Further arrests in connection with the recent series of bomb blasts in Gauteng were imminent on Wednesday, National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi said.
Briefing the National Assembly’s safety and security committee, he said 17 people had already been arrested. By the time the matter reached we go to court” the number would be between 20 and 30.
Selebi said police were now certain that members of the rightwing ”Boeremag” organisation were behind the terror.
”We are certain of the people we are looking for and their numbers.”
There might still be some groups ”sleeping somewhere”, but police were convinced they were able to contain and deal with them.
”It is just a matter of time before we find the people we are looking for,” he said.
Boeremag was not an organisation that was established last week; they started in 1994 when their ”generals dropped them by agreeing to democracy”.
These were not simply ”Klipdrift and coke” people who got brave after a few drinks, but rather intelligent, highly educated people who had the necessary resources, Selebi said.
One of them owned a number of farms, and another had faked his own death in Angola sometime ago. This was not a person who went to church on Sundays, Selebi said.
They were especially ruthless people. The bomb they placed in the Bronkhorstspruit temple was set to go off at 12.30pm — a time when many people would have been in the vicinity.
This indicated they meant to kill.
While the bombers could never achieve their objectives, it was nevertheless particularly worrying that young people, some only 17 and in high school, were being used in the group’s activities, Selebi said. – Sapa