TIES THAT BIND: The pipeline between US white supremacists and the SA right

Monica Huggett, born in Kempton Park, emerged as a key figure in connecting white supremacists in the United States with the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) in South Africa. Huggett's story began in 1980 when she was part of the Wit Kommando, a small pro-apartheid terrorist group. She was arrested and found to have bomb-making materials, implicating her in transnational connections.

In the following decade, Huggett reappeared as a committed supporter of Eugene Terre'blanche's AWB. She actively recruited mercenaries for the group, advertised for them in European fascist magazines, and even housed and organized them upon their arrival in South Africa. In 1994, tensions escalated with a shootout involving a German mercenary, leading to Huggett's arrest with a stockpile of weapons.

After serving an undisclosed prison term, Huggett fled to the United States in the early 1990s. She eventually settled in Louisiana, where she married Jim Stone, a former member of David Duke's Ku Klux Klan. Huggett became an integral part of the Louisiana white supremacist community, maintaining her AWB uniform and addressing far-right gatherings. In 2011, she launched the South Africa Project, aiming to bring attention to the supposed "white genocide" in South Africa.

Despite the distance between Kempton Park, South Africa, and Louisiana, Huggett's ideological connection remained strong. In 2012, she returned to her hometown, where she operated a charity, the Living Waters Foundation, that provided aid exclusively to whites. In 2018, the leader of another far-right group recommended Huggett to a neo-Nazi podcast, maintaining her prominent position within the extreme right movement.