Tienie Groenewald
| Tienie Groenewald (Military officer) | |
|---|---|
| File:AL3283 C03 44 06.jpg | |
| Born | Pieter Hendrik Groenewald 7 July 1936 |
| Died | 2 November 2015 |
Pieter Hendrik "Tienie" Groenewald was a South African military officer who was Air Attaché at the South African embassy in London and head of the Military Intelligence (MI) in the mid-1980s under President P W Botha.
Derailing 'total onslaught'
Tienie Groenewald's tasks included orchestrating covert schemes to assist the UNITA and RENAMO rebels in Angola and Mozambique. In South Africa, MI identified Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha movement as a useful instrument in promoting division and violent instability among blacks. The aim was to stop the African National Congress from taking power, to derail what was described as a Moscow-orchestrated Communist 'total onslaught'.
Creating an Afrikaner state
A member of the Afrikaner Broederbond, General Groenewald was a key figure in the Committee of Generals - retired army and police officers - who saw it as their task to galvanise the fragmented right wing into forging a united plan of action.
In a 2003 interview with the Johannesburg Star, Groenewald denied he was hatching plans for a new 'armed struggle' but defended people's right to 'self-protection'. Such a need might come about should the Afrikaners he represents opt, 'as a last resort', for secession.
First, however, he defined the committee's objective as unifying the right wing, at present divided into more than 50 small, squabbling sub-groups. Second, pressure - in the form of mass protest if necessary - would be applied for the creation of an Afrikaner state. Specifically, this meant bolstering the positions of a loose right-wing alliance taking part in multi-party talks, the Concerned South Africans Grouping (Cosag).
Preserving apartheid
Cosag was founded in 2002 at the initiative of Chief Buthelezi and includes the Inkatha Freedom Party, the right-wing Conservative Party, a marginally more moderate body called the Afrikaner Volksunie, and the governments of the so-called 'homelands' of Ciskei and Bophuthatswana. Each in their separate ways sought to preserve the power and privilege obtained under the apartheid system.[1]