”White Wolf” Barend Strydom is to testify for the defence in the Boeremag treason trial, the Pretoria High Court was told on Wednesday.
Daan Mostert, appearing for one of the accused, Adriaan van Wyk, told the court he intended calling the far-rightwinger as a witness for the defence.
Strydom was sentenced to death in 1989 for killing eight black people and wounding several others in a shooting spree at Pretoria’s Strijdom Square in 1988, but received amnesty and was released from prison shortly after the 1994 elections in South Africa.
Police spy Johan Smit on Wednesday told the court his name was on top of several hit lists distributed by Strydom.
He claimed a photograph stolen from his previous employer, the murdered Nic van Rensburg, had been used for Strydom’s murder list.
Smit alleged he had infiltrated the Boeremag’s inner circle and, while secretly reporting to the police, became a party to an elaborate plan to take over the government in a violent coup.
During cross-examination by Mostert, Smit for the first time revealed that the Boeremag had discussed a plan ”to destroy Parliament with a Rooivalk helicopter”. The plan, he said, had been to take over the government and kill people.
”One of the discussions was to for example destroy Parliament with a Rooivalk,” he said, to which Mostert remarked amid laughter: ”My goodness, if one shoots Parliament to bits with a Rooivalk, one would also destroy the official opposition.”
According to Smit, he first heard of the coup plan early in 2001 when rightwinger Kobus van Marle told him about it.
”I phoned my handler [police Superintendent Louis Pretorius] to tell him about it. We laughed about the coup plan and said how sick it was. That was until we got Document 12 [an alleged detailed coup plan],” Smit testified.
The hearing continues on Thursday. — Sapa