Sharp detective work, dangerous undercover investigations and their own high technology led to the downfall of the 23 Boeremag members who will appear in the Pretoria High Court next week to face 43 charges, including murder.
For police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi and his team of investigators the trial is the culmination of a detailed investigation that started three years ago and ended in a countrywide manhunt.
Selby Bokaba, representative for Selebi, hailed the police officers involved in nabbing the Boeremag members.
“This was an intense and involved operation that took a lot out of the men and women in the police force. Some of these people worked non-stop around the clock for almost a year. The operation grew in intensity when the bombings started. These men and women did not see their homes in daytime and some of them were not at home for weeks.
“It was these tenacious investigators who cracked the case,” he said.
Bokaba says several policemen were asked to go under cover, a nerve-racking and difficult exercise.
“In a huge investigation like this you have to go deep and have people strategically placed,” he said.
Bokaba says more details of the investigations will come out in the trial, but because the case is sub judice police officers have been advised not to talk about it.
He says the case is a tribute to the police’s commitment to preserving safety and security in South Africa.
“Rightwingers formed the group in 1994 when their generals dropped them by agreeing to democracy,” Selebi said during last year’s arrests.
“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. One of them owned nine farms.”
He said the Boeremag members were arrested after two years of intense undercover work. Because of this, the police were able to nab the alleged Soweto bombers after a three-month, round-the-clock operation, the commissioner said.
Police say the Boeremag started recruiting members in 2000. The charge sheet alleges that Boeremag members were required to take an oath pledging their lives to the organisation and vowing to wage war against the government. Some of the accused allegedly assumed military ranks and noms de guerre in the ceremonies. It is alleged that members also set about compiling a detailed plan for a coup dubbed “Document 12”.
The police started looking into the Boeremag when other rightwingers, on trial and under interrogation, gave them hints about the group’s existence. Investigators subsequently infiltrated the group with carefully planted informers who were instructed to get close to the leaders.
The Boeremag’s plans began to unravel in April last year when Michael du Toit, Andries Tibert du Toit, and Jacobus Christoffel “Rooikoos” du Plessis were arrested after allegedly trying to recruit a South African Defence Force lieutenant colonel to train their members. Du Toit allegedly gave the man a copy of Document 12.
The police consider Du Toit the Boeremag’s kingpin, though Lourens van Zyl and Tom Vorster, two members arrested later, were at one stage also named as possible leaders. Another seven members were arrested in August last year after police exposed an alleged plot to bomb the World Summit on Sustainable Development. Giel Burger, Pieter van Deventer, Dion van den Heever, Jacques Olivier, Adriaan Jacobus van Wyk, Johan Herman Scheepers and Lourens du Plessis were nabbed. Du Plessis, was later freed and the charges against him were withdrawn.
The investigation that led to the August arrests was headed by Superintendent Louis Pretorius. He is attached to a police unit in Klerksdorp in North West province which investigates crimes against the state.
One of his men, Jan Coenraad Smit, went undercover to infiltrate the Boeremag. Another investigator, Andre “Klippies” van Vuuren, also helped nail the suspects. The police have been keeping all three investigators under wraps before the trial because of death threats from the Boeremag.
“They regard us as traitors who have to be eliminated. I have heard through an informant that I am to be strangled,” Pretorius testified at a bail hearing.
Beeld newspaper reported in January that the Boeremag had established a group of underground cells known as “Die Uile”, named after a youth gang featured in a series of Afrikaans adventure books.
Die Uile were allegedly instructed to “find and secure” members who sold out to the state, especially state witnesses. Beeld said that a list of 70 “boere-verraaiers”, or traitors, is being circulated in right-wing circles.
“We are just waiting for the trial to begin, then we will have all the names of the traitors who have turned state witness against us,” an anonymous Boeremag member told the newspaper.
Even after the August arrests the Boeremag allegedly continued its operation to take over South Africa. But it was just a matter of time before the house of cards tumbled.
Police say they discovered key information that ultimately spelt the end for the group’s plans. Much of the intelligence was reported to have been leaked by Boeremag members. September was a bad month for the group when seven more members were arrested. Many members went into hiding and others surrendered to the police.
Frits Naude from Bethlehem, Frederick Hendricus Boltman from Makopane (Potgietersrus), Jurie Johannes Vermeulen from Brandfort and Dawid Oosthuizen from Bela Bela (Warmbaths) were detained and their names added to the charge sheet.
On September 20 Dirk Jacobus Hanekom of Bloemfontein and Henk van Zyl were arrested on a farm in the Memel district of the Free State. Charges against Van Zyl were later dropped.
Johan “Lets” Pretorius, a wealthy doctor from Makopane, was arrested when an abandoned truck registered in his name was found in Lichtenburg containing weapons, food, two-way radios and medical equipment.
Police say Pretorius played an important role in the planning of the coup, including hiring vehicles that were to be used for car bombs. Despite these setbacks, a small core group of extreme Boeremag members, including Pretorius’s sons, allegedly refused to abandon the coup and embarked on a campaign of terror. They continued exploring targets and manufacturing bombs as if nothing had happened, preparing for their mission planned for the end of October last year.
On the night of October 30 over a two-hour period, nine bombs exploded around Soweto, one of which killed Claudia Kokone. Members of the police bomb squad defused other bombs. Also on October 30, a bomb blast damaged a Buddhist temple in Bronkhorstspruit. The police searched the temple and found and defused another bomb.
The alleged conspirators sent out a letter in which they claimed responsibility for the bombings. The letter demanded that jailed colleagues be released and contained a threat to blow up more “heathen” institutions around the country.
On November 4 Tom Vorster, was arrested after an intensive intelligence-driven investigation. A joint operation between South African and United States authorities led Vorster into a trap after he had evaded the police for months. He reportedly went to the US consulate to apply to have his green card renewed and was arrested as he did so.
Despite Vorster’s arrest, the Boeremag was allegedly responsible for bombing Grand Central Airport outside Johannesburg on November 22. Six days later it allegedly struck again when the MC Mitchell Bridge over the Umtamvuma River near the Wild Coast Sun resort was blasted.
The police sprang into action and released identikits of six suspects: Johan, Kobus and Wilhelm Pretorius — Lets Pretorius’s sons — Rudi Gouws, Herman van Rooyen and Gerhardus Petrus Visagie, also known as “Oom Vissie”.
Operation Hopper was launched, with the police raiding the farms of presumed sympathisers for illegal arms and the six suspects. But the fugitives evaded the police, apparently camping on roadsides, at secluded campsites and on remote farms.
Their activities did not remain undetected. Police received tip-offs from the public, including farmers and dominees, and on December 10 last year the Boeremag fugitives’ luck finally ran out. The police said they lured Wilhelm Pretorius and Gouws into a trap set in Rietondale, Pretoria, that night and then arrested another four men, including Van Rooyen and Crous, in nearby East Lynne.
Van Rooyen was allegedly driving a bakkie containing 384kg of explosives. Police also confiscated a global positioning system (GPS), which held the exact co-ordinates of Boeremag targets and key sanctuaries.
Johannes Vreugdenburg, the lead investigating officer, said the GPS held more than 500 addresses of Boeremag sympathisers in its memory. About 130 of the addresses were used as safe havens, he said afterwards.
With this information the police soon located the hideout of the remaining two Pretorius brothers on a farm in Limpopo. Only one of the new suspects arrested in the December raids is included in the treason trial. Jacques Jordaan has reportedly declined to turn state witness, though he is reported to have joined the Boeremag only days before his arrest.
Crous, one of the men arrested with Van Rooyen, was going to be charged with the others, but prosecutor Dries van Rensburg withdrew all charges in January this year without giving any reasons.
By the beginning of February this year, only one suspect was still on the run. Gerhardus Visagie held out until February 22 when he too was arrested in Pretoria.