S. Africa to Indict Ex-Defense Minister in ’87 Massacre : Justice: Ten former top military officers also face murder charges. News sparks fears of rightist backlash.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa —  In a surprise move that sparked fears of a violent right-wing backlash, the government has announced plans to file murder charges against a prominent apartheid-era defense minister and 10 former top-ranking military officers for their alleged roles in a 1987 massacre.

Magnus Malan, who served as defense minister from 1980 to 1991 and who led the white-ruled regime’s brutal “total onslaught” strategy against its foes, is the highest-ranking member of the former government to be charged with politically inspired crimes by President Nelson Mandela’s democratic administration.

Sydney Mufamadi, minister of safety and security, told a news conference Sunday night that Malan and his 10 former aides will be arrested and arraigned in Durban on Thursday for allegedly authorizing a death squad that killed a priest and 12 women and children as they lay sleeping in a Zulu township on Jan. 21, 1987.

The impending arrest of some of the most powerful and feared figures of the recent past was bitterly denounced by right-wing leaders and members of the former government, including the last white president, Frederik W. de Klerk.

“Selective prosecutions are totally unacceptable,” De Klerk, now deputy president under Mandela, said in a statement. He warned that the case could have “far-reaching repercussions for national reconciliation.”

De Klerk said he had asked Mandela to grant temporary amnesty to the men, and to anyone else facing charges of or under investigation for political crimes, until they can apply for full amnesty by testifying before a proposed Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Parliament has authorized the controversial panel, but Mandela has yet to name its members.

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The 11 men form a virtual Who’s Who of military brass during the most vicious period of the apartheid years. The crackdown by the white supremacist regime against black liberation movements and their Communist allies, especially in the mid-1980s, led to a campaign of murder, torture and other human rights abuses.

In addition to Malan, those to be charged include former South African defense force chief Gen. Jannie Geldenhuys, former army chief Gen. Kat Liebenberg and former military intelligence director Gen. Tienie Groenewald, who is now a member of Parliament. The others named were all senior intelligence or operations officers.

News of the imminent high-profile prosecutions raised tensions sharply two days before crucial local elections are planned in about 700 cities and towns across the country. The polls are expected to create black-led local councils for the first time in many communities.

Unlike the country’s first all-race national elections in April last year, which saw a deadly spate of bombings and clashes as election day neared, only minor campaign-related violence has been reported so far.

But right-wing leaders warned that the prosecutions could spark--and a few firebrands even urged--a backlash from disgruntled whites. Constand Viljoen, a retired general who now heads the Freedom Front, a political party that champions Afrikaner rights, said the case has created “a serious, almost national crisis.”

Mufamadi said the group will be charged for allegedly creating “an offensive paramilitary force” that operated on behalf of the Inkatha Freedom Party, a militant Zulu-nationalist group embroiled since the mid-1980s in a power struggle with Mandela’s African National Congress.

The force, Mufamadi said, “was nothing else but hit squads perpetrating violence” in the strife-torn KwaZulu-Natal province. An estimated 10,000 people were killed in the province in the decade before the 1994 election.

A probe by a special investigative task force led to charges in June against seven members of military or security forces in KwaZulu-Natal, all aligned with Inkatha, for their role in the massacre eight years ago at KwaMakhutha, about 18 miles south of Durban. They will now be tried with Malan and his aides, prosecutors said.