A Gauteng woman has told how she and her family fled their home for the safety of a small Free State town, after believing a hoax SMS that former president Nelson Mandela was in a coma.
Christene Pretorius, from Springs, swallowed the message warning Afrikaners to escape a genocide triggered by Mandela's supposed imminent death.
When she received the warning SMS she left work, rounded up her family and went to camp out "in the middle of nowhere" for two days before realising she had been duped.
But when Pretorius returned she was fired from her pharmacy job of 12 years for absconding from work. On Monday her flight to Heilbron for two days has a sequel before the Council for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) when she tries to get her job back.
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Behind Pretorius and her family's panicked flight to safety in Heilbron is a tale of conspiracy theory, "basic survival", and claims of an Uhuru plot which would be ignited by Mandela's death.
The alarming SMS, sent on February 19, said the police and army were on alert in preparation for attacks. The message was a warning that the time for Uhuru had arrived and whites, especially Afrikaners, were in danger of being wiped out.
The claimed threats to the safety of Afrikaners had been highlighted in a DVD by Gustav Muller, the leader of a group calling themselves Suidlanders.
"The DVD was very convincing. I have never been this scared in my life and when we got the warning I thought it was real and what the DVD warned about was about to happen," said Pretorius.
The DVD has been widely circulated and is also a topic of conversation on the Boerevryheid website.
Both the Suidlanders and Boerevryheid are splinter groups within rightwing Afrikaner circles.
In his "information" DVD, dated January 2007, Muller warns of an Uhuru plot - also known as the Night of the Long Knives, Iron Eagle and Operation White Clean-up.
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