Investigation into South Africa bombings

national | miscellaneous | news report Thursday October 31, 2002 20:00 by Mags

I did take this from the RTE site (sorry) but it is an important enough story and I haven't seen it on here and it has not been prominent in the mainstream media. I suppose is depends on who is suspected of terrorist attacks and so it is not reported widely.

Investigation into South Africa bombings

South Africa is hunting down white right-wing soldiers and police after the most serious bombing spree since racist apartheid rule ended in 1994, the defence minister said today.

Nine bombs exploded in the sprawling black township of Soweto near Johannesburg early yesterday, killing a woman and raising fears that white extremists are back on the warpath. A 10th explosion near Pretoria wounded two others.

Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota said that a minority of right-wing white Afrikaners in the armed forces and police could be part of a plot to plunge South Africa into a race war.‘They are a racially oriented group. They want to achieve a race war,’ Lekota said.

Nobody has been arrested or claimed responsibility for the worst bombing spree since a blitz by white rightwingers ahead of all-race polls in 1994 that swept Nelson Mandela to power.

Mandela said in a statement during a visit to London: ‘This is the work of extremists who do not have the capacity to weigh the consequences of their criminal actions’.

RTE News - October 31, 2002