Eben Jordaan – praag.org

Boeremag 20 to be sentenced today

The Pretorius brothers in court: Wilhelm (left) and Johan (right)

Twenty Boeremag members convicted of high treason will be sentenced in the High Court in Pretoria on Tuesday.

The charge arose from a rightwing plot in the late 1990s and early 2000s to violently overthrow the African National Congress government and chase all black, coloured and Indian people out of the country.

The first of the Boeremag members was arrested before others commenced a bombing spree, attacking among others the police air wing at the Grand Central Airport, and blowing up railway lines, bridges and a Buddhist temple.

Members of the Boeremag’s bomb squad, Herman van Rooyen, Rudi Gouws and brothers Johan, Kobus and Wilhelm Pretorius, were also convicted of culpable homicide and conspiring to murder former president Nelson Mandela.

Soweto mother Claudia Mokome was killed when the bomb squad blew up a railway line and a piece of steel landed on her shack.

The men also planted a bomb on the road Mandela he was supposed to use on his way to open a rural school, but the plan was thwarted when he arrived by helicopter instead.

The decade-long trial has been one of the most expensive in South African history.

Legal Aid SA said it had spent just over R36 million on the accused’s legal costs to date.

On Monday, Judge Eben Jordaan described the personal circumstances of each accused in detail, stressing that their involvement in the case had caused financial ruin, the end of promising careers and also the end of marriages for many of them.

He said Pretorius had ignored warnings that he was busy with unlawful activities and had bullied underlings to become part of the coup plan.

Jordaan rejected Prestorius’s claim that the others had misled him, and said he must have understood the consequences of being complicit in the plot. – Sapa

Boeremag accused to be sentenced

A South African court began sentencing Monday 20 right-wing extremists convicted of high treason for a plot to kill Nelson Mandela and drive blacks out of the country.

The “Boeremag” organisation had planned a right-wing coup in 2002 to overthrow the post-apartheid government.

The trial lasted almost a decade until the organisation’s members were convicted in August last year — the first guilty verdicts for treason since the end of apartheid in 1994.

“The accused had aimed to overthrow the government through unconstitutional methods that included violence,” said High Court judge Eben Jordaan as he began the two-day sentencing hearing.

“They planned a violent attack against people of colour that would certainly be followed by retaliation attacks against whites as a result,” Jordaan said at the hearing taking place in the same Pretoria courtroom where Mandela was convicted of treason in 1964.

One woman died and dozens of people were injured in blasts that shook the Johannesburg township of Soweto in October 2002.

All 20 accused were convicted of treason, but only five of murder and the plot to kill Nobel peace laureate Mandela, South Africa’s first black president.

The state is seeking life sentences for the group’s leaders and bomb specialists, and 10 to 15 years in prison for the other defendants.

South Africa does not have the death sentence.

“We are hoping for a good conviction,” said Paul Ramoloka, spokesman for specialist police unit the Hawks, who investigated the plot.

Security was tight around the courtroom, with police carrying out body searches of the public.

The Boeremag — Afrikaans for “Boer Force”, a reference to the descendants of the first Dutch colonisers — had planned to sow chaos through bomb blasts then take over military bases, replace the government with white military rule and chase all blacks and Indians from the country.

Far-right organisation the Boer Republicans bussed in its members to support the defendants during sentencing.

“I support them 100 percent because their plan was right,” the group’s leader Piet Rudolph told AFP.

“Our people are being oppressed, we are servants, and people should revolt against that.”

The sentences are expected to be handed down on Tuesday. – AFP

Judgment in Boeremag treason trial continues today

Johannesburg – Judgment in the treason trial of a group of Afrikaner right-wingers is expected to continue in the Pretoria High Court in Pretoria on Tuesday.

Boeremag leader Tom Vorster on Monday became the 10th accused to be convicted of treason.

Judge Eben Jordaan found that Vorster, who owned a security company, had played a leading role in planning a right-wing coup.

Vorster took over as leader of the organisation when the author of the original war plan, Mike du Toit, went on the run from the police early in 2002.

Vorster had taken part in reconnaissance missions to identify targets to be blown up during the planned coup. He also presided when numerous new members swore an oath of allegiance to the Boeremag and its cause, making it clear that traitors would be shot, and handed out ranks to members.

The judge rejected Vorster’s evidence that he and others had gathered at a farm near Warmbaths in September 2002 as an “exercise” in self-defence.

The trial was previously postponed after Vorster’s advocate objected to judgment continuing in his absence.

Vorster was not in court last week after apparently suffering from an upset stomach.

The 20 men have been charged with treason, murder, attempted murder, and alternative charges including sabotage, terrorism, manufacturing explosives and the illegal possession of firearms. – Sapa