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South Africa: 20 Right-wing extremists to be sentenced in Mandela assassination plot
Former South African President Nelson Mandela. PHOTO/PETER DEJONG /AP
(AFP) – A South African court began sentencing on Monday 20 right-wing extremists convicted of high treason for a plot to assassinate Nelson Mandela and drive blacks out of the country.
The “Boeremag” organization had planned a right-wing coup in 2002 to overthrow the post-apartheid government.
The trial lasted almost a decade until the organization’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 color 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.
