* Plots hatched around barbecue
* Fringe group wanted to kill Mandela and drive out blacks
* Verdicts awaited on 21 others
JOHANNESBURG, July 26 (Reuters) – The mastermind of a white
supremacist plot to assassinate Nelson Mandela and drive blacks
out of South Africa was found guilty of high treason on Thursday
after a trial that started almost a decade ago.
The verdict on former university lecturer Mike du Toit was
the first member of the “Boeremag”, or “Boer Army”, a rag-tag
militia of apartheid loyalists, in connection with a botched
2002 coup attempt in Africa’s biggest economy.
He will be sentenced at a later date. Verdicts on another 21
are expected over the next few weeks.
Under du Toit’s plan, concocted around barbecues and in
fast-food outlets, the Boeremag would force South Africa’s black
majority – roughly 40 million people – over the border into
Zimbabwe with food parcels, while its 1.2 million Indians would
be put on boats back to the subcontinent.
Witnesses testified that the group also planned to
assassinate Mandela, who became South Africa’s first black
president in 1994 and acted as a unifying force after decades of
white-minority rule.
The Boeremag also intended to shoot whites who opposed their
vision of a racially pure nation.
Despite racial tensions in Mandela’s “Rainbow Nation”,
radical white groups such as the Boeremag have very little
support among South Africa’s five million-strong white
population.
(Reporting by Peroshni Govender; Editing by Ed Cropley and
Andrew Roche)
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