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Posted on 10/07/2002 7:54:58 PM PDT by blam
Police foil white plot to recapture South Africa
Racist coup leaders planned to kick out millions of black people
Rory Carroll in Modimolle
Tuesday October 8, 2002
The Guardian
To those communities feeling abandoned and threatened by a country they no longer recognise, to whom the coup to overthrow South Africa's government cannot come soon enough, the news is not good. The alleged plot has been betrayed, the weapons found, the suspects arrested. The latest setback came on Friday when the police dug up a cache of guns, grenades and homemade bombs in the red earth of a farm near Modimolle, deep in the Boer heartland of Limpopo province.
It included 16 ammonia-nitrate cylinder bombs, time switches, chemicals, and thousand of rounds for various firearms, including shotguns, rifles and 9mm pistols.
Not a huge arsenal but significant, the police said, because it was intended to supply a rightwing conspiracy to take power through terror and to re-establish white minority rule in South Africa.
The alleged plot was breathtaking in its ambition. A few thousand men were to seize radio and television stations, assassinate cabinet ministers and expel hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of black people.
Since a democratically elected government ended apartheid rule in 1994 there have been rumours of a violent backlash by white militants and it is claimed that a group known as Boeremag (Boerforce) decided to take action.
"This was one of the most serious incidents. They had the capacity to harm a lot of innocent people," a national police spokesman said.
The alleged plot came to light last month when a lorry packed with firearms and explosives was found abandoned at a filling station, leading to the arrest of 12 men.
Described by the police as a "maverick, isolated group", they have been charged with high treason and terrorism and are due to go on trial in Pretoria in February.
One of the first to be arrested was Lets Pretorius, 56, a doctor in whose name the abandoned lorry was allegedly registered. His son Johan Pretorius, 31, is also wanted in connection with the plot, as is a Pretoria businessman, Thomas Vorster, and Herman van Rooyen, a 28-year-old farmer from the town of Warmbaths.
Intelligence analysts and politicians agree the plot stood no chance of success: the roots of democracy and majority rule are too deep. But to a small minority of whites overthrowing the government is a justifiable necessity.
Scattered in towns and farmsteads in Limpopo and North West province, they seethe with grievance and call their ANC rulers illegitimate incompetent usurpers.
"It is possible to make a coup. At the moment we can't use the military or the police, because most of our sympathisers have left the services, but guys my age were conscripted for two years. We're trained," said Johan Barnard, a Pretoria militant who supported the alleged coup's objectives.
"It's still going too good in this country. Things need to go down the drain, like in Zimbabwe, and suddenly the whites will wake up. There are people preparing for that day."
A Boer visionary, Siener van Rensburg, predicted in the 1920s that there would be a black president and that seven days after he died a war would erupt which the blacks, weakened by disease, would lose, Mr Barnard said. The disease was Aids, he added.
Mr Barnard, an IT worker, claimed that ANC incompetence was deepening resentment. "We tried to teach the blacks 2,000 years of civilisation in 300 years, it was like trying to teach a child a master's degree in one day. It was impossible."
It is a sentiment shared by many in the bushveld, the flat dry savanna of fruit farms north of Johannesburg whree many of the alleged plotters live. Some see the post-apartheid policy of reconciliation rather than revenge, and sharing resources more equally as a euphemism for stripping privileges.
According to court documents, the conspiracy was to spring apartheid-era killers from jail, blow up dams, destroy the state's computer network and seize military bases.
A report intercepted by the police known as "document 12" shopwed how 3,772 men would initiate a five-phase plan.
The Western Cape was to be given to "coloureds", people of mixed race, in exchange for their collaboration and "all important traitors" were to be eliminated.
"Blacks and Indians will be told to leave the country. The 'push' action will be used by attacking blacks and Indians who refuse to leave. For the 'suck' action, food will be provided on the roads to motivate them to move," the document stated.
It was reportedly handed to the police by an army officer approached by the plotters, who include former army officers, doctors and farmers.
A mother in Modimolle said that were it not not for the children she would join a coup. "Absolutely, 100% to overthrow the government. Crime is out of control, you can murder and get away with it. All the jobs are kept for blacks but they're incompetent, got no education."
White Guys with Guns: We are fighting for our freedom from the opression of government! We have a right to this land just as the others who took it from us! The oppressed people are tired of being trampled on and considered second class citizens, and we are only reacting the way we are because we have no choice left!
Government:"Crime is out of control...." The primary duty of a government is to protect the safety and welfare of its citizens. Here's hoping that the government of South Africa gets the crime implosion under control.
Someone tell me again Mandella's position on Palestine?
Hypocritical so and sos ....
They were nuts and I object to this language. We don't hear about the leftwing Mugabe government.
More whites in South Africa to carry the load.
It's amazing what just a few thousand well trained men are capable of.
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