The Crazy South African Racists Who Wanted to Shoot Mandela in the Head

If Dad's Army had an SS wing, it'd look a lot like the Boeremag. This month brings down the curtain on one of the most deranged trials in South African history. During a case lasting ten years, 22 racists who want to overthrow the post-Apartheid government and kill or deport every black person in South Africa have stood in the dock accused of high treason.

This rag-tag band of farmers, mechanics, small-time academics and agricultural equipment salesmen, inspired by the prophecies of a 150-year-old Boer soothsayer, plotted to blow up a Boeing jet with a bazooka, poison people with gas, start an apocalyptic race war and enforce a policy of mass-insemination. The accused have stood in the exact same courtroom that Nelson Mandela once occupied for his own treason trial. Ironically enough, they were training snipers to kill him.

Their plan, laid out in an MS Word doc cunningly codenamed "Document 12" in the hope that investigators would give up after reading documents one to 11, had gone so far as to divide up the cabinet portfolios amongst themselves. But not far enough to explain exactly how they'd take control of major military bases equipped with only pistols and hunting rifles.

Their dreams were daft. But they were more than just fantasy. On 13 September, 2002, in cars loaded with pipe, petrol and cylinder bombs, armed to the teeth with rifles and grenades, a group of them drove towards Alexandra, Johannesburg. From there, the plan was to put their bombs into rented cars and send them off to execute phase one. The plan got diverted. But they already had 1500 kilos of high explosives, and were making contact with chemists who could create poison gas. High farce and low skullduggery have seldom sat so jeek-by-jowl. These are some of the highlights of what the past decade has revealed:

De Toit brothers, Andre (left) and Mike (right).

THEY WERE INSPIRED BY A LONG-DEAD SOOTHSAYER
Mike du Toit, the leader of the coup, recruited people he suspected might be vulnerable by telling them they were being hired to staff a "farm security" business. After that, he'd really hook them by telling them all about "Siener" Van Rensburg, a mystic prophet who'd been an adviser to Boer president Martinus Steyn and whose cheery vision of the future culminated with a full-blown race war. (Which the white guys won, obviously.) Du Toit thought his men would be better equipped to achieve their aims if they saw themselves as agents carrying out their mystical destiny.

THEY WERE DAD'S ARMY
In early 2002, members stood inside a potato shed on a farm in the Free State, swore an oath of allegiance, and signed "blue letters" declaring war on the government. They were each given a bullet, to symbolise the fact that "traitors would be shot". It was also at that meeting that plotter Fritz Naude chose for himself the codename "KGB". Other agents' codenames included "Rottweiller" and "Motherfucker". It was that kind of an organisation.

An accused member of the Boeremag at Pretoria High Court.

THEY BELIEVED IN THE BREADCRUMB THEORY OF ETHNIC CLEANSING
In the sort of mass-migration that would've made the partition of India look like a netball team away game, it was envisaged that, after the Boeremag took power, every black person in South Africa would head for the border. They would be encouraged to do this, according to Document 12, by "the laying of food parcels at strategic intervals". That's right: the Boeremag would literally get big sacks of maize, point them in the right direction up the N1 highway, and these hens would cluck meekly across the borders into Zimbabwe, Botswana and Mozambique. Once there, du Toit's plan imagined that the UN would step in to create refugee camps for these surplus humans.

THEY DREAMED OF ANOTHER 9/11
It's hard to know where to start with a coup. Initially, there was a lot of talk about doing "another 9/11" – a spectacle so dramatic it would cause so much chaos that the Boeremag would be able to waltz into the vacuum. In 2001, after police raided his home (and allegedly "planted" software and child pornography in it), a livid du Toit announced he would call up 450 men he had at his disposal in the Eastern Transvaal. They would simply shoot blacks indiscriminately to create chaos: “So many kaffirs [blacks] would die it wouldn't even be funny.” A sniper's bullets would take care of Nelson Mandela and key officials in the Defence Force. They toyed with the idea of downing a Boeing jet with a bazooka. In the end, du Toit argued for simultaneous takedowns of Parliament, the Reserve Bank and the national grid. Once electricity was restored, TV would announce that the Boeremag were now in charge. Amazingly, du Toit overestimated the appeal of his racist plot and none of this materialised.

THEY BELIEVED THEY WOULD BE HAILED AS SAVIOURS
Upon hearing the good news that they were about to be run by a neo-Dutch Tailban, white Afrikaaners would apparently spontaneously rise up and attack blacks. Many of them would already have been asked to store 200 litres of diesel and three days' worth of tinned food to aid the attack forces. Non-Afrikaans whites would do as they were damn well told: anyone who didn't co-operate would be shot. Tom Vorster, who took over leadership after du Toit went on the run, floated the idea that non-Afrikaans whites who didn't wholeheartedly support the Boeremag should be used to "clean up" squatter camps, once the blacks had fled. He went so far as to tell one witness that these race-traitors' cars would be taken to steel mills and melted down, which shows a disturbing naivety about modern steel production techniques.

THEY NURTURED DREAMS OF SPERM
On a car journey, Vorster told one of his men that he dreamed of keeping a massive harem of women at the headquarters of Armscor, the national military manufacturer, and impregnating them with Boeremag sperm in order to breed a new nation. It was during this same trip that Vorster suggested the idea of assassinating popular Afrikaans comedian Casper de Vries, "because he was not on the right path".

For the avoidance of doubt, this is popular Afrikaans comedian Casper de Vries:

THEY WOULD FIRE CANONS ACROSS CITIES
In terms of seizing the nation's military apparatus, the plan was pretty basic. Aerial photos would give them the intellgence to attack military bases. Heavier weapons would then be seized from these bases. Untrained recruits would then be given these massively hi-tech weapons, and told to begin preparing for an assault on Pretoria. The government's attack aircraft would be shot down by Boeremag commandos armed with hunting rifles, crouched outside military bases. Vorster also suggested firing the heavy artillery from Potchefstroom military base across the city, to "instigate panic". Piece of piss.

THEY WERE PINNING THEIR HOPES ON IMMIGRATION
Once the main work was done, into this earthly paradise would pour the hundreds of thousands of white South Africans who had emigrated over the past decades. Perth, Putney, Vancouver: all would empty as Saffas abandoned their biltong import businesses and rushed back to this eerily quiet nation where there was no longer anyone to clean their swimming pools or pump their petrol, just big pools of blood bubbling up from the water table. They'd want to rush back because, having ditched its unproductive human capital into the sea, the new South Africa would finally become an economic utopia. In other words, it'd be like Australia. Only, without all those degenerate Australians.

THEY'RE VETERAN ESCAPOLOGISTS
In 2006, two of the Boeremag escaped from holding cells one lunchtime and went on the run for nine months. In 2011, three policemen and a security guard were taken to hospital after ammonia was sprayed in their eyes during court. Herman Van Rooyen managed to punch his way through a glass panel and escape into downtown Pretoria, where he was rearrested later. Vorster punched a policewoman and would have escaped too, had she not hit back with a tazer. These days, they aren't just brought into court in leg irons, they're forced to sleep in them too.

BUT REALLY THEY JUST DON'T CARE ANY MORE
The trial has taken ten years. The judgements alone are taking a month to read. The accused are way beyond court fatigue. During Judge Eben Jansen's summary against Rooikoos du Plessis, some of his co-accused were apparently reading a car magazine through 3D glasses. In their defence, South Africa is widely known for its gripping 3D car magazines. Something to be proud of.

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