The Bophuthatswana coup of March 1994 occurred in the tribal homeland of Bophuthatswana and resulted in the reincorporation of the homeland into South Africa following the negotiated ending of apartheid. The mutiny of the Bophuthatswana Defence Force followed a major civil service strike, and was opposed by heavily armed, paramilitary members of the right-wing Afrikaner Volksfront (AVF) and white supremacist Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) invading the territory. The conflict is remembered mostly for an incident in which 3 AWB members were shot dead in front of television cameras by a member of the Bophuthatswana Defence Force. This proved to be a public relations disaster for the AWB and demoralized the white right.[1] Despite this disaster, Eugène Terre'Blanche claimed the failed campaign was a victory because over a hundred Bophutatswana soldiers were killed and only five AWB members.[2]
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In 1990 South African State President F.W. de Klerk began negotiations to end apartheid, unbanning the African National Congress and releasing Nelson Mandela from prison. This led to a growth in support for far-right parties among the ruling Afrikaner minority, some of whom opposed the end of apartheid and joined organisations such as the AWB and AVF. The negotiators at the World Trade Centre in Kempton Park, Johannesburg, agreed on 27 April 1994 as the date for the first election allowing all of South Africa's citizens to vote. It was clear that the ANC would win these elections.
Bophuthatswana was one of several nominally independent homelands in which blacks had to live under apartheid. At the time the leader was Lucas Mangope, an aging and autocratic leader.
Mangope had made clear at the 1993 Kempton Park negotiations that Bophuthatswana would remain independent of the new and integrated South Africa and that he would not allow the upcoming multiracial elections to take place in his country. This led to increasing opposition from the citizens of Bophuthatswana. Mangope had previously used his Defence Force and Police to suppress protests, and had been accused of police brutality when a student protest was suppressed by his police force.
In February 1994, a Crisis Commission was held when heads of 52 government departments had gone on strike. This caused almost the entire Bophuthatswana public services to collapse, including the Health Service, because nursing staff were striking. 30,000 teachers went on strike.
Mangope's Defence Force and Police were on the brink of mutiny because many of them were in favour of re-integration into a democratic South Africa. The forces had been abused by the people, physically and verbally, had their homes and families attacked and found it increasingly hard to remain loyal to Mangope. Mangope refused to relent on his policy of keeping Bophuthatswana independent. By this stage widespread rioting and looting broke out, including the burning of the Mega City shopping mall in Mmabatho. Mangope decided to call on outside forces to restore order.
On Tuesday 8 March 1994 Mangope invited General Constand Viljoen, then head of the right-wing, Afrikaner Volksfront, to a meeting of the heads of the Bophuthatswana Defence Force, Police, National Intelligence Service and Cabinet Ministers.
It was concluded that Viljoen would use militiamen to defend certain government locations in Bophuthatswana if the situation deteriorated. On the following Tuesday, March 15, the Bophuthatswana parliament was planning to meet to discuss, again, the possibility of re-integration. However if necessary he would call on Viljoen sooner because the scheduled ANC invasion was planned for the weekend of March 12 - March 13. Yet Mangope made it clear that he would not tolerate the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging being present because they were regarded as racist and over-violent. Viljoen was regarded as a more moderate right-wing leader, and was respected as the former head of both the South African Army (from 1976-1980) and the entire South African Defence Force (from 1980-1985).
By Thursday March 10 the situation had severely deteriorated and Mangope was advised to leave Bophuthatswana for his own safety. He left via personal helicopter at 2 p.m. that day and returned to his tribal homeland of Motswedi.
Later on that afternoon a group of anti-Mangope policemen took a memorandum to the Bophuthatswana embassy to South Africa and gave it to the ambassador, Professor Tjaart van der Walt, calling for Bophuthatswana to be re-integrated into South Africa, against Mangope's orders. By late afternoon virtually all policing in Bophuthatswana had ended. Only the Defence Force remained to maintain order.
Following another group of policemen joining student protests and reports of ANC troops on the Bophuthatswana borders Mangope asked Viljoen and the Afrikaner Volksfront to keep order in Bophuthatswana.
The AVF were hastily rallied and mobilised, under the command of retired SA Colonel J. Breytenbach. It was, however, under the command of Commandant Douw Steyn that they were escorted by the Bophuthatswana Defence Force to an Air Force base on the outskirts of Mmabatho, early on Friday March 11, 1994.
Meanwhile both the AWB and SA Defence Force had been mobilising and moving in, the SA Defence Force to protect their embassy and the lives and interests of any South African nationals in the area. The majority of the AWB forces had been called in from the towns of Ventersdorp (the AWB's headquarters), Witbank and Rustenburg in the Western Transvaal, and other places, such as Naboomspruit.
While the AVF had been mobilising, on the evening of March 10, a contingent of AWB members had gathered outside Mafikeng. An even larger contingent were at a border post near Rooigrond.
That evening Colonel Antonie Botse asked AWB leader Eugene Terre'Blanche and his men to leave but Terre'Blanche refused to take orders from a Colonel. During the night from March 10 - March 11, Jack Turner of the Bophuthatswana Defence Force re-iterated Botse's request but Terre'Blanche falsely stated that Mangope had requested his presence even though Mangope denied it to Turner. It was agreed that the AWB could remain in the area but that Terre'Blanche himself was to leave and that the men were under the command of Breytenbach and Steyn, not Terre'Blanche, and additionally that they were to remove all AWB insignia from their clothing.
During the evening of negotiations some 37 people were killed, allegedly by the AWB. The next morning the AWB joined the AVF convoy to the air base. General Nicolaas Fourie, one of the 3 AWB commandos killed in an incident on their way out of Mmabatho, had told Terre'Blanche that it was unwise to move into the airbase. They were sent to guard various places, although many blacks in the Bophuthatswana Defence Force had threatened to attack the AWB and AVF because they had supported Mangope only on the terms that the AWB would not be involved and they were upset about the 37 deaths. Greg Marinovich, journalist and member of the Bang-Bang Club, stated that one Afrikaner present had remarked, "Ons is op 'n kafferskiet piekniek", Afrikaans for 'we are on a kaffir-shooting picnic'.
Between 12.00 and 13.00 hours the AWB forces left the air force base in Mmabatho without an escort and, despite promising to remove all AWB insignia and work under Steyn and Breytenbach, they did neither and drove through Mmabatho and Mafikeng and shot many civilians.
Marinovich described pulling out at an intersection in his car and seeing columns of AWB vehicles extending left and right, as far as the eye could see. AWB members were indiscriminately shooting and tossing grenades at civilians alongside the convoys.
The AVF left at 16.00 hours on March 11 and were escorted out via a route which kept them from contact with the general public.
The single most publicised event of the coup was the killing of three wounded AWB members who were shot dead at point-blank range in front of journalists by a Bophuthatswana police constable, Ontlametse Bernstein Menyatsoe.
AWB Colonel Alwyn Wolfaardt, AWB General Nicolaas Fourie and Veldkornet (Field Cornet) Jacobus Stephanus Uys were driving a blue Mercedes at the end of a convoy of AWB vehicles that had been firing into roadside huts.[3] Members of the Bophuthatswana Defence Force returned fire and hit the driver of the car, Nicolaas Fourie, in the neck, another gunman, Alwyn Wolfaardt, in the arm and the remaining gunman, Jacobus Uys, in the leg. Wolfaardt got out of the car and waved a pistol but was advised by nearby journalists not to start shooting. A Bophuthatswana police officer relieved him of the weapon. Another policeman tried to fire on journalists but his rifle jammed and it was taken from him by yet another policeman. Menyatsoe approached and spoke to Wolfaardt, asking if he was a member of the AWB. Wolfaardt confirmed this, saying they came from Naboomspruit, and pleaded for his life and the lives of the other two wounded AWB members. Menyatsoe then shot the three wounded men dead at point blank range with an R4 rifle, saying "what are you doing in my country". The shooting was captured by the watching journalists and broadcast worldwide.
Menyatsoe was not charged with murder. He applied for amnesty to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) , on the grounds that the killings were politically motivated. The application was opposed by the Wolfaardt, Uys and Fourie families. At the hearing in August 1999, Manyatsoe was cross-examined by AWB leader Eugene Terre'Blanche. Menyatsoe claimed that his emotions were raised by his seeing a wounded mother, who had been hit when the AWB had fired from their vehicles into a nearby crowd. According to other journalists dozens of paramilitaries had been firing into traditional houses along the road out of Bophuthatswana. Terre'Blanche pointed out that the three soldiers were wounded by the time Menyatso shot them and that they no longer posed any threat. Menyatso claimed that he acted on his own initiative because of the absence of a commanding officer. Terre'Blanche countered that he could not claim he acted as a policeman because his function was to protect high-ranking government officials, i.e. Mangope, that he was a part of a mutiny, and that the AWB and AVF were an ally of Mangope's regime brought in to quell rioting and suppress the mutiny.[4]
Menyatsoe was granted amnesty by the TRC.[5]