SOUTH AFRICA: A woman was killed and her husband injured when a series of bombs exploded before dawn yesterday in Soweto, the township which served as a centre of resistance to white rule in the 1970s and 1980s.
A mosque was damaged by one of nine bombs detonated in the township, most of them at strategic points along the railway linking Soweto to nearby Johannesburg. Later yesterday a 10th bomb exploded in a Buddhist temple at Bronkhorstspruit, east of Pretoria.
President Thabo Mbeki and several of his ministers refrained from explicit accusations. However, their comments conveyed the message that they suspected "right-wing extremists" seeking to sow confusion and uncertainty were behind the explosions.
Mr Mbeki counselled South Africans not to respond to the blast in a manner that might feed racial tensions and divide the emerging nation against itself.
While careful not to pre-empt police investigations, Mr Mbeki drew attention to the re-emergence of right-wing extremism. The context of his remarks was the arrest and pending trial of 14 alleged members of Die Boeremag (the Boer Force) who face charges of treason.
"The information that government has had for some time is that right-wing groups have intended to conduct a campaign to destabilise the country and increase the sense of insecurity among the entire population," Mr Mbeki said.
Their immediate aim was to "create a political climate which would enable them to undertake bolder actions". Their ultimate aim was the removal of the government and its replacement by "some other authority".
But, Mr Mbeki hastened to add, they had embarked on a hopeless venture and there was "absolutely no possibility" that they would achieve their objectives.
The National Police Commissioner, Mr Jackie Selebi, referred to two white men seen acting suspiciously near a petrol station where a bomb was later defused.
In the present South African context, the finger of suspicion must point to Afrikaner zealots.