Afrikaaner Weerstandsbeweging

The Afrikaaner Weerstandsbeweging was an infamous terrorist group based in South Africa. The AWB, as it was commonly called, could trace its ultimate ancestry to the history of South Africa. The region that would eventually become South Africa was first settled by the Dutch, but after the American Revolution the territory fell under British control as part of the colony of Draka. Draka was a thoroughly racist slaveocracy with aspirations of ruling over the entirety of Africa and enslaving the local population, but this dream was shattered by the rapid rise of the Tswana Empire. The collapse of the Tswana after a plague wiped out their war dragons allowed for both the British and Dutch to reestablish control in the region. Many on both sides of that divide felt sympathy for the Draka—something which lingered even after Britain subjugated the whole of South Africa once again post-Boer War. The AWB additionally took cues from the Nazi ideology of Adenoid Hynkel. While Hynkel paid little attention to Africans compared to the Jews, his regime was ardently white supremacist and quite popular among white South Africans.

For these radical beliefs, the AWB tended to be marginalised even in the heyday of apartheid after Jaapie Botha founded the group in 1973. However, the AWB would achieve mainstream success in 1992 thanks to a combination of factors. First, Indian dictator Khan Noonien Singh saw merit in helping grow their arsenal in order to prevent the international community from combatting his efforts to build an international bloc of fellow Augments. Secondly, radicalisation among white South Africans increased after the government allowed a group of alien refugees later dubbed prawns to settle in the country. There was a baseless fear that efforts to compromise with anti-apartheid leaders and efforts to peaceably deal with aliens would lead to the destruction of white South Africans. All of these helped it grow, but it was the actions of Karl Voster who allowed the AWB a period of rule.

Voster conspired to sabotage peace negotiations between reformist President Frederich Haymans and anti-apartheid movements. To that end, he helped ensure the death of Haymans and his reform-minded cabinet, allowing Voster to take control as State President. Voster engaged in a heavy-handed crackdown with the aid of the AWB. He used a South African nuclear weapon on Cuban forces invading from Namibia. Brutal crackdowns on the black population became the norm. Ultimately, however, Voster and the AWB's hold on power would break owing to Anglo-American intervention in 1994. The US and British governments had determined Voster's ties to the Khan regime coupled with wider economic damage were too great to tolerate. The intervention deposed Voster and led to the beginning of a new round of negotiations paving the way for multiracial democracy and the ascension of Nelson Mandela to the presidency of South Africa after these first elections. While Voster was deposed, however, the AWB remained active—initially in particular within the self-identified 'mercenary state' of Outer Heaven before it was wiped out by the United States in 1995.

Mandela would take early action to combat the AWB threat, hiring the mercenary Golgo to assassinate the high-ranking General Praetorian who was plotting to overthrow Mandela and bring back apartheid. Mandela's efforts were successful at pushing the AWB back to the fringes of society, but they did not truly go away. AWB members continued to target black South Africans and prawns with violence for the next several decades, a pattern which they extended to supernatural nonhumans emerging post-Awakening of Magic. The AWB, while remaining fairly fringe overall, was able to revive its fortunes in the upheaval that followed the Awakening and accompanying disasters. Colonel Coetzee's efforts to reestablish Outer Heaven along the South African-Zamundan border helped provide the AWB with enough of a window to move actively. The AWB engaged in a number of terrorist attacks in the post-Awakening era, killing hundreds. The AWB became regarded as an international problem after they kidnapped Japanese scientist Shouichi Makise. The scientist had claimed to have uncovered a secret to time travel and the AWB forced him to construct a crude time machine at their behest. Makise proved only capable of providing them with a crude machine, but the AWB succeeded in travelling back in time, only for their efforts at changing history to be thwarted by the 13th Doctor and the Rescue Aid Society.