Constand Viljoen: General who plotted a coup but was seduced by Mandela 1933-2020
● Gen Constand Viljoen, who has died on his farm near Ohrigstad at the age of 86, was a former chief of the South African Defence Force (SADF) who came frighteningly close to staging a coup against the FW de Klerk government in order to halt the peace process and prevent the 1994 democratic elections.
He believed the ANC was still pursuing a revolutionary agenda and that De Klerk was caving in to their demands and had to be stopped.
Blunt, determined and committed to an Afrikaner volkstaat, he was egged on by rightwingers who idolised him for his military exploits and shared his sense of anger and betrayal at their perceived marginalisation in the negotiations.
At a huge meeting in Pretoria in January 1994 they shouted him down with chants of “we want war” when he tried to tell them, “You don’t know what war is like.”
Called the last of the Boer generals, he was highly regarded in the defence force for his professionalism and personal integrity. When he said he could raise 50,000 men from defence force units and the citizen force, few disbelieved him.
A number of things happened to make him back down.
Chief of the army Gen Georg Meiring told him to his face that if he started a coup, “We’ll have to stop you.” Viljoen told him: “You and I and our men can take this country in an afternoon.”
“Yes,” replied Meiring, “but what do we do the morning after the coup?”
In 1993 Meiring warned Nelson Mandela of the dire consequences if Viljoen tried to stop the elections. Mandela invited Viljoen to tea.
Expecting a ruthless, hardline communist, Viljoen was bowled over by the legendary Mandela charm, his knowledge of Afrikaner history and sensitivity to the fears of whites.
Speaking Afrikaans, Mandela put it to him that he could go to war, and that his people undoubtedly had more military skills than black South Africans. But if it came to a race war, black South Africans had the numbers and would have the support of the international community. There’d be no winners, he said.
They met several times, and each time Viljoen’s liking, respect and trust grew. Mandela promised that his demand for a volkstaat would be taken seriously. Viljoen decided that Mandela was someone “with whom we could negotiate the future of the Afrikaner people”.
Another decisive event was in March 1994 when Viljoen mobilised 4,000 men to rush to the help of Bophuthatswana leader Lucas Mangope, who feared he was about to be overthrown by the ANC.
But then, as he put it, “came the AWB gemors [mess]”. He ordered Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging leader Eugene Terre’Blanche to pull out of the looming fight, but his men went on a shooting spree in Mmabatho.
“It was a damn disaster,” he said. He decided the political route was the only way to go, phoned Meiring and told him he was going to participate in the elections, formed the Freedom Front and registered.
His decision to reject a coup led to him being ostracised by former supporters who now saw him as a traitor to the Afrikaner cause.
In 2003 it came to light that Viljoen had been a target of the Boeremag paramilitary rightwing group, which considered him a traitor who had sold out the Afrikaner people.
To placate the right wing he needed an agreement on a volkstaat. He began negotiations with the ANC, facilitated by his twin brother Braam, a theology professor at Unisa and his diametric opposite politically.
One of the problems facing him was that none of its proponents could agree where the volkstaat should be. Another was that a 1993 poll showed that only one-fifth of Afrikaners supported a volkstaat strongly enough to consider moving there.
Viljoen said he decided a full-blown coup wouldn’t have been successful “because of the personality of Mandela”. Too many whites saw him as the only hope for peace. “And so a very large portion of the defence force would not have accepted a coup.”
It would have been “brother against brother, and I said I cannot do this”.
He said he’d been prepared to wage a war and “sacrifice lives” if he saw it as the only possibility, and had worked “flat out” for nine months preparing a military strategy. He said that failing an outright coup, his plan B was the “IRA option” for which his team had also done extensive planning.
His Freedom Front won 2.2% of the vote in the 1994 elections and he went to parliament. Before the inaugural session began, Mandela crossed the floor to shake hands with him. “He said, ‘I am very glad to see you here, general,’ ” recounted Viljoen. “I said nothing. I am a military man and he was my president. I shook his hand and stood to attention.”
Viljoen was born on October 28 1933 in Standerton, Mpumalanga. He matriculated at Standerton High School in 1951, joined the SADF and obtained a degree in military science at the University of Pretoria in 1955.
He became director of operations in 1974, as Angola transitioned to independence and the civil war there hotted up. He armed Jonas Savimbi’s National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) and the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) with missiles, landmines, armoured cars and rocket launchers to take on the ruling Marxist People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA).
He wasn’t impressed with the military capabilities of Unita and the FNLA. It was clear to him that without the support of the SADF, the MPLA and its Cuban allies would soon control the whole of Angola.
He played a key role in escalating SA’s military involvement which culminated in Operation Savannah, SA’s top-secret invasion of Angola, which ended ignominiously in 1976 after the US withdrew its support with the SADF poised to take Luanda.
Viljoen said the intention was never to take Luanda or put Savimbi in power, but to put pressure on the then Organisation of African Unity to install a government of national unity.
In 1977 he became chief of the army and established a reputation as a swashbuckling leader who loved accompanying his men in crossborder operations inside Angola.
In 1980 he took over from Magnus Malan as chief of the SADF.
He repeatedly made it clear to the PW Botha government that there was no military solution to SA’s problems and that a political solution had to be found before SA was forced to negotiate from a position of “despair” rather than strength.
In a 1981 briefing to the cabinet he said a formula was needed “where all the people living in the country would feel involved and part of the country”.
In a speech to the Broederbond he spoke about black South Africans who were serving in his army, saying: “If they can fight for SA then they can vote for SA.”
In 1985 he retired from the SADF and went farming, which he always said was his first love.
In 1993, accusing De Klerk of selling out the Afrikaners, he formed the Afrikaner Volksfront, a coalition of right-wing parties, organisations and movements demanding a volkstaat.
In 1996 he told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: “We certainly made a grave mistake when we allowed our political leaders to ignore the need for a timely settlement.”
He said the refusal of the National Party government to address the demands of blacks “invited” the ANC to take up arms and forge an alliance with communists.
He said he would not attempt “to rationalise what is generally called gross violation of human rights. They were wrong.”
He is survived by his wife Christina and five children.
He told the TRC:
‘We certainly made a grave mistake when we allowed our political leaders to ignore the need for a timely settlement’