JAMES WHEELER
At that stage, with all these statements and pronouncements, we were actually afraid as to what would happen to us if there was a takeover of the government, because in the whole of South Africa's history, there'd never been black people in government, and I assumed that what these people were telling us, namely that it would be a disaster, and it would be especially bad for the Afrikaners if there were such a change in government, that caused me to think what would happen and how things would be after the elections, and in that way I was influenced and I had a growing conviction that the people in South Africa would be very badly off under a black controlled government, and that is how I made the decision to try and combat that.  The explosions that took place at the time also made me realise that these people were actually busy doing what they had promised they would do, and that we would take our land back and that we would not yield to an ANC/Communist government.   All right, today the contrary has been proved, that we are not that badly off after all, and now we realise that we should just have accepted it, and that in the past our people suffered, but today things are not that bad, and I think if we had this view then, we would have had a very different situation today, the feelings that we had then, before the elections, namely the fear that these people, the new government, would oppress us, those are feelings which are hard to describe, and those feelings were instilled in us, and that is how it happened, that is the feeling that I had regarding that period surrounding the elections, I feared that we were entering a very shaky period, and at that stage everybody was full of bravado and quite prepared to resist.   Ultimately, of course, nothing happened and we stood alone.