Police in South Africa raided homes of suspected white militants across the country yesterday in the biggest security sweep since terrorists started a bombing campaign to destabilise the government.
Several people were arrested and some weapons seized during the pre-dawn raids on 94 residences.
The intelligence minister, Lindiwe Sisulu, said the state would continue to infiltrate and spy on those who threatened it. ”For as long as mad rightwingers threaten our peace, we will ensure that they rue the day they were born,” she said.
One of those arrested was Gaye Derby-Lewis (63) the wife of Clive Derby-Lewis, a white militant who is serving a life sentence for the 1993 assassination of the Communist party secretary general Chris Hani.
She was expected to be charged on Monday for illegal possession of a firearm. The Conservative party leader, Ferdi Hartzenberg, said: ”I am surprised that they are acting so harshly against her.”
Months of surveillance led to yesterday’s raids but no major caches of arms were reported found, nor were the most-wanted suspects arrested.
In recent months the police have discovered two big caches of arms and arrested 20 people, yet the attacks – blamed on a little known right-wing group called Boeremag (Boer power) — have continued.
Nine bombs rocked Soweto in a single night in October, damaging railway lines and killing a woman. Later the same day a detonator of a bomb exploded in a Buddhist temple near Pretoria, slightly wounding two people.
In recent weeks bombs have damaged a police station in Cape Town, an airport in Midrand and a bridge over the Umtamvuna river. No one was injured and no group claimed responsibility but Boeremag was suspected of starting a Christmas campaign.
Security analysts have scoffed at the notion of a white takeover but said the militants’ access to weapons and their breakdown into small, apparently autonomous cells meant they had the capacity for widespread destruction. – Guardian Unlimited (c)Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001