger my training camps will be. On Saturday you'll see.
POM. So what do you think happened, what dynamics were going on, do you think, in the ANC between the period from when, (i) did the ANC want CODESA to fail, (ii) they went from deadlock to walking out on the talks altogether, issuing a whole new list of demands and bringing mass mobilisation to the front burner rather than having it on the back burner? What do you think were the dynamics going on?
ET. Weakness. It was not dynamics I'm certain. Totally the weakness of the State President and his Cabinet. He gave in to all their claims right through the negotiations process since they started it two years ago. Mandela is already, well I think the last year, he's already governing this country through the Union Buildings by putting pressure on this weak de Klerk who committed him to peace and he doesn't want to fail. You know that man is the biggest liar ever known in politics. That is the one man who lied more to the most people, to more people than any other man right through history, don't mind who it is.
POM. De Klerk?
ET. De Klerk. He's flying literally from country to country, right through the world telling them we are heading for peace and prosperity in South Africa and ask people to bring, to send money to South Africa and they are going to lose their blimming money, my good man, be sure of that. But now he's in the position that he cannot stand up to the demands of the ANC because maybe there will be unrest in the country more than it is now and then the big money spinners of the world will not invest here.
POM. So do you think then that the ANC orchestrated the deadlock and the walkout in order to bring mass mobilisation forward, to spread it throughout the country, to say to de Klerk unless you give in to our demands, see what's going to happen?
ET. Oh yes. De Klerk, at this stage his problem is I think, you know I'm so glad that I am where I am. You know what I am? I'm honest. Maybe I'm not the best and the brightest. I am honest and I am not stupid. I think I have common sense and common sense told me that time and that time I told you we're heading for a revolution. De Klerk cannot stop the revolution any more if he stands up to Mandela's demands. It's impossible. He went too far. He weakened the South African Defence Force, he committed himself to the people with whom he compromised that he will weaken our forces. He even closed certain military bases. He weakened the South African Police because for years they sat there looking at my people, the best the cream of the SAP, get out of the police because of a lack of money or salary. He weakened them by scrapping laws which gives them the opportunity to prevent crime. In the past when a man is loitering in the street in the middle of the night then the police had the right to ask where are you going, what are you doing? They scrapped that. So hundreds of thousands of hungry black people went to the cities after they scrapped the laws and now they just, as I said, the terrorist bases shifted from Lusaka to each blimming town or city in squatter camps. De Klerk released all the political leaders. He gave in to the demands that 40,000 trained terrorists can come back to South Africa. He opened the doors of the jails, he released criminals, hundreds, thousands of them.
. He is not in a position to stand up to the ANC. And what is more, they came to agreement, de Klerk and Mandela, and Mandela said he will stop his war, his armed struggle and he will hand in his weapons and he will show the bases where they stock these weapons. They did not give him one single weapon. In the last two years they brought in thousands and thousands of Russian weapons, ammunition and arms to South Africa. I can assure you this government is knowing that they are busy with training camps each day in the Transkei under the command and with the blessing of Bantu Holomisa of the Transkei. My friends and the people I'm working with in Umtata told me that at least once per month trained uMkhonto weSizwes are being brought into Soweto and to the townships with buses from the Transkei with the AK47s in their hands. And you know I did not believe it when they told me. And yesterday, the day before yesterday, my people phoned in because we were at all the mass actions, my people in civvies, they phoned in from each town where they were, there were AK47s visible. I spoke to certain people, I put some pressure on the minister and the minister announced the day before yesterday that they know, they saw some AK47s during this march.
POM. Which Minister was this?
ET. Hernus Kriel, Minister of Law and Order. So they do not even have the guts now to enforce law and to stop them immediately in their march and say, I want that man and that man, get out.
POM. You mentioned the police and that really interests me because abroad the image of the South African Police from the sixties through the eighties was of a ruthlessly efficient police organisation that would track down suspected terrorists and pull them in, secure their convictions. And now you have had the Waddington Report talking about incompetence and lack of accountability. It's the very opposite of what you imagine this police force to have been. What's happened?
ET. Well the government systematically destroyed the South African police force, systematically. You must realise when 99% of those policemen went to the South African Police and took the oath of loyalty, etc., they said, "I'm taking the oath in the presence of my God, for my God, my people and my fatherland." Now with nationalism, driven by nationalism and by ideals they went to the police but nowadays they are just, most of them or a hell of a lot of them are paid policemen because they cannot express their own views, they are forbidden to take part in the politics in South Africa, they do not have the right to be a member of a party, etc. so they try to make them just a private, a real private army for the benefit of the government and not for the people and God any more. As I said, many of them, we are picking them up. The brightest policemen who are not members of the force any more, they are becoming leaders and officers in the commandos of the AWB. We are using them, good men. Men like our Commandant General de Wet, a man who was a District Commandant of Cape Town, one of the biggest districts in South Africa with the most crime. He was District Commandant. He walked out on the police and now he's Commandant General in AWB.
. Now the police force, the South African police force is not what it was a year ago and the fact is the poor people don't know what to do. If they sent them in in the townships, if they tried to restore law and order then Mandela asked for a commission and the government allowed it and they pulled them naked before that commission and the courts and next time they asked them not to go in. And then Mandela says it's a lack of police presence at the scenes. So they really don't know what to do. I think you can believe, I've had a lot of good senior policemen which I'm seeing and I don't think the government can bargain on their loyalty in the oncoming revolution.
POM. Is de Klerk really - are there constraints on what he can do with the police because they would simply, at some point, turn on him?
ET. De Klerk is an individual. He's a loner. His thinking is far from the reality of what is going on in his own country and in his own different departments. He doesn't believe that things will go wrong for him. He's so naïve, impulsive. For instance, he came to Ventersdorp a year ago, Saturday a year ago. He came to Ventersdorp, he interfered in Ventersdorp. For what? Just because the AWB Commando officers are here and it's a strong CP constituency. He said he wants to come to the Western Transvaal. He lied. If all the former Prime Ministers who visited the Western Transvaal and the Western Transvaal's National Party went to Potchefstroom or to Klerksdorp, not to Ventersdorp, that's a blimming story, and the police officers advised him not to come, even some of his own members of his Cabinet warned him and he came here. He walked away from Ventersdorp over the dead bodies of three of his own nation, three Boer blokes in the streets. Nine months after that he went to Boipatong and the police officers warned him not to go in there, but he went in there. He walked away over the bodies of three black men. That man walked over six bodies by pure blimming stupidness. It was not necessary. What did he create when he visited Ventersdorp? Bugger all except the death of people and a hell of a lot of policemen wounded and a lot of AWB's wounded. What did he create in Boipatong? Nothing. Policemen wounded, three blacks dead. And then people think he's a statesman. That's the poorest statesman ever known, my good friend.
POM. What is he after? What's his game plan?
ET. I think he's in trouble. He compromised with people to become Prime Minister, when he tried to sack PW Botha, in one week's time they finished PW Botha and with the support of certain people. And he compromised with them and after that he could never say no. And he put his feet on the negotiation way to give in and to change and to reform and all that nonsense and now there's only one way for him to get out of this and that's to hand over the government to the ANC and I can assure you I am glad I can look you in the eyes. I don't know what I said a year ago to you, or two years ago, but I know what I'm saying today I have said for years and years I am preparing myself for the revolution. I have said through the years there is no such workable system as power sharing. That's nonsense.
POM. There seems to be every indication now that the parties are going to get back to the negotiating table and de Klerk will convene a session of parliament in October to pass legislation to provide for an interim government, so that by the end of the year you could in fact have an interim government with Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, Chris Hani in it.
ET. Joe Slovo.
POM. When does the revolution start?
ET. Do you remember what I told you last time? There's only one way to be legal as a resistance movement in this country and that is to say that we are preparing ourselves to resist the oncoming revolution which the ANC will start. And I think they will do it after they take over the government and they are in the position of a real government, in possession of our army equipment. Then they will drive out of this country the white man for ever, except when we and the Zulus will resist it and destroy them. And the Zulus, I can assure you, will never accept them as a government. So there will be a war which neither de Klerk nor Bush nor anyone can stop.
POM. So do you see yourself as maybe ultimately working in some kind of an alliance with the Zulus?
ET. If we will not work in an alliance with the Zulus it will be foolish because the Zulu nation is not interested in a united South Africa to govern over all the other small races. They are power people, they are the biggest black nation in South Africa. What they want is their own country, Qwa-Qwa Zulu and more land and I don't mind to talk about more land for the Zulus. No problem at all. I will talk about more land to any nation but especially for the Zulus. I know they have too small a piece of South Africa.
POM. Could you tell me a little more about the non-aggression pact? How that came about? It was Musa Myeni?
ET. Musa Myeni yes. Listen I did not make a pact with Musa Myeni. I made a pact with Musa Myeni and the Executive of Inkatha in Transvaal and I did it in public with at least, well the whole blimming Executive, even a black Zulu lady from Cape Town was present at that time. But at least the majority of the Executive of the leadership of Inkatha in Transvaal and, let me say it again, that non-aggressive pact stands and we are still working together.
POM. How did it come about? Did you approach them? Did they approach you?
ET. No, strangely enough me and Mr Myeni were on the same television programme, I can't remember which one it was, here in South Africa, then he said he wants to see me afterwards, he likes my statements. More or less a month or two before that me and the Zulu King were at the same Peace Conference in Pretoria and after I spoke he immediately got up and he supported my speech.
POM. This was the King?
ET. Yes, the Zulu King. King Zwelithini. And it was a hell of a thing, these church people of South Africa, Heyns and that lot, I can still remember how they ran to each other and said, "Now there is a polarisation happening, the Zulus and the AWB on the one side and all the other people and this Peace Conference will go to hell, etc." But the fact is, there in public the Zulu King says, "We will never accept a strange nation to rule us whether it's Americans, Afrikaners or British we don't mind. I can assure them we are a fighting people and we will fight them"' And that is exactly what I said. I said that day you can never have peace in this country if you do not realise and agree and accept that the Boer people have the right to have land of their own. You must accept that you cannot share power. So we met, Mr Myeni visited me here in my office, so we went on with several meetings after that. We are still meeting.
POM. I want to ask you a couple of things, and I appreciate the time. I come once a year 10,000 miles to have one hour of your time, and I'll come back next year again. Why is it so difficult to get all right wing organisations together operating cohesively? Why is there this continuous fragmentation, organisations here and organisations there?
ET. I don't mind if there are more right wing, extra-parliamentary movements because it helps us. It's difficult for the security forces in the end to trace down how big and how great the resistance really is. In the end, if the paw-paw strikes the fan, my good friend, there will be only one organisation. I said years ago that in the end it will be only a choice, I think I said it to you, between the AWB and the ANC and we are moving to that situation right now. I'm in contact with 90% of the smaller right wing organisations. I can phone Andries Treurnicht right now and he will see me in an hour's time, and the same with Beyers. I differ openly and honestly with them on certain points but the movement now in the last eight months is moving totally out of politics. Our task is to get some land for our people and there it stops. So I'm not arguing with people about will we have apartheid or what will happen to the Indians or what will happen to that and that. I'm not arguing. That's not my task. My task and the movement's task is to resist a total capitulation where we will lose everything we have and I'm sure, well the growth of the AWB is unbelievable. I don't mind to tell you that I will never give you the real number of the AWBs and what our support is, but I will give you the numbers of the trained commando members. We are between 15,000 and 20,000 trained men and women right now. And that happened during a year and half, eighteen months time.
POM. Do you conduct this training in South Africa or out of South Africa?
ET. Yes, in South Africa. We do it openly. At one stage we invited the press to a big training camp, it was shown right through the country, but we showed them some of the skills of the Iron Brigade and of the commando members and I introduced that day more or less more than 2,000 trained commando members.
POM. When was that so I can just look it up?
ET. There must be many television materials.
POM. I'll look for it.
ET. Yes, please. There were 13 or 14 foreign countries that were present.
POM. Why do you think the state or the government doesn't move against you and say, no you're training people openly for military action?
ET. I'm not training them for military action. I'm training them to meet the oncoming revolution to defend ourselves. I negotiated it three times with the Minister of Law and Order, then Mr Adriaan Vlok, and frankly speaking he legalised the commandos as a system with which we are able to defend ourselves. You see the police are in such a position right now that they admit it that they cannot stop the crime and they are asking, they are appealing to the public, please to defend yourselves, please start home guards and all that nonsense. We knew a year ago that that is impossible, that is not the solution, that is not the answer. The answer is a real good motivated organisation to meet the AK47s and the trained uMkhonto weSizwes. I cannot defend myself with a woman just by putting a gun in her hands. That's impossible. So we are training them to be trained men.
POM. So as far as you're concerned you were legalised by the government after your negotiations?
ET. If they try to stop me, they said they will stop private armies and I said, well then it will mean a declaration of war because if they stop me to prepare myself, to better my people, to beat the oncoming revolution then they are declaring war. I will not lay down that they can kill them, we will not be the oppressors. We don't want one single piece of land of the Ciskei or of the Transkei or Zululand. We are not going into the townships.
POM. Just three last quick things I want to ask you, and at one of them don't jump, but as a social writer, it's the whole Janie Allen thing. Will you put that in some perspective for me and how you think it will affect or won't affect your own political development and what you're doing?
ET. It cannot affect my political development because I am not a Member of Parliament paid by the taxpayers. I started this movement, my movement's leaders, the Generals and the general staff, all the officers, they are hard liners, knowing the politics, wise men, trained men, fighting people, knowing what is really happening, they worked with me for years around me. They know that 90% of what was said in London is the most unbelievable blimming filth and lies ever known. God knows along how people can let themselves be bought to stand there in the witness box, swearing to God and then lie like most of those witnesses did.
POM. Do you think there was any attempt, like a conspiracy to make you the target of ...?
ET. Oh definitely, yes. You see it wasn't a conspiracy to destroy me, but Miss Allen made a hell of a mistake trying to take these people who are supported with millions and millions of rands to the High Court in Britain knowing that I am involved. You see, my good friend, that people, the British people they killed in 1,855 Boers, hanged them in the Eastern Cape at a place called Slagtersnek. That same British people killed 27,000 women and children just because the woman and children stick to their families and their husbands and to the promises which they made to their God, just because they resist the British onslaught on the sovereignty of our country. They killed in 1914 some of our best and purest men, people like Joupie Fourie who they shot. A British High Court will never ever, and I said it to the lawyers who phoned me and said I must go and testify and I said no I don't want to be part of it. Miss Allen wants some money. I have nothing to do with Miss Allen but she must realise that the jury, and that was my problem, that the jury of twenty people, civilian people, will believe and will like sex scandals and will listen to the sex stories. They will never, never come to a verdict in which they can help me in any way. They will destroy me.
. That same court killed my people in the past just for being a Boer. And I, my friend, I am the most Boer of all the Boers in South Africa. I'm the boerest Boer. I'm the one Boer who stands for my ideals over nineteen years, the one man they could not break, the one man who can bring together in time of revolution the white resistance and I'm doing it right now. And they tried for years to break me. My people are used to it. That unbelievable, blimming nonsense that I have sex in a motor car, in a sports car, that the lady watched through the bloody peephole and saw me. I never saw that bitch, man. And the man who talked about my underpants. You know my wife is buying my clothes. I have never in my life had blimming green underpants. Things like that. The other lady who stated that I like to eat T-bone and she served me and Miss Allen in a cafe and I ate T-bone. I am always, she says, eating T-bone with an egg on top of it and then drink Black Label. That's shit. All my people know I'm a cattle farmer. I never ate T-bone. I know meat. I ate rump steak my good friend. I never, not once in my life, I don't know the taste of Black Label and all my people know it. So she lied but they paid her to lie.
POM. Who paid her?
ET. Well I believe Channel 4. Maybe this is not for the record but I'm telling you as man to man, you see luckily they went too far with me. They tried it in the past and always trying to couple me to one or another scandal. The fact is, you know why I will survive and why my movement is growing? Because I will never betray my people and my country. And that my supporters, and that the hundreds of thousands of people who are on their way to be supporters know, I did not change my story in nineteen years time. I never backed off in any circumstances. I ran in Ventersdorp between the bullets and shouting to the blimming police, "Please stop! In God's name look what you have done!" It was on television. And I stood there, with the help of my guard and I stopped them. In the debate the next day the minister says they did not give the command to shoot. And I said, "Yes, maybe they did not, but I know one thing, you did not give the command to stop. I did." And thank God the police listened to me.
. The point which I want to make is for a so-called, maybe it is or maybe it is not, maybe it is a sex scandal, my people will never ever turn their backs on me. I promised them a fatherland and I promised them to fight and what the government's intentions and ideas will be I don't know. But they fight me in the trenches, through the streets or in the veldt, always for the same things for which they are supporting me. I am not a traitor and I'm not a dominee and I'm not a priest and the movement is not a kindergarten. We are preparing to fight the most ugly, trained terrorists in the world, uMkhonto weSizwe, whose intention is to kill women and children by limpet mines and by bombs and by dynamite. If my people have a choice in the end between the AWB and the ANC, it will be a choice between Mandela or Terre'Blanche and they will always choose me, my man.
POM. OK. Thank you. Just a little thing. Did the yes vote or the no vote win in this area? Did the no vote win in this area?
ET. You see they made it, the yes vote won by far but what they did was they put the Western Transvaal together with Johannesburg or Roodepoort so we have lost it with a few thousand, but they are so clever you know. They made areas and you can't believe it. They take the Western Transvaal's vote and they count it with part of Johannesburg, put it with the Johannesburg area so that it looks like we have this area. In fact everybody knows, I don't think in Ventersdorp 15% and in Lichtenburg, this part, voted yes.
POM. I see. So they didn't give turnouts in different areas? They just gave the raw numbers?
ET. Yes, that was one of the reasons why I asked the Conservative Party not to go into the election. I asked them at least that the votes must be counted in each constituency because for me to prepare myself for the revolution I love to have those numbers, the real figures. The government said no, it was only five, they cut the country into five areas.
POM. And they just gave the turnouts for five areas?
ET. That's right, only the turnout for the five areas.
POM. So you don't know what percentage of registered voters actually went to vote?
ET. The only area which they could not damage was the northern part, Pietersburg, so they won by far there the no votes. But then they even counted the foreign votes. There were a hell of a lot of them, somebody said 200,000 or so. The votes from foreign countries, from South Africans were counted in Pretoria so they even changed the outcome of the referendum in Pretoria by bringing in the votes of foreign countries. My good man, the angels are in heaven. We are dealing with people, with mankind. You know one of our greatest poets said, "The more I look to my dog, the less I think of my neighbour." People are people and people are weak, people are criminals.
POM. Thank you.