It took ten years of police work and court proceedings, but South Africa has sentenced leaders and members of a white supremacist ring who planned to assassinate Nelson Mandela and drive black people out of South Africa.

Mike du Toit, a former university history lecturer with a master’s degree in philosophy was sentenced to 35 years in prison.  His crimes including nine bombings that killed one person, laying out a blueprint for a terrorist campaign to evict black people from South Africa, and kill anyone who opposed it.  Du Toit is the first person in South Africa to be convicted of treason since the end of apartheid white minority rule in 1994.

Twenty other members of the “Boeremag” organization each got sentences of five to 35 years in the slammer. 

It was already the longest-running and most expensive trials in South African legal history, and at least some of the defendants are expected to appeal.