How spies nailed the Boeremag bombers

WHILE the world hailed South Africa's peaceful transition to democracy 19 years ago, a group of extremists were plotting to overthrow Nelson Mandela's government.

Over braai fires - and even in strip clubs - plans were hatched by the Boeremag to "take back" the country.

They wanted to murder Mandela, the voice and symbol of reconciliation, drive black people out of the country and spark anarchy.

The Boeremag were widely ridiculed this week. But Judge Eben Jordaan, who sent their leaders to jail, reminded the country how the planned acts of terror could have brought about turmoil in South Africa.

"This country could have been thrown into chaos," the judge said in handing down stiff sentences for, among other crimes, high treason .

In October 2002, several bombs exploded in Soweto, killing a mother, Claurina Mokone, and injuring many others.

The police, who had been monitoring the white terrorist group, made swift arrests.

A 10-year trial - the longest in South African history - ended this week in room GD in the High Court in Pretoria. It ran to about 60000 pages and cost close to R40-million, with the defendants getting legal aid.

Judge Jordaan meted out sentences ranging from 10 to 30 years.

The Boeremag's plan was contained in Document 12, which now looks ridiculous with its plans to blow up the Reserve Bank and Luthuli House, shoot down aircraft, take over the SABC, drive black people out of the country along the highways and kill Mandela. They even wanted to introduce a new currency, "die veld".

The plan to kill Mandela was meant to provoke a "night of the long knives", allegedly predicted by the charlatan Siener van Rensburg, regarded as a Boer prophet in the 1920s.

Once in court, the Boeremag tried every trick to stall the trial - easy when the legal fees were not for their own pockets.

They brought no fewer than 30 bail applications. One frivolous application concerned complaints about loud music outside their cells.

Lead investigator Colonel Tollie Vreugdenburg and prosecutor Paul Fick won praise for their role in bringing the group to book, but it would have been impossible were it not for undercover police spies - the unsung heroes.

By the time Boeremag leader Mike du Toit, his brother Andre and Tom Vorster were adding the finishing touches to their "master plan" in 2002, there were already police spies in their midst.

One of them was police informant JC Smit, who not only took part in the planning, but even gave explosives training. He was the key witness for the state.

A senior police officer involved in the operation at the time told the Sunday Times: "It takes a thief to catch a thief ... our informants had to come across as being right-wing racists themselves to win their trust."

He said a task team consisting of intelligence operatives, special forces and logistical experts - in the event of a full-out war - had worked on the case.

"At one stage, we had about 15 informers just concentrating on the Boeremag," he said.

The Boeremag and right-wing bloggers have for years claimed the police set up the group as agents provocateurs.

Last year, even a former police captain, Deon Loots, made a sworn statement about his discomfort with police operations. He claimed the "provocateurs" enticed the group to commit crimes, supposedly to ensure the white officers in the force would look good in the eyes of the black government .

He said police intelligence was spying on conversations between the defendants and their lawyers.

The Boeremag's lawyers jumped at the opportunity to add Loots's claims as a special entry in court records - useful if they were to go on appeal. Like many other applications, that one failed too.

The senior police officer, who was not authorised to speak to the media, said: "The only way to infiltrate groups like these is to place people who look like them, talk like them, drink like them. They were going to commit the crimes in any case. We had to know how and where."

Smit was able to explain the group's plans in great detail, also telling the court how the group planned to destroy parliament with a Rooivalk attack helicopter.

Smit said he first heard of the plot in 2001 and phoned his police handler. "We laughed about the coup plan and said how sick it was. That was until we got document 12," he said.

Despite overwhelming evidence of how South Africa would have been plunged into anarchy had the plot succeeded, some right-wingers still hailed the men as "true Boer heroes".

Du Toit's wife, Ester, said of their young daughter: " I will tell her that her father is a man who stood up for the Boer nation."

But, for the Du Toit brothers and their co-conspirators, life behind bars for the next two or three decades is the reality they are now facing.