RACE RELATIONS : Assassination in South Africa Galvanizes Right-Wing Whites

The people of this nation have mourned black nationalist leader Chris Hani in their millions, seething with anger over the handiwork of a white assassin. But at least one South African has been unable to conceal his glee.

Koos Vermeulen has been inundated by donations and letters of support for his Pretoria-based World Apartheid Movement, which has offered to raise money to pay legal expenses for the right-winger now in jail and accused of assassinating Hani.

“Our post box is overfilling. We can’t keep up with the response,” Vermeulen said Friday, speaking from his Pretoria home on a telephone he said was “probably tapped” by police. “And this is just the beginning.”

The killing of Hani, chief of South Africa’s Communist Party and former guerrilla leader of the African National Congress, has galvanized dozens of right-wing white groups that had been all but forgotten since the resumption of black-white talks.

Thrust back into the national spotlight, white extremists are pointing to the violent black protests on the “day of mourning” Wednesday as proof that a government controlled by the black majority will mean trouble. And the resurgence of the right has been a grim reminder that any future black-controlled government will face an angry, militant white opposition.

Hani’s slaying was a dramatic, unprecedented strike at a key black politician. And although most white extremist leaders deny any part in planning the attack, they admit their members privately applaud the accused assailant, Janusz Walus.

“Mr. Hani lived by the sword and that was his end,” said Eugene TerreBlanche, leader of the right-wing Afrikaner Resistance Movement. Walus has been a dues-paying member of that movement for seven years.

“I cannot condone any assassination,” TerreBlanche added. “But if they (blacks) kill innocent women and children, then the Afrikaner people will retaliate. And no force in the world will stop them.”

The assassination and its aftermath have reflected a growing polarization between far-right whites and far-left blacks. The right-wing cause has been helped by growing black militancy, reflected in recent attacks on whites and the taunting of white journalists and even white members of Nelson Mandela’s ANC in the black townships.

Mandela has tried to talk his more radical followers out of their growing anti-white feelings. In a nationally televised address, he noted that even though Hani’s accused assailant was a white man, the witness who came forward with the tip that led to his arrest also was white--and a descendant of the Afrikaner people who imposed apartheid on South Africa.

Mandela’s words, though, have not been widely heeded. And Retha Harmse, the witness whom Mandela praised, disconnected her telephone this week after threatening phone calls from right-wing whites; she is being escorted to work by police guards.

Wim J. Booyse, head of Risk-Afrique, a private political consulting firm in Pretoria, says right-wing whites now realize that killing anti-apartheid leaders can touch off a black uprising--and frighten whites into joining their cause. “They’re going to continue to do these things to provoke the black militants,” said Booyse, the country’s leading expert on white extremists. “It really shows you how volatile this society is. And the right will thrive on this chaos.”

South Africa has dozens of right-wing groups, with perhaps 5,000 members. Walus, 40, their new hero, is a quiet, blond salesman with virulent anti-Communist views. He moved here from Poland 11 years ago and took South African citizenship. Police found two pistols in his car, saying one was the murder weapon. A search of his home uncovered a “hit list” with names and addresses of Hani and others.

The weapons had been stolen from air force headquarters in 1990 by Piet Rudolph, who distributed them among right-wing whites before he was arrested, then granted political amnesty by President Frederik W. de Klerk. An unapologetic Rudolph said this week that he was unsurprised by Hani’s assassination and predicted more attacks on black leaders “to satisfy that urge for retribution.”