S. Africa 'plotted to kill Charles'

Pretoria: South Africa's apartheid rulers wanted to murder Prince Charles and Robert Mugabe in a bomb plot designed to pave the way for the invasion of newly independent Zimbabwe, a new book claims.

Details of the conspiracy, which would also have killed Lord Soames, the interim colonial governor, and Lord Carrington, the then foreign secretary, are described by a former Rhodesian special branch officer, Jim Parker.

He was in a counter-terrorist unit known as the Selous Scouts and interviewed dozens of former members of the Rhodesian and South African defence forces for his book, which is published this week.

He claims that the British and South African government, as well as the outgoing white Rhodesian regime, expected the country's first black elections to produce a coalition government of moderate parties. When, to their horror, Mugabe's Zanu PF party won overall power, the South Africans decided to eliminate him as Zimbabwe prepared to celebrate independence.

Roadside bombs

A close-knit group of disaffected ex-Selous Scouts planned to detonate at least five roadside bombs, disguised as electrical sub-stations and traffic light control boxes, along the route Mugabe and the British dignitaries were due to take through Harare in 1980.

The prince, who was to have led the convoy in an open-top 1953 Rolls Royce, would have been directly exposed to the danger.

Mac McGuinness, a former commander of counter-terrorism for the Rhodesian special branch and the man who discovered the plot, confirmed that the bombs were intended to kill everyone. He said the assassinations were intended as a precursor to an invasion by South African forces when, as expected, Mugabe's supporters launched savage reprisals against the white population.

McGuinness said: "At that stage, the Rhodesian defence forces had been disarmed and confined to barracks. The object was that once the assassination of Mugabe had taken place, the black population would rise up and slaughter the whites, who were now defenceless.

"The South African Defence Force (SADF) had an armoured column on the road not far from the border ready to go charging in to save the Europeans. They would use world opinion to take over Rhodesia."

General Constand Viljoen, a former head of the SADF, denied knowledge of a plot.