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Freedom Front Plus

The old apartheid era National Party leadership collectively joined the African National Congress years ago, leaving the Freedom Front Plus [FFP] as the sole independent voice of the Afrikaner community. There are those in the party who want to remain beholden to farming roots and those in the party who recognize that it needed metro representation to survive 21st century South African politics.

The Freedom Front (FF) was a right-wing Afrikaner political party established in March 1994, following a split among extremist organizations, to ensure a proapartheid presence in the April elections. It is a successor to the Afrikaner Volksfront (AVF), which was founded by General Constand Viljoen, who had also served as chief of the South African Defence Force (SADF) until November 1985. Viljoen emerged from retirement in 1991 to lead a group of right-wing former generals in forming an alliance of Afrikaner parties.

As the AVF, the alliance included the White Protection Movement (Blanke Bevrydingsbeweging--BBB), the Boerestaat Party (Boer State Party, the military wing of which was known as the the Boer Resistance Movement, or the Boere Weerstandsbeweging--BWB), the Conservative Party of South Africa (CP), the Reconstituted National Party (Herstigte Nasionale Party--HNP), the Oranjewerkers (Orange Workers), and the Republic Unity Movement. The AVF's objective was to unify the extreme right and to advocate the formation of a volkstaat , an autonomous Afrikaner nation-state, in a postapartheid South Africa. However, even some AVF leaders were troubled by the violent racism and political extremism of some members of the front. Their refusal to participate in the nation's first nonracial elections weakened the movement, and in March 1994 General Viljoen and his allies broke away to form the FF.

Much of the support for the FF came from farmers' organizations in the former Transvaal and the Free State. Among the FF's leaders are several former Conservative Party members of parliament, former high-ranking military officers, and a former chairman of the Broederbond. In the 1994 elections, the FF received only 2.2 percent of the vote, gaining nine National Assembly seats. The party performed best in Gauteng, where some 40 percent of its votes were cast. Its participation in the elections helped to legitimize the electoral process and thus to neutralize the violent threat that the extremist right-wing extraparliamentary forces could have posed to the new political system. In doing so, it bolstered the standing of Viljoen and others who sought to preserve Afrikaner cultural autonomy through nonviolent means.