Pretoria - A Northern Cape electrician has joined the ranks of the growing number of Boeremag accused to be convicted of high treason.
Judge Eben Jordaan found that Dion van den Heever, an electrician who did contract work at the Lohatlha military base in the Northern Cape, had actively taken part in planning a violent rightwing coup.
He also recruited a high ranking defence force officer at the base, Col Magiel Burger, for the coup plan.
Van den Heever supplied information about the Lohatlha and Wallmansthall military bases to members of the inner circle.
He was appointed as one of the military commanders of the Boeremag and was put in charge of the first division, which would have attacked Lohatlha.
He at one stage described Lohatlha as “a walk-over” and said taking over the base was his “favourite project” on which he had been working for years.
Van den Heever was later assigned the task to get components for timing mechanisms for bombs to blow up electricity sub-stations, as part of the coup plan.
He also indicated that he could get R4 ammunition, which could be sold at a profit to get money for the coup plan.
Van den Heever attended numerous meetings at which the coup plan was discussed in detail.
A prominent role was also assigned to him in Boeremag leader Mike du Toit's war plan, known as Document 12.
Jordaan rejected Van den Heever's claims that the meetings he attended were “innocent” and were about the protection of certain rural areas.
He said Van den Heever was one of the Boeremag members who swore allegiance to the Boeremag at a meeting in the Free State early in 2002. Each received a bullet symbolising that traitors would be shot.
Judgment continues. - Sapa