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"Remember, remember,
the fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
We see no reason why
Gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot!"

It was around 400 years ago that Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators decided that they’d just about had enough of King James 1st and figured that the best way to change things would be to blow the monarch sky-high.

Perhaps the twenty-two Boeremag members who are currently on trial for treason were inspired by Fawkes’ plot. Perhaps they also wanted to be remembered in rhyming couplets by future generations. Perhaps they should have paid more attention in history class.

You got to give the Boeremag credit for liberal use of their imaginations, although common sense was not the order of the day. In fact the plot reads like a cross between “Lord of The Rings” and a revenge-fantasy dreamed up by a teenager who really hates his parents for not buying him a Playstation.

Like Guy Fawkes, the basic premise of the “Document 12” plot (yes, they had eleven other plans), relied on the anarchy following an unexpected attack on the ruling powers and their supporters. But where Fawkes and co. had the gunpowder plot, the Boeremag had Operation Popeye.

According to Henk “Bittereinder” Van Zyl, one time Boeremag operative and potato farmer and now State’s witness, Operation Popeye revolved around tossing poisoned oranges in to the streets of Soweto. The chaos which would follow this mass poisoning would be the signal for the final push by the Boeremag, ending with them taking over government and eliminating the rest of the black population. I would have thought mopani worms or biltong might have been more tempting. Then again, generations of rugby-loving forefathers had perfected the art of lacing oranges with various substances so why re-invent the wheel?

Unfortunately the “chaplain” in charge of this operation, “Oom Vis” Visagie, never got his chance to test his orange-tossing skills. The police were onto the plot long before it was scheduled to be mobilised. Shame, he didn’t even get his chance to “hit them with a curse” and we know he must have worked hard on it too.

Then there were the planned assassinations of Thabo Mbeki, Cyril Ramaphosa and Casper De Vries. Personally, I’m not that fond of Casper’s humour either, but I certainly don’t want him dead — changing the channel is a lot less messy.

But then such simple methods are not the ways of those on a divine crusade against “evil spirits in the air”. Or at least that’s what Siener Van Rensburg, the Gandalf-esque prophet in this dysfunctional Fellowship, would have you believe.

But the cherry on the cake is not Siener’s prophecy of the “night of the long knives” (where he foretold that the white population would be annihilated seven days after Nelson Mandela’s death) nor is it the fact that they willingly chose noms de guerre that are more appropriate to B-grade comic book heroes. No, the piece de resistance of this coup de’ twak is the planned use of the Armscor building as the birthplace for the new folk. Actually, it would also be the conception centre as well — in more ways than one.

Bittereinder and his comrades (amongst them Rottweiler, KGB and Volla – you gotta love those names) would be responsible for the creation of the new volk. Tom Vorster, the “brains” behind the Boeremag, hit upon the idea of using the Armscor building to “keep a bunch of women, isolate them and inseminate them with (the sperm of) Boeremag members to start a new nation".

What’s most terrifying about that statement is that somewhere out there is a group of Afrikaner women who would actually willingly volunteer themselves to go through with something like that.

So has the threat of the Boeremag passed? Was it ever a serious threat? Who knows? One thing’s for sure, until the Boeremag decide to stop cribbing from past “A-Team” episodes for battle-plans I will sleep easy assured by the knowledge that these “Fawkers” are more of a threat to themselves than anyone else.