Tuesday’s sentencing of several White supremacists hopefully closes a brutal and bloody chapter of South Africa’s apartheid past. Mike du Toit, the mastermind behind a White supremacist plot to assassinate Nelson Mandela and drive Blacks out of South Africa, has been jailed for 35 years after a decade-long trial.
Mike du Toit, his brother Andre and twenty other members of his White supremacist militia Boeremag were also jailed. Sentences for their roles in bombings in Soweto in 2002 and a coup plot to overthrow the democratically elected African National Congress ranged from five to 35 years.
Judge Eben Jordaan of the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria said, “South Africa could have been thrown into chaos if the plot to kill Nelson Mandela with a car bomb had succeeded.”
During this lengthy trial, the court heard Mike du Toit’s plans to violently overthrow the government and return the country to White-only rule. Founding the militia group Boeremag, he and his supporters waged a campaign of terror, claiming responsibility for a series of bombs that killed a woman and caused damage throughout the South African township of Soweto in 2002.
The trial also reveal du Toit’s “blueprint” for revolution — known as Document 12 — to evict Black people from South Africa. He is the first person to be convicted of treason in South Africa since White minority rule ended in 1994.
Analysts say that while race relations in South Africa are still a huge issue, White extremist groups like Boeremag — which means Afrikaner Power in Afrikaans — have very little support. But this is not the only threat the ANC government has faced.
Last year, President Jacob Zuma was the target of terrorist attacks by four White extremists. Claiming to be members of the right-wing Federal Freedom party (FFP), they attempted to bomb an ANC conference that drew more than 4,500 people, including Zuma and dozens of ministers attending the five-day conference in Bloemfontein.
The FFP, a fringe group that claims it is pushing for self-determination for the country’s Afrikaner minority, said at least two of the people arrested were believed to be members of the party.
Although there have been small and isolated movements for White rule in South Africa, this type of extremism is largely a part of South Africa’s past. Now the battleground is changing.
Is White supremacy a dying force?
There was some gasps of dismay from the gallery when sentences were passed on the 22 White supremacists.
Nine of the accused walked free after being held for 11 years behind bars during the trial, National Prosecuting Authority spokesman Medupi Simasiku told Reuters.
Former anti-apartheid campaigner Sonia Watson said of the verdict, “Considering Nelson Mandela served 27 years for his campaign to end segregation and end anti-apartheid laws, I think this is very lenient.”
The 11-year trial exposed a reign of terror through bombing campaign in 2002, directed at heavily populated Black areas in Soweto — including railways and airports. This violence has turned the majority of White South Africans against the group, but for the die-hard few, the battle continues, but not in the township. Now the violence has moved to rural areas and farmland.
In 2010, the death of Eugene Terreblanche, White supremacist and member of the Afrikaner Resistance movement (AWB), uncovered a new racial tension and a spate of racial killings in rural South Africa.
Terreblanche had a history of racial hate crimes. He was sentenced to six years in prison for the attempted murder of a Black security guard and assaulting a Black gas station worker before becoming an influential figure in the AWB. But his murder revealed the toxic past of apartheid — and how it easily it resurfaces.
Members of Terreblanche’s AWB said the farmer murders were racially motivated and that Blacks were carrying out a “genocide” against them.
Black farm workers argue that the farm attacks are mostly driven by the racist treatment they face at the hands of their White employers. As unemployment is high in rural areas, Black farm workers claim they have little choice and will put up with an abusive employer rather than losing their job.
South Africa’s rural economy has seen very little growth, and jobs are hard to find. Getting paid for the work is even harder. According to South African Institute of Race Relations research, the average annual Black income is $2,300, compared with Whites, who average $17,500. With such a huge economic divide between Black and White South Africa, this could be fuelling racial tensions.
Today White supremacist groups are gaining more support in the rural areas where farmers are increasingly targeted, leaving Black South Africans nervous about the future.
“I live in the township a few kilometres from town and we don’t feel safe as blacks, especially now Terreblanche has been killed,” university student Lesego Tsui told the BBC.
“I don’t even want to go out at night any more because you don’t know if the Boers [Whites] will come after us.”