Plot to assassinate ANC youth leader

Plot to assassinate ANC youth leader

By Norm Dixon

South African police have uncovered a plot by white right-wingers to murder the president of the African National Congress Youth League, Peter Mokaba. The police, however, have refused to give the ANC the names of the suspects, or to inform the ANC whether this planned attack was part of a wider offensive.

On September 28, the ANC received the information from the SAP headquarters in Pretoria. The police obtained confessions from right-wingers arrested for a racist bombing of an Indian shopping complex, the Bronkhorstpruit Mall, near Pretoria. The terrorists planned to bomb Mokaba's home in Johannesburg.

The ANC found the SAP's refusal to release information about the plot "disturbing". ANC secretary general Cyril Ramaphosa said in a statement that the ANC has "every reason to suspect that the right-wingers might have both national and international right-wing connections, as in the murder of the General Secretary of the SACP, Chris Hani."

He demanded that the names of the plotters be disclosed and their confessions made public, that information be provided on whether the unit arrested is implicated in any other acts of terror around the country, and that the terrorists be speedily brought to justice.

The plot to kill Mokaba comes after similar plots have been discovered to kill senior members of the ANC, including Joe Slovo and Tokyo Sexwale.

Ramaphosa said that it was "the right-wing element within the government, coupled with the inability or unwillingness of the security forces to act decisively, that has emboldened ultraright-wingers to act with impunity. The immediate threat to the process of peace and democracy in our country remains the broad right-wing coalition of blacks and whites. This coalition represents a minority of our population and must be exposed."

From GLW issue 118