The mother of three of the Boeremag treason-trial accused, whose husband is also on trial, on Tuesday told the Pretoria High Court she knew nothing about evidence that one of her sons had built a bomb to kill former president Nelson Mandela.
Minnie Pretorius testified in the bail application of her son, Kobus, who is on trial with his father, Dr Lets Pretorius, brothers Johan and Wilhelm, and 17 co-accused on 42 charges, ranging from high treason to terrorism, attempted murder and murder.
Minnie not only offered her flat as security for her son’s bail, but also repeatedly assured the court that she would see to it that her son attended the rest of his trial.
The trial resumes on Monday.
Kobus said he deserved bail because he had had an epiphany in jail, was ”a new man” and now wanted to ”serve the community of South Africa”.
His mother described him and his brothers as gifted and talented men who had much to offer society, instead of being a burden to taxpayers in jail.
Asked by prosecutor Dries van Rensburg what would have moved her ”talented son” to build a bomb to kill Mandela, to manufacture and explode a bomb in Soweto that killed a woman and to wage a campaign of terror with a series of other explosions, Pretorius said such things ”were not in their frame of reference.”
She insisted that her husband and sons were innocent and that she had not been aware of her son’s whereabouts while he and his brothers were on the run from police for months before their arrest in 2002.
She emphasised that she and her family were not fanatics or racists, but had always lived for church, nation, work and their culture.
They strongly believed in ethnicity and an own identity and would welcome it if there was a ”black Verwoerd” in South Africa, or if Thabo Mbeki were to offer the ”Boer nation” their own little piece of land.
She insisted that the mostly white, Afrikaans-speaking prosecutors might be Afrikaners, but were not ”Boere” and did not belong to the same nation as she and her family, ”even though one might not see it from the outside”.
The application continues. — Sapa