According to a BBC report:
“The ringleader of a white supremacist plot to assassinate Nelson Mandela and drive Black people out of South Africa has been sentenced to 35 years in jail.
“Former university lecturer Mike du Toit was convicted last year of treason for his leadership role in the plot, after a trial lasting nine years. Twenty other members of his white supremacist militia Boeremag were also jailed for between five and 35 years. In 2002 it attempted to overthrow the governing African National Congress.
“In July 2012 Du Toit, a history lecturer with a master’s degree in philosophy, was convicted of being behind nine bombings in Johannesburg’s Soweto township in 2002, killing one person.
“He was also found guilty of authoring a blueprint for revolution intended to evict Black people from most of South Africa and establish a racially ‘pure’ nation by killing anyone who got in the way.
“Du Toit was the first person to be convicted of treason in South Africa since white minority rule ended in 1994.
“Mr Mandela spent 27 years in prison for his fight against apartheid before becoming the country’s first democratically elected president in 1994.”
Verdicts widely considered appropriate
According to the Deutsche Welle:
“Judge Eben Jordaan said that if the group had been successful in carrying out their plans to overthrow the government, they would have plunged the country into chaos and bloodshed.
“State prosecutor Paul Vick, who has been involved with the case for the past 10 years, told the press that the state was satisfied with the outcome. ‘It was a fair trial and we are satisfied that the accused got what they deserved, and I think the community will be satisfied,’ Vick said.
“The case was closely followed in South Africa and reactions to the verdict were mixed, DW’s correspondent Subry Govender reports.
“Durban resident Ngobile Ngubane, in his mid 20s, said the verdicts were appropriate in view of the crimes being planned, while another Black South African Leonard Christensen said the extremists should have become members of a political party and used the mechanisms available to express their opinions. ‘Whatever was worrying them could have been expressed through a party,’ he said.”
