Boxer's Rebellion

Dark, muscular Sydney Robey Leib-brandt, German-descended South African, might have won the light-middleweight championship at Berlin's 1936 Olympics if he had not been too fascinated sightseeing to show up for the title bout.

Back in South Africa, he joined the anti-British Ossewa Brandwag. In 1937 he returned to Germany, learned to speak excellent German, grew a mustache like Hitler's, took the Nazi "leadership-training" course, became a Reichswehr parachutist.

In July 1941, a U-boat took Leibbrandt to a point off desolate Namaqualand, South Africa. With $10,000 and radio equipment he rowed ashore in a rubber dinghy. For three days he walked across the hot plains, finally got a lift to Cape Town. Then he headed for the interior.

In the Union's northern provinces he recruited "National Socialist Rebels." He told them he had been sent by Hitler to save Afrikanders from the British. They signed an oath of allegiance in their own blood. Everywhere that Leibbrandt went, sabotage and terrorism were sure to follow.

Police finally caught up with him on Christmas Eve 1941, put him in Pretoria jail. There he spoke only German (his English is perfect), aped Hitler's appearance, gave the Nazi salute, declared: "God sent Adolf Hitler to save Germany and all oppressed mankind." He said he intended to give South Africans the benefit of his trained leadership "after the war has ended in the inevitable Axis victory."

In mid-November, 30-year-old Sydney Leibbrandt and six of his Rebels went before the Transvaal Division of the South African Supreme Court charged with high treason. For a month Leibbrandt remained calm, arrogant, defiant. Then, last week, into the courtroom strode a bemedaled Nazi parachutist captured in the recent Middle East fighting. Believing his testimony would get his fellow Nazi "honorable" treatment as a prisoner of war, the soldier positively identified Leibbrandt, coolly told how they had trained together as parachutists in Germany in 1940-41.

That cracked Leibbrandt. He began to sob buried his head in his arms. His conviction seemed certain. Probable penalty: death.

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