Regarding Bophuthatswana and the fall of Mangope, I have three questions.. One, Constand Viljoen maintains that he had a sufficient corps of former Commandos in place, disciplined, well-trained, who were prepared to seize a piece of the land or take military action, but that he had made it clear he wanted no involvement of the AWB and that when the AWB went into Bophuthatswana he said, 'This is it, I'm out, I'm out of here, I will not deal with these people, simply will not deal with them'.
In that sense – not to put it argumentatively -- should one thank Eugene Terre'Blanche and the AWB for being such a messy, horrible group of undisciplined thugs that they made Viljoen's side pull out of Bophuthatswana and thereby sealed Mangope's fate and averted the threat of the white right?
Two, do you think that, had Viljoen decided to press ahead with whatever armed forced he had at his disposal, it would have proved a problem?
Three, I understand that you had a role to play, that you accompanied General George Meiring, head of the SADF, on his trip to Bop to restore order and effectively, on the instructions of the government or the TEC or whomever, to tell Lucas Mangope that his days were up and that he should start packing his bags?
I do not want to rob General Constand Viljoen of an important role that he has played in this transition, but I think the statement that he is making is too narrow to be confined to a militaristic standpoint. There was evidence long before that that a whole set of forces on the white right were gathering together with a view to blocking any change to democracy and that Constand Viljoen had emerged as a critical element in that equation because of his access to the Defence Force and particularly to the Commandos. And it is clear that they were organised. But there were all the signs for a political person to see that those forces that he was gathering together and who had put him in the lead were doing it with different agendas, including Eugene Terre'Blanche.