White supremacist Mike du Toit, who plotted to kill Nelson Mandela, jailed

Mike du Toit was found guilty in July last year after witnesses testified that the group planned to assassinate Mr Mandela

Five leaders of a plot in South Africa to assassinate Nelson Mandela and drive non-whites out of the country were sentenced to 35 years in prison after a trial lasting more than 10 years.

A Pretoria High Court handed down shorter sentences ranging to some of the other 21 defendants who were members of the ‘Boeremag’, a rag-tag militia of apartheid loyalists accused of a botched 2002 coup attempt.

Nine of the accused walked free after being held for 11 years behind bars during the trial.

In the course of the prolonged case, witnesses testified that the Boeremag planned to assassinate anti-apartheid hero Mandela, who was South Africa’s first black president, by planting a bomb along a route he was due to travel.

Their plans however were thwarted when the statesman, now aged 95, travelled to his engagement by helicopter.

Several of the Boeremag members were charged with causing nine explosions at various sites in October 2002, with most blasts taking place in the sprawling township of Soweto, south of Johannesburg, where one woman was killed.

Racial tensions persist almost 20 years since the first democratic elections ended apartheid rule in South Africa.

But groups like the Boeremag and the Afrikaner Resistance Movement of murdered far-right leader Eugene Terre’blanche have little backing from the country’s almost 5 million whites.

The alleged mastermind of the Boeremag, former university lecturer Mike du Toit, was the first to be convicted last year for high treason, and was among those given a 35-year sentence.

Members of the right-wing 'Boeremag' wait ahead of their sentencing at Pretoria High Court today

Johan Pretorius, one of the 20 right-wing extremists convicted of high treason for a plot to kill former South African president Nelson Mandela sits in a police vehicle outside Pretoria High Court

Mike du Toit (pictured right with his brother Andre) was found guilty in July last year after witnesses testified that the group planned to assassinate Mr Mandela

According to prosecution testimony, the Boeremag’s plot, concocted around barbeques and at fast food outlets, had suggested driving South Africa’s black majority of about 40 million out of the country and into Zimbabwe by lining a major national road between the two countries with food parcels.
It had also proposed sending the 1.2 million Indians in the country back to the subcontinent by boat. 

Friends and family were in court today to watch the sentencing of right-wing extremists who plotted to kill Mandela and drive non-whites out of South Africa

Women react to the sentencing of right-wing extremists who were convicted of high treason for plotting to kill former South African president Nelson Mandela

Mike du Toit was found guilty in July last year after witnesses testified that the group planned to assassinate Mr Mandela, South Africa's first black president from 1994 to 1999 and acting as a unifying force after decades of white-minority rule.

The decade-long trial is believed to have cost taxpayers more than R30million or £1.89million in legal aid fees.

President Nelson Mandela would have to be murdered', one part of the document is reported to have read

Du Toit drew up a document that served as a blueprint for a revolution that would see the majority black population driven out of South Africa and a white-only military government installed.

Witnesses told the court how in a series of meetings with co-plotters, Du Toit discussed luring black citizens towards the country's northern border using food as bait and making allies of its Indian and Cape people, before shooting them once the coup had reached its aim.

Document 12, Du Toit's 'war plan', was discovered on his computer after police raided his house in October 2001, reported in South Africa's Business Day newspaper at the time. 

He discussed creating a 'trigger' for his coup by blowing up a major dam, shooting down a Boeing aeroplane, assassinating Mr Mandela or cutting electricity to major cities, the paper added.

'President Nelson Mandela would have to be murdered because he was still seen as a peace figure,' one part of the document is reported to have read.

A court in Pretoria ruled that Boeremag leader du Toit was behind the nine bombings in Johannesburg's Soweto township in 2002.

During the trial Judge Eben Jordaan said Du Toit had authored a blueprint for revolution intended to evict black people from most of South Africa and to kill anyone who got in the way.

The group also intended to shoot whites who opposed their vision of a racially pure nation, the witnesses said.

Nearly 200 people gave evidence for the state - including police informants within Boeremag. 

The trial took place in the same Pretoria courtroom where Mandela was convicted of treason in 1964.

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