Andries Treurnicht : Defending the All-White Barricades as South Africa Readies for Change

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA —  A few years back, a Colored historian made the scandalous claim that Andries Treurnicht had enough mixed blood in his family tree to warrant reclassification as a “Colored.” Treurnicht commissioned a government think tank to track down six generations of his ancestors. The genealogists found 27 Germans, 20 Dutchmen, 13 Frenchmen, two Belgians, one Swiss and one Swede. The historian’s claim, Treurnicht concluded, was “just an attempt by a Colored to run down white people.”

Andries Petrus Treurnicht is, indeed, a white man. And proud of it.

He is the leader of about 650,000 white members of the Conservative Party, one of every four white voters. Their determination, through force if necessary, to win the right to govern themselves poses a major threat to President Frederik W. de Klerk, whose government has lost credibility in recent days with liberal whites for secretly funding an African National Congress rival.

Treurnicht flatly opposes everything De Klerk is doing--removing apartheid laws, talking with the ANC and planning to grant blacks the right to vote in a one-person, one-vote election for a democratic, multiracial South African state. Conservatives fear their white heritage will be trampled under the jackboot of a black government, and are not mollified by De Klerk’s assurances that the interests of whites will be protected.

Seeking to stop De Klerk, Treurnicht’s supporters have attempted to remove black squatters from farms at gunpoint, bombed an empty school and other facilities and may have contributed, under the guise of the country’s security forces, to the black factional fighting that has stalled negotiations.

De Klerk’s National Party, supported by the white business Establishment, still has enough votes in Parliament to overcome its Conservative opponents. But the president cannot afford to ignore whites’ concerns, shared by many in the president’s own party.

Treurnicht was first elected to Parliament in 1972, as a member of the ruling National Party, and became party leader in the Transvaal Province. But he clashed with the reform-minded president, Pieter W. Botha, and was booted out of the party, in 1982, for trying to organize a palace revolt.

In conversation, the right-wing leader is a courteous man who looks a decade younger than his 70 years. The descendant of Germans who arrived in South Africa 230 years ago, he has worked as a Dutch Reformed Church minister and as editor of two newspapers. He lives in Pretoria with his wife of 42 years, Engela. They have four grown daughters.

Question: The government is in trouble now for having given some financial support to Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Inkatha movement. You have opposed it, even though you, like the government, share Inkatha’s concern about a potential ANC government. Why is that?

Answer: It is unethical for the government to support a political party or an organization while other organizations who could claim such support are not ever told. If it is, as the government says, for a party that opposes sanctions, then other organizations, including the Conservative Party, would qualify.

Q: You have called on the government to call a new election as a result of this scandal. Will it respond to you?

A: This government has a reputation for not responding to our calls. It seems to me they’ll simply continue. But in the meantime a negative climate is developing in the country, which helps the Conservative Party.

Q: Why?

A: Because it shows the government cannot be trusted with taxpayers’ money.

Q: Your Conservative Party strongly opposes the president’s reform program. What course do you think he should take?

A: Well, he should act according to what we regard as a world-wide accepted principle--and that is self-determination for people. We have many peoples (ethnic groups) in this country and it is an oversimplification to see it in terms of one undivided country and one nation. We think it doesn’t make sense to make one nation out of many nations.

Q: When people think of the right wing here, they think of militant extremists. What is your relationship with them?

A: Well, there are no official links . . . . We demand the same thing--recognition of our people and our land. But it’s a matter of style, method or idiom . . . .

Q: So the Conservative Party represents a wide breadth of style?

A: I think so, yes. Our supporters may number close to 1 million at this stage. We will need a general election to determine that, but my perception now is of increasing support for us, as a result of Mr. (Frederik W.) de Klerk’s policies and as a result of the effects of the ANC (African National Congress) negotiating with him.

Q: But many Afrikaners seem pleased that De Klerk’s reforms are being rewarded internationally. Doesn’t that make it more difficult to recruit new members?

A: We say . . . it shouldn’t have been necessary to blackmail South Africa into accepting policies which are detrimental to the community life of our people and our political say in our own country. The price De Klerk is paying for international acceptance is not acceptable.

Q: But if your party were to take control of the government, and you turned the clock back on apartheid, wouldn’t the world re-impose sanctions?

A: That would depend on several things. The one is your style of government, your style of foreign relations. One can be reasonable. The second thing is if we have the cooperation of some of these black nations, who could add to the strength of our argument . . . .

But when it comes to political power, every people demands to be governed by his own people--the idea of somebody demanding one unitary state is outdated.

Q: But isn’t there room for self-determination in a unitary state with strong provincial governments--not unlike the U.S. federal system?

A: I’ve heard the argument, but we think the difficulty lies in the composition of your central government.

A federal state would suit us but it would have to be independent regions with some form of cooperation--a loose association of member states, something similar to the European Community. For economic reasons, we cannot do without cooperation. But when it comes to politics, the name of that game is power.

Q: So what would happen to a place like Soweto, the black city of 2.5 million just outside Johannesburg?

A: Yes, well, Soweto is theirs. It’s part of reality. With Soweto, you have two choices. The one is the course the government is taking, and that is to include it into the larger Johannesburg area and, I think, just around the corner, (whites) will be outnumbered. Or Soweto could be divided into various zones, some for the Zulu, some for Tswana, etc . . . .

Q: What about the ANC--which is a powerful, multi-ethnic force? Wouldn’t the ANC be a sticking point in your scenario?

A: I think their influence is exaggerated. But they still remain a very dangerous group of people, on account of their acceptance of violence . . . .

For them to demand that the whole country should be handed over to an ANC-dominated black government, which would redistribute the land . . . that is completely against the legal rights of the whites. And it won’t be acceptable.

I have no difficulty with their claim to land for blacks, but they shouldn’t have the same claim on the whole country as well. That is unrealistic. It is pure revolution . . . .

Q: But Nelson Mandela has said the ANC would protect cultural identities.

A: He can’t do it. He should rather return to what is basically acceptable to the United Nations and that is that people have the right to self-determination. And his organization, the ANC, not only does not appeal to us, it goes contrary to our basic claims.

Q: Do you disbelieve his sincerity?

A: I won’t comment on his sincerity. There’s an old saying from Latin, you don’t judge on the inside. But he can’t deliver the goods.

Q: What’s your impression of Mandela since he’s gotten out of prison?

A: He may be a leader for some people, but I can’t think of him in any way as a possible leader for the white nation . . . . I would never be able to live in a country ruled by him.

Q: Why?

A: Why? His ideals, his aspirations, are contrary to what we believe, that whites want white people to govern ourselves in our own country.

Q: Do you really think De Klerk is going to agree to any constitution that allows whites to be unfairly dominated by blacks?

A: He tries to give certain assurances that there won’t be domination of one over the other, but I say you cannot avoid domination unless you have the power. He thinks he can, but I don’t think he can.

He challenges us to negotiate, but at the same time he is surrendering nearly everything that we think should have been retained. So when he comes to the negotiation table, all that’s left is the surrender of power.

Q: What has he surrendered? He hasn’t taken any land away from whites to give to blacks.

A: But he says the land now owned by blacks, in the homelands, will remain in black hands and land owned by whites can be purchased by anybody who has got the money. We say that’s where the difficulty lies.

Q: But isn’t that idea--land to anyone who can afford to buy it--just the free-market approach that you would support?

A: Yes, but that causes an inconsistency. The Zulus can have Zululand, but our land, which equally belongs to us historically, is now thrown open. What the government doesn’t admit is that our policy of separate development (apartheid) protects black rights, too.

Q: Would you agree that there is a racial imbalance in land ownership ?

A: Oh yes, you have to agree with that. You also have to take into account the historical process by which land has been acquired by the whites . . . . Most has been purchased--large stretches of land that were practically useless a century and a half ago.

Q: President de Klerk says that the policy of separate development was a policy which just didn’t work. What’s your opinion?

A: I think that isn’t true. There are 7 independent black states at this point, which I think can be regarded as the success of separate development. The principle of separate development is land for a people under their own government. . . . It is the failure of applying separate development which caused the large influx of squatters around our cities . . . . Tomorrow, these people, on the basis of one-man one-vote, can decide the government of the country. Totally unacceptable.

Q: Why unacceptable? Are black people not qualified to vote in their own country?

A: Well, it’s the whole picture of the differences between people. In the Cape Peninsula, you have 26,000 blacks squatting illegally. If tomorrow you declare they have the vote, your common sense tells you (that they will believe they can) squat on other people’s territory and gain a right to be there. It’s chaos.

Q: Are you comfortable with the increasing militancy of some CP supporters?

A: We are a political party, and a party is limited as to its means and methods. But we also warn the government. We say you warn us against violence but you engage in violence against your own (white) people. You abolish laws which were our protection and if there is any resistance you beat us on the head. That’s official violence.

Q: Isn’t that what black activists said for years--that the government was using violence against its people?

A: Well, it may be a question of what is the motivation behind their rights and ours. We are a settled community with genuine, legitimate rights and the ANC’s claims are contrary to what we regard as our rights.

Q: As a pastor, aren’t you a little bit uncomfortable with all the saber-rattling among conservatives?

A: What we say is that the individual is not entitled to take up arms against the government. That’s an old principle coming down right through the Calvinist movement . . . . But the official representatives of the people, as we regard ourselves, should offer resistance when you have an unjust government denying the rights of your people.