Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

White extremists accused of plotting to overthrow the South African government were planning to chase the country's 35 million black people over the border to Zimbabwe, a court heard Wednesday.

Police informer and former right-winger Johannes Coenraad Smit told the Pretoria High Court, where 22 members of the white right-wing Boeremag (Boer Force) organisation are facing treason charges, that a similar plan had been hatched for the more than one million South Africans of Indian origin.

"Black people would have been chased to Zimbabwe," Smit testified at the first day of the hearing, held in the South African capital under tight security, and which had been dogged by numerous postponements.

"The coup plan made provision for the country's Indians to be chased to the (eastern) KwaZulu-Natal coast via the N3 highway, from where they would have been shipped to India," Smit said.

He added: "Blacks and Indians who resisted the Boeremag's repatriation efforts would have been summarily shot."

The men are facing 42 charges, ranging from terrorism to murder, related to a series of bombings committed in the predominantly black Johannesburg township of Soweto last year and a plan to unseat the African National Congress (ANC)-led government.

Details of the coup plot were contained in a document which Smit claimed to have received from the organisation's leader and first accused, Mike du Toit, in June 2001, the SAPA news agency reported.

Smit said he had infiltrated the organisation and took the stand on Wednesday after being given indemnity from prosecution.

Dubbed "Document 12", the paper outlines different phases in the planned coup, starting with identifying and recruiting members, and followed by the elimination of enemies, including former president Nelson Mandela, leading up to the formation of a new government.

Said Smit: "We discussed Document 12 in full detail at a meeting in June 2001. He (Du Toit) said all the (black) people ... must be chased out of the country on the N1 highway."

"His (Du Toit's) biggest ideal was that South Africa should be a white country.... He said that there were already people in place that could take over parliament."

The plan provided for the destruction of the public broadcaster SABC, seen by the plotters as a propaganda tool for the ANC government, which was democratically elected in 1994.

"The SABC was seen as a huge propaganda tool that could be used against us. We had to destroy the SABC to stop its propaganda."

The plan also included taking over several military bases, and altering the machinery of the South African Mint to produce weapons rather than coins.

Smit also discussed the formation of so-called "shadow commandos" within existing structures in the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) and staging possible cash-in-transit robberies to fund the planned coup.

The shadow commandos were to occupy buildings such as police stations, defence force headquarters and fuel depots.

"Certain military bases were earmarked. Some had to be taken over, others destroyed and in others, the logistics removed," said Smit.

The trial had been due to start in May, but was repeatedly postponed by the defence, which has complained about jail conditions for its clients, and which tried without success to subpoena former president Frederik de Klerk to testify.

Said Smit: "Anyone who did not support us had to be destroyed."