The High Treason Club

On the night of 30 October 2002, eight bomb blasts tore through Soweto, leaving one woman dead and damaging vital infrastructure. The bombs were the work of a far-right white Afrikaner separatist group called the Boeremag, whose stated aim was to overthrow the ruling ANC government, rid the country of black people and reinstate a new Boer-administered republic. For months before the bombings, police had been investigating the terror group and had made several arrests. In December, after an intense cross-country manhunt, the perpetrators were finally caught. All in all, 23 men were arrested and charged with high treason after the police seized explosives, homemade pipe bombs, weapons and ammunition in arms caches hidden all over the country.

The trial began in May 2003 under tight security at the Palace of Justice in Pretoria. Over the next decade, in what became the longest and most expensive trial in the country’s history, details would emerge of a group driven by nationalism, racism, militancy and fear. The public would hear how a fanatical belief in the visions of a 19th-century Boer prophet named Siener van Rensburg culminated in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to assassinate former president Nelson Mandela and initiate a coup.

The High Treason Club is the story of the Boeremag, the investigation that brought them down and the subsequent trial, the first of its kind in democratic South Africa. Based on exclusive interviews, as well as thousands of pages of court transcripts and documentary evidence, this book elegantly unpacks a complex case and gives unprecedented insight into the various role-players and their motivations.