JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- An explosion rocked the offices of a liberal Afrikaans newspaper Wednesday, hours after a shadowy white extremist group claimed responsibility for a string of urban bombings in the past week.
The attacks follow a string of right-wing terrorist acts and threats through May and June that police have blamed on increasingly militant conservative elements opposed to Pretoria's racial reform drive.
The blast early Wednesday 'fairly seriously' damaged the empty premises of the weekly Vrye Weekblad, police said. Two weeks ago, the paper claimed to expose a right-wing plot to assassinate President Frederik de Klerk and black leader Nelson Mandela.
A man indentifying himself as a member of the White Wolves telephoned the Citizen newspaper late Tuesday claiming the white-supremacist group was responsible for three recent Johannesburg blasts directed at city councillors of the liberal Democratic Party and ruling National Party.
A bomb Friday damaged the garden wall of DP councillor Clive Gilbert, a second wrecked his business offices Sunday, and the third Monday rocked the home of NP councillor Jan Burger. The explosions caused no casualties.
The man claiming responsibility said the targets had no set patterns. 'They are one and the same, and the same target,' he said, referring to the alliance conservatives claim the government has struck with the DP to push its policies of racial reform begun in February.
The man said the White Wolves demand the release of mass-murderer Barend Strydom, on death row for randomly killing six black pedestrians in 1988, a general election to test white support for the government, and a reward be placed on the head of Chris Hani, leader of the military wing of the anti-apartheid African National Congress.
Right-wingers are suspected of complicity in at least four politically motivated crimes since a surge in white extremist activity late in May.
Police detained a member of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement for the May 23 bombing of a museum in Pretoria and another for the June 9 bombing of a black union office.
Authorities put a $18,800 reward on the head of a fugitive extremist following a weapons theft for his June 19 publicized videotape declaration of war on the government and they temporarily detained 11 right-wingers based on the June 23 Vrye Weekblad report of the assassination plot.
'We are following up all incidents, from months ago to today ... They are all taken seriously,' a police spokesman said Wednesday.
Law and Order Ministry spokesman Brig. Leon Mellet has acknowledged the growing threat from the right, but has said the groups are newly formed and 'will take us awhile to infiltrate and break up ... although we have made some good arrests.'
De Klerk's moves to dismantle 42 years of white minority rule have outraged the right-wing parliamentary opposition as well as extremists, and leader of the Conservative Party Andries Treurnicht has warned, 'This so-called reform could well provoke people to take drastic measures.'
