A group of apartheid-era army generals plan to make a public display of support for the former South African president, P.W Botha, who is due to stand trial this week.

One of the generals told an Afrikaans-language newspaper that the group of eleven -- led by two former defence ministers, Magnus Malan and Constand Viljoen -- has set up a fund to to meet Mr Botha's legal costs for the court hearing in the coastal town of Geaorge in Western Cape province on Friday.

Mr Botha is charged with repeatedly ignoring summonses to testify before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Mr Botha, who has called the Commission a circus, has sent it a seventeen-hundred-page report on his time as South Africa's president.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service
 

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