I have to admit to a startling and disturbing memory that overtook me as I was driving towards Ventersdorp to watch Eugene Terre’blanche be buried.  Thousands of his sad and angry supporters were also driving to that little North West (formerly Western Transvaal) town to bid their white power icon adieu, after he was murdered by two black farmhands. (More on that later).

As I drove through a gray dawn, I reflected on my history of run-ins with the far right of South African politics, the AWB. Vivid memories of bearded and heavily-set men wearing their firearms like a phallus, and mean-eyed yet sexy boeremeisies in khaki skirts giving me a look that went way beyond political disdain.

I now admit that my ‘Eighties fantasies in the khaki realm were, firstly, to sacrifice myself in a suicidal attack on Terre’blanche and rid our land of a terrible evil; and, secondly, to have violent sex with one of those comely Nazi hussies. I don’t mean rape, but well, you know, rough nookie of the kind that got Sodom blitzed, and perhaps even move onto that really bad stuff that did for Gomorrah. Actually, perhaps I should swap those two fantasies around, for the sake of logic, you know. And that, it seems, is surprisingly close to ET’s own fantasies – if police reports about him having pants down and a recently used condom at The Leader’s bedside are to be believed.

Farmhands? Rent boys? Our whiter-than-white neo Nazi having sex with black boys?  Is it real or is it a very convoluted conspiracy? Disinformation? Sunday, the police denied a used condom was found, but the younger alleged murderer said Terre’blanche wanted to sodomize him. Who’s to know the truth, but now I’m concerned that the mean, piercing gaze he and his cohorts used to give me when I covered their rallies was not a “Damn kaffirboetjie’ look but rather a ‘I could do with some of that boy’s cute butt right now’ look. Yowzer.

In fact, while living in the boonies for some years, I was told a great tale about the little town of Senekal. Whenever the river that divided the white town from the black township flooded overnight, there were some very angry husbands (black) yelling at their wives who got caught on the wrong (white) side of the river in the wee hours without their spouses’ knowledge. Just down the road from Senekal is an even smaller dorp called Excelsior. Google that, and try key wording in the ‘Seventies, Nationalist Party, miscegenation and suicide …. (do let me know what you find, my Internet connection is too slow to play).

Other memories of the AWB arise not from my imagination, but reality. In 1994, as they tried to support the last pillar of Apartheid in Bophuthatswana, I came close to being executed by one khaki-clad Sunday warriors. The only thing that saved me was another AWB member stepping between us so he could steal the camera from round my neck. Ah yes, fond memories indeed.

What is interesting is how many people attended Terre’blanche’s funeral. Several thousand easily. The last time I saw that many AWB supporters together in Bop in ’94, they drove old and cheap clunkers like me. On Friday, most of the cars in the column going from the church to the farm were very expensive and very new. So much for the theory that economic deprivation was driving Afrikaners to the right.

The images below are from 1989, 1994 and 2010.