One dead in S.African bombings, white right blamed
By Zandile Nkuta
SOWETO, South Africa, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Ten bomb blasts rocked South Africa on Wednesday, killing a woman and injuring two other people, in attacks that President Thabo Mbeki blamed on white right-wing extremists.
Nine bombs exploded in Soweto, South Africa's biggest black township which is on the outskirts of Johannesburg, and a 10th went off at a Buddhist temple near the capital Pretoria, police said.
They said some damage was caused to targets including a mosque, railway lines and stations, but the scale suggested the explosive devices were relatively small.
Mbeki pointed the finger at right-wing whites who he said were plotting to try and overthrow his black majority rule government, which came to power after the end of apartheid in 1994.
"These are criminal actions that seek to introduce a terrorist campaign in the country," Mbeki told a news conference in Cape Town.
"The information the government has had for some time...indicates that the right wing have the intention to conduct a campaign of this type to destabilise the country and create a political climate that would enable them to take...actions for the removal of the government and the installation of some other government.
Mbeki said the right-wingers had no hope of achieving their aims. "They will certainly fail," he said.
RIGHT-WING PLOT UNCOVERED THIS YEAR
South Africa's police chief Jackie Selebi said two white men were seen acting suspiciously near a Soweto petrol station where officers defused a bomb on Wednesday.
"We think we know who did this," he told a parliamentary committee, South Africa's SAPA news agency reported.
Earlier this year police said they had uncovered a plot by right-wing whites to topple the government and chase out blacks from parts of the country.
Police have charged 15 white men, all from the Afrikaner community which dominated during the apartheid era, and are hunting for others.
Soweto, home to three million people, was a focal point for blacks in the long struggle against apartheid. Since then it has been politically calm but, like many parts of South Africa, is blighted by high rates of violent crime.
National television broke into its normal schedule to cover the blasts and the government tried to calm nerves about the most serious and coordinated attacks since the end of apartheid.
South Africa's rand currency lost gains made during the week after news of the explosions but recovered later. It fell to 10.27 to the dollar compared to 10.05 before the news broke.
"We condemn this dastardly deed in the strongest terms. We appeal to our people to remain calm and not to panic," Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula said when he visited the blast sites in Soweto with two cabinet colleagues.
A 42-year-old black woman was killed by falling debris in her shack in a shanty area of Soweto when the explosions shook the sleeping township in the early hours.
"It's the first time I saw anything like that, her brain was hanging out. Why would anyone do anything like that?" neighbour Josephine Monareng told Reuters.
Other residents said they heard a very loud bang but stayed in their shacks fearing they would be attacked.
One of the nine devices that went off in Soweto blew a hole in the wall of a mosque around midnight. Subsequent explosions damaged railway tracks and stations, Police Director Henriette Bester said.
Hours later, there was an explosion outside a Buddhist temple at Bronkhorstspruit, east of Pretoria.
"Two people were injured," police superintendent Morne van Wyk told Reuters.
10/30/02 07:46 ET
Copyright 2002 Reuters Limited
