The women still fighting their Boer ‘war’

Press, 10 February 1981, Page 17

The women still fighting their Boer ‘war’

From

ERIC MARSDEN,

“Sunday

Times,” in Johannesburg

When South Africa’s parliament met for the new session in Cape Town, attention was diverted from the Stat President’s procession to a group of stern-looking women wearing the black mourning gowns and bonnets of the pioneering Afrikaner Voortrekkers of a century agd?""

Their lead r, a striking, six-foot tall domestic sci-. ence teacher, Mrs' Marie van Zyl, was carrying a bouquet of white carnations on to which each of the women had splashed a drop of blood pricked from their fingers.

Thes were the shock troops of the Kappiecommando Bonnet Brigade — the nation’s newest right-wing protest organisation.

The Kappiecommando, which claims to have 7000 members throughout the country and to be growing fast, is a revival of a band

of women who fought with rifl s alongside their menfolk during the Boer War of 1899-1901, and later trekked to the Orange Free State, living off the land rather than stay under British occupation. Their targets include the entire- ruling National Party.. .ag!.., part of thg “forces . of. ~ anti-Christ;" and they lay the main blame for th rot in Afrikanerdom on the “unholy triumvirate" of. Bothas — Prime Minister Pieter, Foreign Minister Pik, and Labour Minister Fanie — and Dr Piet Koornhof, the Minister who deals mainly with African developm nt. A measure of the fanacticism of the Kappiecommando is that they regard the Broederbond, the secret society which liberals think is the pow r behind l hf ' a

the Government, as bunch of weak-kneed sellouts, and describe it as "our greatest enemy.”

Many of them ' have broken with the “Pri sts of Baal” of the Dutch Reformed Church, which is racked by controversy over whether to admit blacks to services. / • ■ The Kappiecommando was reborn after a series of m etings in .-the well-to-do Pretoria suburb of Lynwood Glen. Housewives carrying shopping baskets and young women in tennis dresses dropped in to the home of Mrs van Zyl, wife of a dentist and mother .of four children, as though for a morning coffee s ssion, but they were really bent on saving the soul of the Afrikaner nation. ■

They- emerged in full dress for (he first time in Decemb r on the Day of the Covenant, when Afrikaners commemorate the Battles of Blood river pact when -thehandful -'of vdortrekkers-whoyTought off thousands of Zulu warriors pledged thems Ives to God. Led by Mrs van Zyl and two boys dressed as scouts of pioneering days, they carried a coffin and laid it on a balcony at Union Buildings, home of the Government. About the same time, Mrs van Zyl delivered her first stat ment to the ‘Pretoria News,” - pre ferring to give it to an

English-language paper than to the “Breeder-domi-nated” Afrikaans Press. It was a statement of intent to the “Africaner BOEREVROUE“ (Boer worn n) calling them to show courage and hold freedom’s flag high at a time when “fiery manly hearts beat raggedlygas * a result : of. assaults, of and dbubt aM (nien’s) arms hang loosely.” Another message declared: “Like the voortrekker women of old, it is time for the Afrikaner women again to enter the fight, to stand up and say, ‘rather walk barefoot back across the Drakensberg than to be overwhelmed and dominated by black heathens and Mohammedans’.” This was a reference to the multiracial President’s Council, which has now replaced the Senate -as South Africa’s second chamber, one of Prime

Minister Botha’s constitutional reforms. After the march on Union Buildings the Kappiecommando leaders delivered a petition to the State President, Viljoen, against the creation of the council. it referred to the inc'usion ci" Coloureds and Indians and complained: “Thtise: people:. are "not Christians. We cannot have Mohanmmedans and ilinaus t'.djrg us.” (Most of the Coloureds are not only Christians but belong to a Coloured branch of the Dutch Reformed Church.) The Kappies hav e net used voiience in their protests, but male Right-wing groups have turned to violence. The “white Command” recently exploded a bomb at the Durban offices of a white councillor who has called for money to be withheld from local authorities unless they open the beaches to all races.