Up to 20 members of a white extremist group have been jailed from five to 35 years in the country’s first post-apartheid treason trial.

A South African court began sentencing 20 right-wing extremists convicted of high treason for a plot to kill Nelson Mandela and drive black people out of the country.

The treason trial of 22 white extremists accused of plotting to assassinate Nelson Mandela and overthrow the South African government opened in Pretoria today.

A formerly unknown Afrikaner extremist group has claimed responsibility for a series of bombings in the township of Soweto that killed one person.