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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 It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.

AWB apologises for not fighting racism enough

Dispatch Online - Saturday, December 13, 1997

CAPE TOWN -- The Afrikaner Weerstands- beweging (AWB) yesterday expressed regrets for the deaths that occurred in the 1994 right-wing incursion into Bophuthatswana, and said it could have done more to combat racism among its members.

In a four-page submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the organisation also accused Freedom Front leader Constand Viljoen of having ordered acts of terror in the run-up to the elections that year.

The submission, drawn up by AWB Brigadier Dries Kriel, said the AWB took part in the Bophuthatswana incident in March 1994 as part of the Afrikaner Volksfront (AV), in whose "cabinet" General Viljoen had been minister of defence.

Three white right-wingers died when they and a contingent of armed colleagues tried to bolster the homeland's collapsing administration. The group apparently shot three black people in their bid to restore order in Mafikeng.The AWB said in its submission that it regretted it had joined the AV, and realised that it should never have become involved in Bophuthatswana. It blamed Gen Viljoen for his "weak and confusing" leadership, and for trying to put the blame for the fiasco he had executed on the AWB.

See http://www.dispatch.co.za/1997/12/13/page%2011t.htm#AWB for full text.

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