“President Nelson Mandela would have to be murdered because he was still
seen as a peace figure,” one part of the document is reported to have
read.
Witnesses told the court how Mr Du Toit had recruited people within the
military and police services and the national power provider Eskom to help
with his plot.
The private army, using their own weapons, stockpiles of diesel and 1,000kg of
explosives, had instructions to seize military bases and major broadcasters
to announce their takeover, the Mail Guardian reported.
But some attempts to recruit security insiders, including a high-ranking
military official, failed and the plotters were being watched by
intelligence agencies.
State witness, Colonel Koos Holtzhausen, infiltrated the organisation and told
how Du Toit assured him the organisation had “massive support” and
that his plan was “100 per cent workable”.
Another, Willem Grobler, testified that the plot leader claimed to be able to
call up 450 men from the rural areas to come to Pretoria and shoot black
people indiscriminately to create chaos.
In October 2002, the Boeremag plotters are alleged to have been involved in
nine bomb blasts on a mosque, railway stations and petrol stations in Soweto
which killed one woman and seriously injured her husband.
Du Toit was one of the first of the 22 defendants to be arrested after the
blasts.
Speaking yesterday, Judge Eben Jordaan said he was confident that the state
witnesses who implicated him were telling the truth.
“We can come to no other conclusion but that accused number one (Du Toit)
was a main role player in planning to overthrow the existing government,”
he said, according to Business Day.
The defendants face charges of treason, murder, attempted murder, sabotage,
terrorism and illegal weapons possession. Six have pleaded not guilty, two
have not entered pleas, one refused to plead, and thirteen have challenged
the court’s jurisdiction, alleging that the post-apartheid constitution and
government of South Africa are illegitimate.
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