Very scarce World War Two era Die Ossewa-Brandwag Knostitutie.
“The Ossewa-Brandwag Constitution”
Printed in Afrikaans, in Bloemfontein. 1939. 2 Pages.
The Ossewa-Brandwag or “Oxwagon Sentinel” was a Afrikaner Nationalist Movement during the Second World War which opposed South Africa’s participation in the war. Afrikaners formed the Ossewabrandwag in Bloemfontein on 4 February 1939.
The Boer members of the Ossewabrandwag (OB) were hostile to the United Kingdom and sympathetic to Nazi Germany. Thus the OB opposed South African participation in the war, even after the Union declared war in support of Britain in September 1939. While there were parallels, neither Van Rensburg nor the OB were genuine fascists, according to van den Berghe.
By 1941, the OB had approximately 350,000 members.
Alexandre Kum'a Ndumbe III however shows that OB was "based on the Führer-principle, fighting against the Empire, the capitalists, the communists, the Jews, the party and the system of parliamentarism... on the base of national-socialism" according to a German secret source dated 18 January 1944.
Members of the OB refused to enlist in the UDF and sometimes harassed servicemen in uniform. This erupted into open rioting in Johannesburg on 1 February 1941; 140 soldiers were seriously hurt.
More dangerous was the formation of the Stormjaers (Storm hunters), a paramilitary wing of the OB. The nature of the Stormjaers was evidenced by the oath sworn by new recruits: "If I retreat, shoot me. If I fall, avenge me. If I charge, follow me" (Afrikaans: As ek omdraai, skiet my. As ek val, wreek my. As ek storm, volg my).
The Stormjaers engaged in sabotage against the Union government. They dynamited electrical power lines and railroads and cut telegraph and telephone lines. These types of acts were going too far for most Afrikaners, and Malan ordered the National Party to break with the OB in 1942.
The Union government cracked down on the OB and the Stormjaers, placing thousands of them in internment camps for the duration of the war. Even so many of the internees, including future prime minister B. J. Vorster, became future leaders of the ruling National Party during apartheid. Moreover, the internment aroused Afrikaner opposition to the government and helped the NP win the 1948 general election.
At the end of the war, the OB was absorbed into the National Party and ceased to exist as a separate body.
