Word: boer
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Afrikaners have traditionally defined themselves with the word boer, meaning farmer; many are wealthy and accustomed to wielding political power. They might be expected to fight any claim to the land they have been farming for decades, no matter how they obtained it. In fact officials say they have been surprised at how ready some whites are to cooperate. Farmers are becoming receptive to negotiations on restitution claims...
...Boer people! We are fighters!" thundered Eugene Terreblanche, leader of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement (A.W.B.), the bastion of white supremacists unwilling to accept South Africa's changing destiny. "I think there will be more explosions and more actions if the government ignores the just claim of my people who demand some land." The fiery rhetoric inspired some of the 300 khaki-clad men and pistol-packing women to rough up and then oust a black American reporter attending the otherwise desultory rally. The motive behind all the violence: a whites-only homeland...
...election-eve bombings are more likely to signal the last gasp of a weak, splintered racist Afrikaner minority than the start of the long-threatened great Boer revolt. Three of the 32 arrested are close to Terreblanche, including leaders of his personal bodyguard unit, the elite Iron Guard. The long, resolute march of democracy has caused deepening divisions within the white right. "The bombing campaign," says Wim Booyse, a political consultant in Pretoria, amounts to "a struggle for control of the heart of the right wing...
Groenewald says the Volksfront's purpose is to back up demands in the current negotiations for an independent white state comprising about 16% of South Africa's territory. It would correspond roughly to the old Boer republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State, which became part of the Union of South Africa in 1910. Neither De Klerk nor Mandela will accept such a state, since it would require the forced removal of millions of blacks or a return to apartheid-style discrimination against them...
Despite the threats, it is far from clear how many whites could be mobilized to fight a new Boer war. Experts estimate that committed right-wing paramilitary activists may number no more than 5,000. Many members of the Conservative Party, which opposes reforms, would probably quit if leaders advocated violence, especially if a political settlement gave assurances that white as well as black ethnic groups could maintain control over their language, religion and customs. That might leave only a handful of diehards to initiate an Irish Republican Army-style terror campaign...