Last week™s right-wing spookstorie (scare story) about Nelson Mandela™s œdeath revived a recurrent theme in the mythology of the Afrikaner far right.

Rumours first swept the right that Mandela would die on September 13 2002. When this did not happen, the Boeremag hatched plans to kill him in a bomb explosion on October 11 2002, believing this would trigger a prophesied race war.

A last-minute decision to fly by helicopter to a destination in Limpopo, rather than drive, saved Mandela™s life.

At the root of the right-wing obsession with Mandela are the prophesies of Nicolaas œSiener (Seer) van Rensburg, the œBoere Nostradamus who lived between 1844 and 1926. Van Rensburg™s prophesies, based on dreams he claimed came from God, enjoyed renewed popularity in about 2001, when the Boeremag appeared on the political scene.

After the plot on Mandela™s life by Herman van Rooyen, Rudi Gouws and the Pretorius brothers, police swooped on the Boeremag and arrested 23 members.

Among the piles of weapons, ammunition, documents and laptop computers — and a bucket filled with commercial explosives apparently meant for Mandela — were books on Van Rensburg.

The seer™s vision went as follows: œIt will all happen very suddenly and unexpectedly … After midnight they will be woken up by dogs barking and rifle shots being fired, people and attackers shouting and running through the streets. Then we will know the bucket of blood has fallen over and nobody will be able to stop it. Thousands of people will be killed in Johannesburg that night.

The precipitating event would be the death of a very powerful black leader — Mandela. God™s disciple, dressed in a brown suit, would then take control and lead the Boerevolk into a war in which they would retake political and military control of South Africa.

Gustav Muller, who sees himself appointed by God to deliver the Boere(194)Â(173)­volk from bondage, and is apparently in hiding, has made and distributed hundreds of DVD recordings of his speeches calling Afrikaners to action. In these, he wears a brown suit.

According to the Boeremag books, Van Rensburg foresaw œa glass coffin and thousands and thousands of people mourning for seven days. Nobody goes to work and people arrive from all over the world to mourn his death. On the eighth day, when the leader is buried, œan unstoppable fire runs from the coffin across Johannesburg.

Then follows œThe Night of Johannesburg, œBartholomew Night or œThe Night of the Long Knives, in which 30 000 whites are massacred in the city. This signals the rise of the Boerevolk and their reconquest of South Africa.

In the reference to œBartholomew Night and 30 000 deaths, right-wing racial politics and Calvinist religious history are curiously intertwined. The reference is to the massacre of 30 000 Protestants in Paris on St Bartholomew™s Day in 1572 — one of the events that precipitated the flight of the Huguenots from France.

Ironically, 23 Boeremag members face the same charge of sabotage faced by Mandela in 1963, in addition to charges of treason, terrorism, murder and attempted murder, after eight bomb explosions rocked Soweto in October 2002.
The trial is being held in the same courtroom in the Pretoria High Court where Mandela and other members of the Umkhonto weSizwe high command were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Steeped in Old Testament allusion, Van Rensburg™s prophecies gave the Boeremag the religious justification for murder and a coup attempt. According to statements by its members, recruits to the organisation were shown videos of the seer™s prophesies and visions.

A senior police source investigating last week™s rumours of Mandela™s death said Mandela œhas to die for Van Rensburg™s prophecy to be activated. œThe reason why they wanted to kill Mandela was to cause chaos which would precipitate the coup attempt.

œThese people believe Siener™s visions should be helped along, (152)˜sped up™, so to speak. Since the rumours of Mandela™s death, we™ve been getting reports about people stockpiling food and getting ready to leave or barricade themselves in their homes. Muller has been going around warning people for some time.

Source: Daily Mail & Guardian
URL: http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articlei…/p>