Word: brandwag
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Furthermore, any diversion of South African troops to Madagascar might be followed by increased pro-Nazi sabotage inside the Union itself. In recent months "dynamitards" of the fascist Ossewa Brandwag-"Ox Wagon Fireguard" (TIME, Feb. 10, 1941)-have blasted high-power transmission lines feeding the great Rand gold mines and the South African railways, have cut telephone & telegraph lines wholesale and even found support among the Union police. Now the Union of South Africa has a death penalty for such acts, but if Madagascar is taken by the Axis, the Union's violent pro-Nazi minority may cause...
...wagons. Anyone who didn't grow a voortreker (pioneer) beard was an "outlander" or a traitor. A synagogue was dynamited, and George VI's message to the final jamboree was read in Afrikaans. A hangover from this emotional bender was the growth of the Ossewa Brandwag (Ox-Wagon Fireguard), an Afrikaans cultural organization specializing in swastika armbands, military training, bombings of buildings and rail ways, beating up British soldiers. Leading "Peace Parades" last spring, General Hertzog found himself a benign and unwilling front man for local fascist extremists...
Last fall General Smuts got to work on the Brandwag, proved in a series of well-publicized trials that its leaders got both ideas and money from a Nazi consul in Portuguese East Africa, only 400-odd miles from Johannesburg. Always a cagey fighter, Smuts did not crack down on the Brandwag rank & file, instead let them quit the organization while the quitting was good. He flew in a loaded bomber to the war zone in the Sudan just to show his people how near it was. This, on top of the smothering of Holland, suggested to Afrikanders that World...
Before the ink was dry on this announcement, hell began to pop. In Johannesburg, British soldiers and bearded Brandwag men tangled in the street after a meeting. Police stopped the fighting, but next evening soldiers on leave were loaded for Boer. They crowded the town, and the sight of a bearded man in a streetcar was enough to touch off a riot. After attacking the car they went for the Brandwag office. Police kept them outside, but they did their best to wreck it with brickbats. To clear rioters from the streets the Government shipped police reinforcements into the city...