White extremists 'planted bomb to kill Mandela'

World News - London Times
March 20, 2003
White extremists 'planted bomb to kill Mandela'
From Michael Dynes in Johannesburg

RIGHT-WING extremists plotted to kill Nelson Mandela by blowing him up in his car, according to a prosecution indictment in the trial of 23 white supremacists due to begin in May. Three members of the terrorist group Boeremag, or Boer Force, are alleged to have built a bomb to kill the former South African President in October while he was travelling to Limpopo Province to open a rural school.

The indictment says that Herman van Rooyen, Johan Pretorious and his
brother, Wilhelm ?- three of the extremists facing treason and terrorism charges ?- placed the bomb on the road they believed that Mr Mandela would use. The plot was foiled when Mr Mandela decided to travel by helicopter.

The attempted murder was part of an audacious, if farcical, attempt by right-wing extremists to overthrow the South African Government, install a white military junta and chase the country's black population "into the sea".

The indictment also gives details of Boeremag's plans to wage a car-bombing campaign aimed at creating panic among the residents of Alexandra, an impoverished black township in northeast Johannesburg. The document accuses the organisation of hiring ten Avis vehicles and storing them in rented property in Alexandra, where they were to be converted into car bombs to be detonated during the Earth Summit in
Johannesburg last autumn.

The campaign was intended to incite violent protests from black people, creating the climate that Boeremag leaders believed was necessary to stage a coup d'etat, the prosecution says.

The 23 members of Boeremag were arrested after a series of bomb
explosions in November in Johannesburg and Pretoria, which provoked
widespread fears of a resurgence of white supremacist attacks across
South Africa.

In addition to the arrests, Operation Zealot, the counter-terrorist unit in charge of the "White Right" investigation, has found a lorry full of thousands of automatic rifles and uncovered various arms caches around the country. Dawn raids on the homes of suspected Boeremag members have also uncovered hundreds of pages of documents and computer disks outlining the group's plans to depose South Africa's democratically elected Government.

The plot called for the killing of "white traitors" such as F. W. de Klerk, the former President who helped to negotiate the transition to majority rule, the elimination of all black Cabinet ministers and the seizure of all airports, radio stations and goldmines.

More than 80 extreme right-wing groups are thought to be operating in
South Africa. They represent a mixture of military underground cells, such as Boeremag, and doomsday cults, such as Israel Vision and
Daughter of Zion. All share the white supremacist ideology that casts
Afrikaners, the descendants of Dutch and French settlers who arrived
in southern Africa more than 300 years ago, as "God's chosen people",
and the indigenous inhabitants as "mud people".

In a separate trial of three Boeremag members accused of plotting to
blow up the Vaal River Dam, evidence has emerged that the defendants
had prepared a statement to be issued on the eve of the coup, calling
for "the kaffirs, Moslems, half-castes, Freemasons, Jews, Jingos and
all other racial aliens" to be chased into the sea.

Most Afrikaners, who account for about 60 per cent of the 4.4 million
whites in a country of 43 million, have little sympathy for the extremists, whose schemes to overthrow the Government are treated with scorn. But the far Right, which comprises farmers, blue-collar workers, professionals, academics, serving and retired military and police officers, numbered in the tens of thousands, is capable of causing widespread death and destruction.

Jackie Selebi, the National Police Commissioner, said yesterday that
Boeremag members were planning atrocities in an effort to disrupt the
treason and terrorism trial in Pretoria. "It would appear that they are not only planning to resume their bombing campaign in the period preceding the trial, but also to assassinate witnesses and police officials," he said.