Now Aint That Interesting ?

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CHAPTER 16 - THE ORDE BOEREVOLK
One of the more dramatic organisations to have grown out of the AWB was the Orde Boerevolk, set up by long time AWB member and activist Piet Rudolph in late 1989\ 1990. This organisation was responsible for a large number of violent incidents in 1990, and was a direct result of the unbanning of the ANC and South African Communist Party at the beginning of that year.
The name "Orde Boerevolk" (Orde is the Afrikaans spelling of `order') was taken by Rudolph from a right wing book published in the United States called The Turner Diaries. This book is about a fictional white right wing armed uprising in that country and had at its core a secret organisation called "The Order." An American right winger, Robert Matthews, and a number of other militant American right wingers formed such an organisation in 1982 after reading The Turner Diaries, and carried out a number of terrorist acts in preparation for what they were hoping would be a race war in the United States.
The fact that Rudolph also named his organisation the "Order" (he did so quite independently of Matthews' organisation, and indeed Rudolph said later he had never heard of Matthews) gives The Turner Diaries the distinction of being the only fiction book to inspire two active armed right wing groups in different parts of the world.

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In March 1990, at an AWB public meeting, two young serving South African air force conscripts, one named Francois Van Rensburg, approached AWB leader Eugene Terre'Blanche and said that they could, with the necessary help, steal a large number of weapons from the Air Force headquarters at which they worked. Terre'Blanche immediately referred them to Rudolph, who was also present at the same meeting. The two young men then approached Rudolph, and between them was born the till then largest arms theft in South African history.
On the evening of Saturday 15 April 1990, Rudolph, who was then deputy leader of the Boerestaat Party, led a daring raid on the South African Airforce Head Office's armoury in Pretoria. Rudolph and a number of accomplices (not all of whom were ever identified, even by the police) drove into the courtyard of the air force headquarters in Church Street in a genuine airforce bus. The driver of the bus, a national serviceman, was one of those who were originally in on the plot. Rudolph and his accomplices lay flat on the floor of the bus so that the sentry standing guard duty outside the building did not see any occupants in the bus.
Once safely inside the building courtyard, Rudolph and his accomplices went to the fourth and fifth floors of the building, passing a further two sentries on the way who were also part of the plot. A duplicate key (which had been painstakingly made with plaster cast imprints of the original) for the armouries on those floors was used to gain access to the weapons safe.
68 firearms were removed, including pistols, pump action shotguns, R5 assault rifles and one light machine gun. Two cases of ammunition - containing many thousands of rounds - were also removed. Putting the arms into brown army kitbags, Rudolph and accomplices then took the weapons back down to the bus, which was then driven out as if nothing had happened. Rudolph and his men once again lay flat on the floor of the bus along with their booty.
Once outside, the weapons were transferred into three separate pick up vans and transported to a small holding belonging to Rudolph confidante Willem Boshoff outside Krugersdorp on the West Rand. From there they were moved to a small holding belonging to another Rudolph confidante, Hilton Hofmeyer, near the East Rand town of Bapsfontein. They were finally removed from this place by AWB men Kallie Bredenhann and his son Henk, and from there were distributed piecemeal amongst right wingers in the Transvaal and Orange Free State. Many of the firearms are missing to this day and have never been recovered.

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With the discovery of the theft early on Tuesday morning - the theft had been carried out over the Easter long weekend - the sentries were immediately questioned. The young men soon confessed to their part in the plot and were charged. Information gained from the men took the police to another man, Gene Taylor, well known in Pretoria's right wing circles.
Taylor was arrested and held at the Pretoria Moot police station and later released on bail. He was later granted amnesty.
Before the police had managed to circulate the fact amongst all their personnel that it was Rudolph who had led the arms raid, he had in fact visited a policeman in the Security Police Headquarters in Pretoria on the Tuesday following the weekend raid. The ridiculous situation then arose where policemen on one floor of the building were preparing a massive manhunt for Rudolph - while at the same time he was in the exact same building on a different floor. Only once Rudolph had left the building was the person he had been visiting informed that Rudolph was wanted for the arms theft. By then Rudolph had of course disappeared and it would be months before the police caught up with him again.
Rudolph then telephoned the Pretoria News newspaper and admitted to his role in the theft, saying that the "war" had now begun and that he was going to arm "Boer commandos" for this purpose with the weapons he had stolen.

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A few days after this theft the armoury of the army base at Wemmerpan in Southern Johannesburg was also raided. Several R1 rifles and pistols were been stolen in this heist.
Shortly thereafter a bomb exploded at the house in Pretoria where the peace treaty ending the Anglo-Boer war of 1899 - 1902 was signed. The house, which is maintained as a museum, was extensively damaged in the attack which was carried out with commercial explosives (that is, dynamite which is commonly used in South African mines).
Three men were arrested by the police in connection with the incident - one of them being Jan Meyer, the former fireman who had since been appointed to be Terre'Blanche's personal secretary.
Shortly thereafter a bomb flattened the offices of the National Union of Mineworkers in the Western Transvaal town of Rustenburg. This act was, it later transpired, carried out by one of the first Orde Boerevolk cells which Rudolph had set up after making off with the Air Force weapons. Rudolph had in fact stayed for quite a while at the house of a sympathiser in Rustenburg while the police manhunt for him went on. He had however left Rustenburg by the time that the union bombing took place.
Above and below: stills from the famous Orde Boerevolk video, released by Piet Rudolph in 1990.

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Apparently not satisfied with the publicity his telephone call to the Pretoria newspaper and the blasts at Melrose House and in Rustenburg had attracted, Rudolph then produced a dramatic "war video" in which he officially declared war on the South African government, the ANC and the South African Communist Party.
The 28 minute video showed Rudolph seated at a table in front of a huge Four Colour flag, flanked on either side by four masked men, two of whom were holding R4 assault rifles, presumably taken from the airforce arms heist. On the table in front of him Rudolph placed several right wing books and one of the pistols stolen from the airforce.
Three copies of the video were posted out in Johannesburg - one to the Beeld newspaper (which used the story on its front page in dramatic fashion); one to an independent radio station (Radio 702) and a third to Robert van Tonder, leader of the Boerestaat Party. The video which was sent to Beeld reached that newspaper's offices on 18 June 1990.
In his message on the video Rudolph said there "was no longer time to talk" and that it "is better to die in glory than to live in disgrace." He urged viewers to "take the enemy with blood and bricks" (an Afrikaans expression which can be translated figuratively as "blood and fire").
Rudolph also urged people to "avoid like the plague those who say wait for the right moment" (an obvious reference to CP leader Treurnicht who had spoken out against Rudolph's actions), saying that "they are nothing but a block around the legs. They will wait until it is too late. "Urge those who talk of fighting and shooting to do so now. All we need is about 500 Boers who are prepared to give their lives on the altar of our ideal to ensure success." Copies of the video were then circulated widely in right wing circles across the country.

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Within days, Rudolph's call to arms was heeded. On the evening of 23 June 1990, two National Party offices in Johannesburg were bombed. The blasts, both caused by commercial explosives, occurred in the dead of night at the Johannesburg head office of the NP in Auckland Park, just next to the Rand Afrikaans University, and at the Florida constituency offices of the then Minister of Finance Barend du Plessis. Extensive damage was caused to both premises.
A number of blasts then occurred in quick succession. On 29 June 1990, a Jewish Democratic Party Johannesburg City Councillor, Clive Gilbert, had his home bombed in another midnight attack. On 1 July 1990, Gilbert's business premises in Highlands North (also in Johannesburg) were bombed, while on the same day a little used synagogue in the Johannesburg Southern suburb of Rosettenville was bombed and defaced with swastikas and slogans such as "Jews = ANC" and "Prepare for War." Gilbert later joined the ANC and so doing become one of that organisation's first city councillors in Johannesburg.

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On 2 July 1990, a National Party Johannesburg City Councillor, Jan Burger, had his house, situated in the Southern Johannesburg suburb of Turffontein, bombed. Burger was a former senior member of the city's management committee and as such had been at the forefront of the liberalisation of the city.
Two days later, on 4 July 1990, the Johannesburg city centre offices of a left wing Afrikaans weekly newspaper, the Vrye Weekblad, were damaged in a night time bomb attack.
The next day, 5 July 1990, a huge dynamite blast flattened the offices of the Black militant ANC-supporting National Union of Mineworkers in the staunchly conservative mining town of Carletonville.
On Friday 6 July 1990 a powerful bomb went off at a crowded Black taxi rank in Johannesburg, injuring 27 people. The bomb had been hidden in a concrete rubbish bin, which had absorbed much of the blast, otherwise many more would have been injured.
It was only after this last blast that anybody claimed responsibility for the blast. Two days after the taxi rank explosion a group calling itself the "White Liberation Army" telefaxed an anonymous statement to a news agency and several newspapers claiming responsibility for the attack.
Referring to Blacks in extremely derogatory terms, the statement also threatened the lives of the minister of Law and Order Adriaan Vlok and the head of the ANC's armed wing, Chris Hani, whom the statement described as a "kaffir ape." The statement warned that the blast would not be the last.

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The police had however not been sleeping while these attacks were occurring. Starting on the morning of 6 July 1990 they had steadily been arresting AWB and former AWB members in the greater Johannesburg area on suspicion of complicity in the events.
Eventually nine people were detained in the first swoop - David Rootenberg (a former AWB Burger Council leader in Vereeniging), Leonard Veenendaal and Darryl Stopforth (who had in the meantime resurfaced in Johannesburg), Lodewyk Mienie, Piet Bester (a former member of the AWB who had joined a breakaway group called the Boere Weerstandbeweging or "Boer Resistance Movement"), Leon van Rensburg (the former West Rand AWB Burger Council leader), Craig Barker, Arthur Archer (both of whom had been arrested along with Veenendaal and Stopforth in South West Africa the previous year as well) and an Italian, Enrico Francicco.
Francicco was released within a few days without any charges being laid against him after he had voluntarily given the police a statement.
(One of the arrested men, David Rootenberg, was in fact an orphan who had been raised as a Jew by his Jewish adoptive parents who had given him the middle name of "Israel." After Rootenberg had joined the AWB, he had renounced his adopted religion).

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The police crackdown, which began at 4am, saw squads of policemen armed with sub-machine guns arrest Veenendaal and Stopforth in a flat in Southern Johannesburg and search the homes of David Rootenberg and that of Boerestaat Party leader Robert van Tonder in Randburg.
What the police did not establish was that one of Veenendaal's comrades from the attack on the UNTAG base and subsequent escape from police custody in South West Africa, Horst Klenz, had also been active with the Order Boerevolk. Klenz at one stage even provided a car which had been stolen from the United Nations in Namibia for use by Rudolph.
Klenz remained free until he was at last betrayed by a government agent, Piet Bester - the same one who was "arrested" along with Veenendaal and Rootenberg in the Johannesburg crackdown described above), who drove with the German into a police road block in the Western Transvaal.

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Klenz, Veenendaal and Stopforth were all given bail after several months in prison. Klenz however did not adhere to the bail conditions, and went underground once more. The next time anything was heard of him was on 14 March 1994, when he and three other Germans were involved in a shootout with a police patrol to the east of Pretoria. In that shootout, one of the Germans, Thomas Kunst, was killed, and the second, Stephan Rays, injured. Klenz was later arrested by the police and held without bail.
While the bomb blasts and subsequent arrests were being carried out, a number of other related events had occurred:
- four of the young men doing their national service and who had helped Rudolph enter the airforce building, appeared in court on theft charges and were released on bail;
- two White men were arrested for a "White Wolf" style killing of two Black men on a deserted road outside Pretoria on 5 July 1990;
- three White men, one of whom was a confirmed AWB member, were arrested in the Johannesburg suburb of Yeoville for the possession of dynamite, 39 hand grenades and three claymore mines;
- an AWB member and mine worker, Hendrik Steyn, was detained in connection with a blast at a National Union of Mineworkers office in the Orange Free State town of Welkom; and
- four men, two of whom were members of the local AWB Burger Council, were arrested in the Eastern Transvaal town of Witbank for the possession of explosives, which included numerous home made hand grenades.

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The sudden series of arrests was widely interpreted to have "broken the back" of the right wing armed cells. This presumption proved however to be premature.
A short lull in attacks did take occur, but during the night of Saturday 14 July 1990, two predominantly Black patronized hotels in the White suburbs of the West Rand were attacked by White men with hand grenades. Two Blacks were killed and 21 injured in these blasts.
While these two attacks were clearly aimed at Black targets, two further explosions which occurred the same night outside the homes of two right wingers, were not. A bomb exploded outside the house of Hendrik Binneman - one of the original "Order of Death" members who had been released on bail - and another outside the house of Enrico Francicco, one of the original group of nine men arrested by the police earlier in the month. Francicco had just been released from police custody.

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It later transpired that the blasts had been intended as intimidatory warnings to the two men not to tell the police too much - Binneman had been asked to shelter Rudolph for two nights, but had refused, while Francicco had (he alleged unwittingly) sheltered Rudolph in his upmarket Cyrildene home for two days and had already made a statement to the police concerning the matter.
The police then announced that the two Order of Death escapees, Lottering and Goosen, were suspected of having teamed up with Rudolph before he had masterminded the airforce weapons heist. The men had apparently spent the interim time establishing a series of safe houses, hideouts and weapons caches.
Rudolph himself had, from the time of the weapons theft in Pretoria, led a "Scarlet Pimpernel" type existence (newspapers even dubbed him the "Boere-Pimpernel"), issuing press statements and making appearances to selected people apparently at will.
Shortly after the weapons theft he stayed briefly at the home of one of the three men arrested for the Melrose House bombing, Gert du Bruyn. Du Bruyn's wife later said that Rudolph at all times carried a hand grenade with him which he said he would use to kill himself "and a few other people" should he ever be cornered - something that Rudolph later denied had been said.
Early in August Rudolph sent by telegraphic money order R1 000 to Du Bruyn's wife to help her out while her husband was in detention.
Rudolph survived by moving around from safe house to safe house as often as he could, but also by staying at the homes of prominent right-wingers - such as the brother in law of Barend Strydom (the White Wolf), one Deon Rautenbach, in the correct presumption that the Police would not think of looking for him there.
He moved around with such freedom that he even saw fit to make a signed affidavit in front of an attorney, Jack Nel, at the latter's offices in the middle of the busy East Rand city of Germiston on 16 July 1990.
Rudolph simply walked unannounced into the attorney's offices, asked Nel to witness the affidavit and walked out. (Nel had done legal work previously for Rudolph). In the affidavit Rudolph said that one of the men arrested for complicity in the Melrose House bombing, Jan Meyer, was completely innocent. Meyer was subsequently released with out being charged after being held for over two months without trial.

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Two other men arrested by the police, Bester and Mienie, were then charged with the illegal possession of arms and ammunition and released on bail. Bester's charge was of course part of his cover as a police agent.
Hendrik Steyn, the AWB man held for the Welkom blast, was also released without any charges being put to him. The police, although acting on information and strong suspicion, had to admit that they were unable to prove anything conclusive against Steyn.
On 22 July 1990 a dynamite blast struck the NP Head Office in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State, causing extensive damage to the walls and offices of the old building. After this blast, another lull in attacks occurred until Saturday 11 August 1990, when a bomb exploded at a crowded Black taxi rank in the centre of Pretoria. Miraculously no-one was killed in the blast, which took place at peak shopping time.
On his return from a weekend trip to Great Britain (for a Channel 4 television appearance), Terre'Blanche condemned the Pretoria bomb, saying these sort of acts were "giving the AWB the wrong image."

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Nonetheless, the number of White terrorist incidents increased steadily. Shortly after the Pretoria bomb, two blasts shook left wing venues in the Johannesburg suburb of Mayfair - one at a hotel frequented by ANC supporters and another outside a cinema hosting a left wing film festival. Only slight damage was caused in these two blasts. (Once again it was much later revealed that these two attacks were carried out by members of the security police, who hoped correctly that the incidents would be blamed on the right wing).
Another hand grenade attack in the Roodepoort area (West Rand) took place on 23 August 1990. A M26 hand grenade, which is of the same type used in the other two attacks in the same suburb, was thrown into a crowd of Blacks standing on the platform of the Roodepoort railway station. One Black man was killed in this attack. M26 hand grenades are of South African manufacture and were issued to Police and Army units.
The pro-government Afrikaans newspaper "Beeld" had its offices in Doornfontein, Johannesburg, hit by two bomb blasts early in September 1990. That newspaper's arts page editor's car was destroyed in the blast, which also blew out windows in the building. No other damage was caused. Piet Rudolph telephoned another newspaper, the Pretoria News, and claimed responsibility for the blasts at Beeld.
It later transpired that the bombs had been set by one Don Gibbs, a friend of Rudolph's from Heidelberg and the man who made the then already famous Piet Rudolph video. Gibbs was arrested for the blasts, but granted indemnity a short while later.
On 12 September 1990, the National Party offices in Brooklyn, Pretoria, were attacked in a midnight bomb blast. The front window of the office and valuable computer equipment was damaged in the blast.

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The Police had in the meantime formulated charges of terrorism against a number of the men they had earlier detained. Veenendaal and Stopforth appeared in court charged with the series of blasts in Johannesburg, while Rootenberg was charged with harbouring a wanted person (the escapee Fanie Goosen, who had allegedly stayed at Rootenberg's home after his escape in March). A large number of other detainees were released without having any charges put to them.
In the interim the two Order of Death escapees, Goosen and Lottering, were rearrested. Lottering was arrested by Police on a farm in Northern Natal while Goosen was arrested at a Police roadblock on the main road between Durban and Johannesburg. Goosen was allegedly severely assaulted and tortured by individual policemen when he was arrested the second time, apparently in a desperate attempt to discover the whereabouts of Rudolph.
In desperation Goosen's parents approached a Conservative Party MP, Koos van der Merwe, for assistance. He was granted permission by the Minister of Law and Order, Adrian Vlok, to visit Goosen in Prison. There Goosen told him of how he had been assaulted by a Major Pretorius at the Sandton Police station while his feet and hands had been shackled. He said he had been repeatedly punched in the face and had had his head slammed into a wall several times. After yet another unidentified White policeman had assaulted him, a Black policeman had been encouraged to assault him as well. After the assaults he had been forced to wipe up the blood with his own shirt.
Upon hearing this evidence, which was substantiated by a visit to the surgeon general, (who confirmed the injuries alleged by Goosen), Vlok appointed a police general to investigate the claims. Assault charges were laid against several policemen - although nothing was ever to come of the investigation.

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HNP leader Jaap Marais, Terre'Blanche and Robert van Tonder then also revealed details of assaults on other White detainees. Marais said he had a letter in his possession which had been written by Veenendaal to his wife in which he claimed he had been assaulted. Van Tonder said he had given the names of six policemen allegedly involved in the torture of detainees to the government and he further demanded their dismissal - a plea which fell on deaf ears.
During a press conference held in Pretoria, Terre'Blanche introduced three AWB members (Jan Meyer and the brothers Gert and Jan du Bruyn - all of whom had been arrested in connection with the Melrose House bombing) who testified that they had been assaulted by individual policemen while in custody. They alleged that they had been punched and had electric shocks applied to their private parts.
One former detainee, Leon van Rensburg, had been held in detention in the Black township of Soweto's police cells (presumably to try and avoid the possibility of other Whites attempting to free him). Van Rensburg claimed that whilst being tortured (a wet canvass bag had been put over his head, almost suffocating him) he had suffered a heart attack.

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Despite all these arrests, Rudolph managed to stay on the loose and became even more daring as time went on, even though the government had put a R50 000 reward out for anyone giving information leading to his arrest.
Early in September a letter which claimed to be from Rudolph was delivered to Beeld's offices in which it was stated that he wanted amnesty from the government so that he "could participate in the peace negotiations between the government and the ANC."
Rudolph then personally delivered a letter to the offices of the left wing Vrye Weekblad newspaper in Bree Street, Johannesburg, in broad daylight on 11 September 1990, in which he denied that he had written the letter to Beeld.
According to the startled Vrye Weekblad receptionist who had opened the door for Rudolph, he was wearing a blue overall with a grey wig and was being driven around by another person in a green station wagon.
This was to be Rudolph's last act of bravado. The next week, on Monday, 17 September 1990, he was arrested in a Pretoria North suburb in a dramatic police swoop which saw the car he was travelling in stopped in a busy street and surrounded by ten heavily armed policemen who had been following him all the way from Potchefstroom.
The person driving Rudolph's vehicle was identified as Chris Beetge, a former journalist who had worked on mainstream newspapers such as the Transvaler and who also had been editor of the AWB's newspaper at one stage. Despite expectations to the contrary, Rudolph's arrest only caused a short pause in right wing terrorism.

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On 2 October 1990, a home made parcel bomb, concealed in a computer casing, detonated on the premises of a private computer company, PC Plus, in Durban. A 23 year old White employee of the company died in the blast. PC Plus was fairly well known in the Durban area as being owned by a left wing sympathiser who specialized in supplying computer equipment to left wing organizations. The director of the company was a draft dodger who had refused to serve in the South African Army. The parcel containing the bomb was handed in to a parcel delivery service in Benoni in the Transvaal for delivery to Durban by three White men.
The Police, after having issued artist's impressions of the three men, announced on 19 November 1990 that six White men (including two British citizens, the brothers Mark and Christopher Singleton, who had apparently deserted from the British Army in Germany to come to South Africa,) had been detained in connection with the incident. The six men were also linked by the Police to the Pretoria taxi rank bomb.
The Singleton brothers were boarding with Koos Vermeulen, leader of the World Apartheid Movement, and a few days later Vermeulen was also detained. Vermeulen was however later released and the Singleton brothers deported. The other men arrested were named as Lood van Schalkwyk, Henry Martin and Adriaan Martiz. The latter three were eventually charged with both blasts, and after failing to gain indemnity for their deeds, went on a prolonged hunger strike in 1991. They were eventually released on bail.
Martin (a British citizen) and Maritz then skipped bail and fled to Britain, while Van Schalkwyk went underground once again, only to be rearrested, tried and sentenced to death in 1992. Maritz tried to re-enter South Africa in May 1994, and was rearrested at Jan Smuts airport by the South African Police who had been tipped off by the British police. He however only spent a short time in jail and he was given amnesty early in 1995 under an amnesty law granted by the last white State President of South Africa, FW de Klerk.
Van Schalkwyk was less fortunate. Inexplicably he was not granted amnesty along with his co-accused, and died in prison of health complications early in 1996.
One interesting aspect of their case was the involvement of a low level police officer, who had supplied the physical address of the computer company to the three men and had helped deliver the computer bomb to the delivery company. The policeman was granted indemnity after he turned state witness.

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On 9 October 1990, a bus full of Blacks was ambushed and raked with AK-47 and R1 rifle fire just outside Durban. Six Blacks were killed and 27 injured in the attack. While the incident was initially thought to be linked to Black on Black violence in Natal, this notion was dispelled on October 17 when the Police announced that they had arrested three AWB men, Dawid Botha, Adriaan Smuts and Eugene Marais, from the Richards Bay area (in the North of that province) for the attack. A large amount of ammunitions and the weapons used in the attack were also seized. The three men were also members of the Orde Boerevolk's Northern Natal organisation.
Evidence in the resultant trial showed that the attack was retaliation for a knife attack by a group of Blacks on White pedestrians walking down a Durban street the day before.
Another interesting revelation to emerge from the trial of Marais (his case was separated from the other two) was that the men were followers of the Israel Vision church (also known as Christian Identity), confirming the pattern that the majority of Whites who had taken up arms up to that time were members of this church.
Marais was found guilty on all seven counts of murder and 27 of attempted murder and sentenced to death, as were Botha and Smuts in a separate trial later.

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On 11 October 1990 a home made bomb, lined with nuts and bolts, went off outside the residence of the American ambassador in Pretoria just after an official function there had come to an end. No-one was injured in the attack, which caused minimal damage.
On 16 October 1990 a Johannesburg advocate and AWB member, Andries Smit, was given a suspended sentence in the Johannesburg Regional Court after he was found guilty of the possession of two M26 hand grenades, supplied by Piet Rudolph.
On 17 October 1990 the brother in law of Barend Strydom (the "White Wolf"), one Deon Rautenbach, was detained by the Security Police, who said that they were holding him in connection with the bomb blasts at the NP office in Pretoria and the American ambassador's house. A short while thereafter, one of Rautenbach's personal friends, a young man by the name of Paul Kruger, was also detained.
Thereafter a third man, Piet Venter, was also detained in connection with the blasts. All three were detained for several weeks before being granted indemnity under the Government's special indemnity offer originally designed for ANC operatives, but which was widely enough defined to include all those making themselves guilty of politically motivated offences up until 8 October 1990.
Kruger's detention created a furore as it transpired that despite his open association with Rautenbach he had still been employed as a junior official in the South African Department of Foreign Affairs.

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On 2 November 1990 State President FW de Klerk was addressing a private meeting of businessmen at the prestigious Johannesburg Sun hotel in the centre of Johannesburg when a bomb went off in the street around the corner from the hotel. The security screen was apparently too tight for the bomber to get any closer, and one shop near the hotel was extensively damaged.
On 12 November 1990 the Police announced that five men, all AWB members, had been arrested in the Orange Free State capital of Bloemfontein in connection with the bombing of the NP office in that city earlier in the year. The men, whose number included Dirk Ackermann, a Wenkommando general in that province, were all granted indemnity in 1991.
On 16 November 1990 the Rand Supreme Court trial of the "Order of Death" escapees, Cornelius Lottering and Fanie Goosen finally got under way after nearly a year's delay caused by their original escape from custody. The first piece of evidence handed in came from Lottering, who had written a 37 page manifesto detailing his beliefs and motivation for his deeds. From this document it became clear that Lottering is also an avid follower of the Israel Vision theory. The court was in uproar when Lottering said in his manifesto (which was read out aloud by his defence advocate) that the multi-national Anglo-American Corporation, the Broederbond, the South African Reserve Bank and the World Bank are "all part of a massive body which was aimed eventually controlling the word to prepare the way for the Anti-Christ." Lottering, whose father was a member of the Ossewabrandwag during the Second World War, described himself as "part of a pure White race descended from the biblical King David which has been blessed by God and which is pitted against the diabolical forces of International Jewry."
Lottering went on to describe Jews as "bastardized descendants of the tribes of Israel who have mixed with Black races, the descendants of Eve's cursed son Cain." Dismissing the holocaust as "Jewish propaganda" Lottering went on to tell the court that the Jewish Rothschild Banking house and the Rockefellars "instigated world catastrophes such as the Russian revolution, Communism and the World Wars." The document also contained more than 100 biblical quotations.

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Acting Justice Irving Steyn was not moved by the manifesto, and, calling Lottering's religious views "warped," found him guilty on all the charges: murder (of the Black taxi driver) of setting of a bomb outside Jani Allan's flat, two charges of robbery with aggravating circumstances, the illegal possession of a firearm and escaping from police custody. Lottering was sentenced to an effective 24 years imprisonment. Goosen was sentenced to an effective 13 years imprisonment, being found guilty on all charges except that of the murder of the Black taxi driver.
The two men gave each other open handed AWB salutes in the dock after sentencing.
On 9 November 1990, a Kempton Park (just to the East of Johannesburg) Conservative Party city councillor, Greyling Bezuidenhout, and two other men, Andre Naude and Hendrick de Kock, appeared in the Kempton Park Regional Court charged with sabotage, attempted murder and two bombings in that town. The three men are all members of the AWB, with Bezuidenhout being the former Kempton Park AWB branch leader who had won a seat on the Kempton Park city council in 1988 under the CP banner.
According to the court indictment, Bezuidenhout supplied explosives and detonators to the two other men in July 1990, which were then used to blow up a Black patronized shop in the centre of Kempton Park and to blow up the railway line linking the neighbouring Black township of Tembisa to Kempton Park on 4 August 1990. The three men were held for nearly fifty days without trial before they were brought to court. After several court postponements the three men were also granted indemnity.

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On 10 November 1990 Terre'Blanche led a noisy demonstration of about 350 women and children outside the Security Police Head Office in Pretoria against the continued detention without trial of nearly 40 men across the country.
After two months in detention, Piet Rudolph launched an unsuccessful bail application at the beginning of December in the Johannesburg Magistrate's Court. From that bail application, it transpired that Rudolph's second in command was Henk Bredenhann, the same man allegedly involved in the Veenendaal escape in Namibia.
Other interesting facts to come out the bail application were that Rudolph confirmed in person for the first time the existence of the Orde Boerevolk and further confirmed that he was the organisation's leader. Rudolph also finally admitted his involvement in a shotgun attack on the British Embassy in Pretoria during February 1990.
Rudolph announced that he was now prepared to look to peaceful options instead of violence, but solemnly told the court that "the war will continue if a Black majority rule government takes over. If a situation should arise in which the Boer volk becomes subjugated, we will enter into a struggle to the death. This struggle will make the French and Russian revolutions look like a Sunday School picnic."
The Police's investigating officer in the case, Major Johan Pretorius, then told the court that he and other security policemen had received countless death threats and that they now had to have 24 hour uniformed guards at their houses to avoid damage or injury to their properties or their families.

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"The Order Boerevolk is merely slumbering, waiting for the return of its leader, to continue with acts of violence," Pretorius told the court. It was further his opinion that if Rudolph was granted bail he would again return to the underground. "His whole movement is out there, up to ten thousand of them," said Pretorius. "He has vast support. He is a master of disguise." To substantiate this last claim, the police then handed in three photographs of Rudolph, two of them showing him dressed in disguises which were in his possession when he was captured.
When questioned by defence attorney Jack Nel as to why he (Pretorius) was of the opinion that Rudolph would skip bail, Pretorius replied that the Police would not recapture Rudolph as the "Order Boerevolk is still a question mark. The Police have not gained information on the movement's ranks, structure, code numbers, logistics and its arsenal. Mr Rudolph has admitted only his own involvement to the Police. He is still as silent as the grave about the Order Boerevolk and his accomplices. He has been sought on a national scale. We searched thousands of kilometres, by helicopter, on foot and in four wheel drive vehicles. The cost in man hours during the five month search is incalculable. We searched for him from here to the Kalahari (desert) but we didn't find him." This last remark caused much mirth in the public gallery, which by the second day was packed with friends and supporters.
Some minutes of the Order Boerevolk's meetings that had fallen into Police hands revealed the existence of operations with the code names "Mandela" and "Sambok" and other code names about which the Police had no information, said Pretorius. He also pointed out that more than two thirds of the weapons stolen by Rudolph and his associates from the air force arsenal were still missing and that Rudolph had refused to say where they were.

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As if on cue, while the bail application was being heard, a Black mineworker found one of the Order Boerevolk's arms caches hidden down a 76 metre disused mine shaft in Krugersdorp.
Some time after Rudolph's court appearance, an acting leader and deputy leader of the Order Boerevolk were publicly appointed - the acting leader being Kallie Bredenhann, (father of Henk) and the deputy leader being Coen Vermaak (a former AWB East Rand burger council leader). Chris Beetge, the ex-journalist arrested with Rudolph, was appointed as the Order Boerevolk's press officer.
The reason for the decision on the part of the Order Boerevolk to go public was twofold - firstly they announced that they now wished to involve themselves in negotiations to claim a Boer state, and secondly (the unstated reason) because that the majority of their operational members had been identified and detained. By going public and committing themselves to a peaceful solution, the Order Boerevolk hoped to secure the release of many of the men being held by conforming to the Government's blanket amnesty offer to political offenders (designed at the time to grant indemnity to returning ANC exiles.)
As it turned out this strategy proved to be the correct one to follow as almost all of the right-wingers detained at this time were granted indemnity. Piet Rudolph was amongst the first to be freed and on his release he was appointed publicity secretary of the AWB and once again became involved in the centre of AWB activities.
Rudolph also gave up his position as deputy leader of the Boerestaat Party and, after a fall out with his former comrades in the Order Boerevolk, resigned as leader of that organisation as well, throwing in for good measure an announcement that the Order was being disbanded. The remaining Order members had however other ideas and elected a new leader, Nick Strydom (father of the "White Wolf" Barend Strydom) and issued a statement in June 1991 saying they had not been disbanded.
Rudolph however restarted the Order Boerevolk in 1992, calling it the Order of the Boerevolk (1992) to distinguish it from the earlier organisation.

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An AWB Wenkommando general, Willem Etsebeth, based in the Orange Free State, was also detained during this period, and made a statement to the police in which he claimed the following:
- he and two other AWB men, Christo Niemand and Stevan Terblanch, planned to blow up the ANC offices in Bloemfontein but were stopped after AWB general (and later - in 1995 -Kommandant General of the AWB) Dirk Ackerman told them not to as the ANC would then blow up the AWB offices in Ventersdorp;
- how he kept explosives in his car;
- how he gave alarm clocks to Dirk Ackerman who made time bomb detonators out of them;
- how Dirk Ackerman showed him the site where he had attacked a National Party office with a shotgun;
- how he gave AWB members Christo Niemand and Bill Alison the explosives and detonators to blow up the NP offices in Bloemfontein on 21 July 1990;
- how he transported claymore mines and other arms and ammunition in his car from Upington to Bloemfontein;
- how he and his colleagues planned to blow up a NP public meeting in Wolmaranstad by throwing explosives, hidden in two loaves of bread, onto the roof of the hall where the meeting was being held. This attack never took place and the explosives were used to bring down a power pylon near Bultfontein.
- how he helped steal a mini bus which was later given to Piet Rudolph to use;
- and how he participated in the theft of another vehicle near a hotel resort near Bloemfontein.
Etsebeth then also said that he and Dirk Ackerman were signed up members of the Orde Boerevolk, which he saw as "a sub division of the AWB."

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Another Orange Free State AWB general, Dirk Ackerman, was also detained during this period, and he also made a statement to the police in which he alleged that:
- he helped AWB fugitives Leonard Veenendaal and Darryl Stopforth move around in SouthAfrica after their escape from Namibia;
- he participated in a car theft in Krugersdorp along with AWB activist Willem Boshoff; this car was eventually given to Piet Rudolph to use;
- he helped transport the weapons stolen by Piet Rudolph from the SA Airforce from a farm in Bapsfontein, belonging to one Hilton Hofmeyer, to a house in Heidelberg belonging to one Kallie Bredenhann, (later an acting leader of the Orde Boerevolk);
- he, Rudolph, Boshoff, who were travelling in one car, followed by Veenendaal and Stopforth in a second car, attacked by shooting at a Black minibus taxi outside the Black township of Sebokeng in a revenge attack for the murder of a White man by Blacks a few days earlier;
- he personally hid the explosives in two loaves of bread for use in the above mentioned planned attack on the NP meeting in Wolmaranstad; and
- he participated in the transport of illegal arms, ammunition and explosives.
Not all the violent incidents have been of a classical terrorist nature though. Terre'Blanche, dressed in the uniform of the Wenkommando, personally attended the first court appearance of nine men in the Northern Transvaal town of Louis Trichardt charged with assaulting a group of Black Sunday School children attempting to use the previously Whites only park in that town early in November 1990. The charges against the men were however withdrawn when it became clear that the state could not prove its case.

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The town of Welkom in the Orange Free State, the scene of many confrontations during the course of 1990, saw yet another clash in December of that year when about 400 members of the ANC supporting National Union of Mineworkers were allegedly attacked by about 50 uniformed AWB men. The union said in a statement that it had not bothered to report the event to the police as they claimed to have recognised off duty policemen amongst the attackers. This allegation could not be verified and as no charges were lain, no prosecutions followed.
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