The 2002 Soweto Bombings were a string of terrorist attacks that occurred in Soweto in South Africa's Gauteng province. Eight blasts took place on 30 October 2002, leaving one woman dead and her husband severely injured. One of the blasts severely damaged a mosque, while others targeted railways and petrol stations in the area. SAPS (South African Police Service) prevented one blast. Another bomb later detonated outside the Nan Hua Buddhist temple in Bronkhorstspruit, east of Pretoria. A white supremacist group, the Warriors of the Boer Nation, claimed responsibility for these explosions in a message sent to an Afrikaans newspaper. Two subsequent explosions on 28 November 2002 damaged a bridge in the area, and another damaged a police helicopter in a small airport. In all, at least ten, and possibly twelve, individual bombings made up the 2002 Soweto Bombings attack. Background Since the end of the apartheid system in 1994, some white South Africans—Afrikaners in particular—felt alienated by black rule and the government of the African National Congress (or ANC). They feared the concurrent violence against whites in Zimbabwe would spill across the border into South Africa. In particular, there were concerns about the rising wave of crime across the country. In the month leading up to the bombings, sixteen members of the Boeremag (a militant far-right organization) had been put on trial for plotting to overthrow the government. This group, and others like it, had been formed in response to the ANC rebellion in the early 1990s—and the resulting violence, described by the then ruling National Party government as terrorism. South Africa has had a history of such events. The AWB were responsible for several assassinations and attacks during the late 1980s and early 1990s, before its leader, Eugene Terre'Blanche, was imprisoned. In 1996, bombs had targeted a Western Cape shopping center, killing four Cape Coloured shoppers, and injuring sixty others. The bombs Two of the 30 October 2002 explosions targeted the railway lines at Lenasia, which connects Soweto to Johannesburg, causing chaos with public transport networks. Another bomb ripped apart the walls of a mosque, and another explosion (in a residential area) killed a woman, Claudia Mokone, while severely injuring her husband. A petrol station was targeted in one of the attacks. Two other people were injured in other bombings. A device placed in the basement of the Nan Hua Buddhist temple was prevented from causing fatalities when