Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging - History

History

The AWB was formed on 7 July 1973 in a garage in Heidelberg, Transvaal (now Gauteng), a town southeast of Johannesburg. Eugène Terre'Blanche, a former police officer, became disillusioned by then-Prime Minister B.J. Vorster's "liberal views," as well as what he viewed as communist influences in South African society. Terre'Blanche decided to form the AWB with six other like-minded persons, and was elected leader of the organisation, a position he held until his death in April 2010.

Their objective was to establish an independent Boerestaat ("Boer State") for Boer-Afrikaner people only, existing separately from South Africa, which was considered too left wing and liberal by Terre'blanche. The AWB was formed in an attempt to regain the ground lost after the Second Boer War: they intended to re-establish the independent Boer Republics of the past – the South African Republic (Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek) and the Republic of the Orange Free State (Oranje Vrystaat).

Read more about this topic:  Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    When the history of this period is written, [William Jennings] Bryan will stand out as one of the most remarkable men of his generation and one of the biggest political men of our country.
    William Howard Taft (1857–1930)

    When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.
    William James (1842–1910)