Invictus - Carlin [63]
The story of Piet Retief and Dingaan was known by every white South African schoolchild. For traditionalists like Constand Viljoen who were steeped in Boer lore and who saw themselves following in the proud tradition of Boer heroes like Retief, the memory of Dingaan’s treachery lurked always as a reminder of what could happen if you chose to trust the black man.
That was pretty much what Mandela was doing to F. W. de Klerk in the eyes of the Volksfront faithful. Braam Viljoen, Constand’s twin brother, understood the way of thinking of the far right better than practically any other person, aligned broadly, as he was, with the ANC camp. What the right had chosen to learn from history was that “our blacks” responded not to rational persuasion, but to intimidation and force. Braam Viljoen wrote a paper for IDASA, the think tank for which he was working, that influenced Mandela and the ANC to start taking the far right as seriously as De Klerk, who possessed better intelligence, had been doing for some time. In his paper, Braam said that the new caliber of leadership “had transformed the mood of the right wing from doom to militant activism and made it possible for the most diverse Afrikaner groups to unite under the new Volksfront umbrella.” Braam, who did not exclude the possibility of significant sectors of the serving SADF answering his brother’s call, warned that the far right had to be given a hearing. “Sometimes I think that the classic elements of tragedy are constellating here: the past inescapably determining the future; heroism and valour combining strangely with utter foolishness to bring about ultimate—but inevitable—disaster.”
In order to find out whether the far right might countenance the “hearing” he advocated, meaning talks with the ANC, Braam decided the time had finally come to break the ice with his brother. Four months short of their sixtieth birthdays, in early July 1993, Braam and Constand Viljoen sat and talked politics for the first time either of them could remember.
Braam began by asking Constand a simple, blunt question. “What are your options?”
“I am afraid,” Constand replied, “that we have only one option. We will have to sort this out with military action.”
Braam, who was expecting him to say that, said, “There might be one more option. Would you consider a high-level bilateral meeting with the ANC? As a last attempt to prevent a civil war?”
Constand reflected for a moment, then he said, “I will put it to my board at the Volksfront.”
A few days later Constand reported back to his brother. Constand was familiar with war; he wished to avoid it. He was in favor of meeting Mandela, and the Volksfront leadership, military types who deferred naturally to their maximum leader, had agreed. “The answer is yes,” Constand told his brother. “We are prepared to meet with the ANC.” Braam set to work immediately. He contacted a former theology student of his called Carl Niehaus who had become one of the most high-profile Afrikaners in the ANC. He ran the day-to-day operations in the organisation’s communications department.
Braam Viljoen told Niehaus that since his brother had been made head of the Volksfront, he had been traveling the country rousing the faithful for war. They hoped to derail the negotiations process and stop all-race elections from taking place. Constand, in league with senior SADF officers sympathetic to his cause, was seriously entertaining the prospect of mounting a coup. “Braam told me they had it in them to break the the SADF’s loyalty to the negotiations process and force government out of power in classic coup style,” Niehaus later recalled. “He told me they believed they had enough firepower and people at their disposal to make it happen.”
Braam told Niehaus that the Volksfront would not participate, as numerous small political groups had done, in the World Trade Centre negotiations.