Right-wing Afrikaaner plotted to kill Mandela

Mike du Toit walking into the courtroom at the Pretoria Hight Court. Photo / AFP

The leader of a white supremacist militia that plotted to overthrow the South African government and kill Nelson Mandela has been found guilty of treason, the first conviction in a mass trial spanning nearly a decade.

High Court Judge Eben Jordaan in Pretoria handed down the ruling to Mike du Toit, the mastermind behind the Boeremag (Boer Force) and a former university lecturer.

It is the first conviction in a saga ongoing since 2002.

Verdicts are also due in the coming weeks for most of the approximately 20 suspected leading members of the militia, which wanted to drive the black majority from the country.

People of Indian descent would have been shipped to the subcontinent under the Boeremag plans.

The pro-Apartheid group, which planted several bombs - in one instance killing a woman at the Soweto township outside Johannesburg - was said to have little support among South Africa's white minority.

Mandela, who turned 94 this month, was the first democratically elected president of South Africa.

He served one five-year term before stepping down in 1999.

- DPA