DHAKA: The ringleader of a white supremacist plot to assassinate Nelson Mandela and drive black people out of South Africa has been sentenced to 35 years in jail.

South Africa’s national broadcaster has reported, says the BBC.

Former university lecturer Mike du Toit was convicted last year of treason for his leadership role in the plot, after a trial lasting nine years.

He led the Boeremag, a militia of white supremacist loyalists.

In 2002 it attempted to overthrow the governing African National Congress.

Twenty other Boeremag members convicted of high treason were given jail terms of between five and 35 years in the court in Pretoria.

In July 2012 du Toit, a former academic, was convicted for being behind nine bombings in Johannesburg’s Soweto township in 2002, killing one person.

He was also found guilty of authoring a blueprint for revolution intended to evict black people from most of South Africa and establish a racially ‘pure’ nation by killing anyone who got in the way.

Du Toit was the first person to be convicted of treason in South Africa since white minority rule ended in 1994.

Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison under apartheid before being elected president in 1994, and acted as a unifying force after decades of white-minority rule.

BDST: 1855 HRS, OCT 29, 2013
RoR/RK