Previous Next. October 29, AM. VOA News. After a year trial, a South African court has sentenced members of a right-wing militant group to up to 35 years in prison for plots to destabilize the government. The Pretoria court handed down the sentences Tuesday to 18 members of the Boeremag militia group who had been charged with treason. Two other convicted group members died before the end of the trial. Some members of the group were linked to a plot to assassinate Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first black president.
Boeremag backed apartheid, the now-defunct South African system of white minority rule and discrimination against blacks. The group claimed responsibility for a spate of bombings in that left one person dead in Soweto.
Correctional services spokesperson Singabakho Nxumalo confirmed this on Tuesday, saying the two were released last year after serving the minimum time. There is nothing special about it. Soweto mother Claudia Mokone was killed when a piece of steel dislodged by a bomb the Boeremag planted on a railway landed in her shack.
Judge Eben Jordaan said Nelson Mandela would have been killed by a landmine planted by the Boeremag bomb squad if he had not gone by helicopter to open a school in Bolobedu, Limpopo.
The bombers already had five large car bombs ready for targets in the city centres of Pretoria and Johannesburg and were planning further bomb attacks when they were caught. Almost witnesses testified for the state, including several accomplices who became state witnesses after their arrest in exchange for possible indemnity from prosecution.
Pretorius senior, a medical doctor, is reunited with his wife Minnie Pretorius, who stood by his side since the arrests of her husband and three sons around In , Pretorius told the High Court in Pretoria that he believed he would die in jail because he was a white political prisoner.
At the time, Pretorius was giving evidence in an application for bail pending an application for leave to appeal against his conviction on high treason and sentence of 30 years' imprisonment, 10 of them suspended. I am 67 and will be 87 when I've served 20 years. According to reports his two other sons, Wilhelm, a theologian, and Johan, also a medical doctor, are still in jail.
The two were sentenced to 25 years each for their roles in the acts of treason. In March, Wilhelm failed in his court bid to get monthly three-hour conjugal visits with his wife. Seven of the blasts occurred on main commuter railway lines running through the township. The damage to the railway lines was estimated at approximately R2 million.
November, Arrest of 26 men alleged to be Boeremag members. About kg of explosives found. The trial was postponed till 9 June This was despite earlier claims by the prosecution that all of the tapes, which police spy Johan C.
Smit claimed he had helped to make, were inaudible and could not be used. Pretoria High Court Judge Eben Jordaan says the witness, Deon Crous, had not proved the existence of exceptional circumstances to warrant such an order, which would limit the freedom of the press.
The plan is abandoned when Mandela arrives at the school by helicopter. Self-confessed coup plotter Deon Crous tells the court he and five of the Boeremag — Herman van Rooyen, Rudi Gouws and the Pretorius brothers Johan, Kobus and Wilhelm — had planned and planted 10 bombs at a bridge, railway lines, a mosque and a taxi rank in the Soweto area.
The Boeremag allegedly had planned to set the bombs off in Pretoria and Johannesburg in December Judge Eben Jordaan ordered that the trial continue in the absence of two accused Gouws and Van Rooyen who escaped two weeks before the trial resume.
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