A protest at the Capitol

In February two thousand twelve, white supremacists from a charter bus protested at the US Capitol wearing neat shirts and ties. They unfurled a banner reading stop white genocide in South Africa. The only woman in the group wore an AWB uniform.

“STOP WHITE GENOCIDE IN SOUTH AFRICA”

Monica Huggett from Kempton Park

The woman was Monica Huggett, about seventy years old, from Kempton Park. Her story, reconstructed by US journalist Molly Conger for the podcast Weird Little Guys, shows how she built links between white nationalists in South Africa and the US.

Fourteen years before Ernst Roets

Huggett had mobilised small-scale demonstrations at thirteen sites across the US under the umbrella of a campaign called the South Africa Project. This was fourteen years before Ernst Roets's Lex Libertas would set up a farm murder protest in almost exactly the same spot.

The Wit Kommando connection

In nineteen eighty, Huggett was part of the Wit Kommando, a tiny pro-apartheid terrorist group. Police found an arsenal including plastic explosives, hand grenades, landmines, rifles, pistols, a machine gun and thousands of rounds of ammunition when members were arrested.

Member of the KKK

Huggett turned state witness and testified that she was a member of both the Wit Kommando and the US Ku Klux Klan. She had obtained bomb-making literature from her Klan contacts. By nineteen eighty, the exchange between the US and South African white right was already more than ideological.

“I was opposed to racial integration. And I still am.”

Resurfaced in the nineteen nineties

Huggett disappeared from records after her nineteen eighty arrest but resurfaced in the nineteen nineties as a loyal soldier of Eugene Terre'blanche's AWB. Afrikaner nationalist writer Adriaan Snyman described her as the only woman to have served prison time for her involvement in the AWB.

Recruiting mercenaries for the AWB

Huggett placed advertisements in European fascist magazines to recruit mercenaries to assist the AWB in violent resistance to the transition to democracy. On their arrival in South Africa, she collected the men from the airport and housed them at her home until they were given their AWB assignments.

Operation falls apart in nineteen ninety-four

In March nineteen ninety-four, the operation began coming apart after a shootout with police in which German mercenary Thomas Kunz was killed. Huggett was caught red-handed with a stockpile of weapons. Shortly after South Africa's first black president entered office, she took off for the US.

Louisiana and Jim Stone

Huggett settled in Louisiana and found love with Jim Stone, a former staff member of erstwhile Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke. She quickly established herself as an indispensable member of the thriving Louisiana white supremacist scene.

The South Africa Project launches

By two thousand eleven, Huggett was addressing the Aryan Nations World Congress on the alleged white genocide in South Africa in her AWB uniform. The next year she helped launch the South Africa Project, which tried to draw national attention to the plight of white South Africans.

All five strands of US white supremacy

The Anti-Defamation League reported that participants in the South Africa Project represented all five major strands of organised US white supremacy, including neo-Nazis, racist skinheads, traditional white supremacists, Christian Identity adherents and racist prison gangs.

Returns to Kempton Park

Despite the perils Huggett apparently believed white South Africans faced, she returned to live in Kempton Park after the death of her American husband in two thousand twelve. There she ran a charity called the Living Waters Foundation, notorious for providing assistance and food parcels only to whites.

Still alive in her mid-eighties

The Living Waters Foundation's last Facebook post was in two thousand twenty-one, but there are hints that Huggett, who would now be in her mid-eighties, is still alive. Conger found online comments seemingly posted by Huggett as late as two thousand twenty-five.

Recommended by the Suidlanders

In two thousand eighteen, the leader of far-right local group the Suidlanders, Simon Roche, was asked on a US neo-Nazi podcast who people should support in South Africa. He recommended Huggett, describing her as a very distinguished, decent lady who has fought for white nationalism.

“She's probably a bit too right-wing for me.”

Why South Africa matters to the white right

Research shows that one of the most enduring themes in US white supremacist propaganda for centuries has been the idea that whites are disproportionately the victims of murder by black people. South Africa, where white farmers are indeed crime victims, provides argumentative meat if given a sufficiently selective framing.

Anders Breivik referenced South Africa

Norwegian neo-Nazi Anders Breivik, who killed seventy-seven people in his two thousand eleven attacks, referenced South Africa at least forty-four times in his manifesto, lamenting the diabolical way blacks are persecuting whites and massacring the Boers.

Identity Evropa's two thousand eighteen protest

In two thousand eighteen, US white supremacist group Identity Evropa staged a farm murder demonstration outside South Africa's embassy in Washington. They draped a kill the farmer, kill the Boer banner on the Nelson Mandela statue and placed fifty white crosses decorated with South African flags on the lawn.

Rebranding as respectable

In two thousand nineteen, Identity Evropa's leader Patrick Casey tried to rebrand the group as the more neutral-sounding American Identity Movement, giving explicit instructions to members that they needed to launder their image to gain access to politicians and media.

Ernst Roets in New York

In March two thousand twenty-five, Ernst Roets and Orania CEO Joost Strydom gave a lengthy interview in New York to Cyan Quinn of the White Papers Policy Institute, a white nationalist group seized with the question of how to prevent white replacement.

Leo Brent Bozell's reverse pipeline

In nineteen eighty-seven, Leo Brent Bozell the Third, then president of the National Conservative Political Action Committee, wrote that his organisation was proud to become a member of the Coalition Against ANC Terrorism. Almost forty years later, Bozell is the US ambassador to South Africa.