JOHANNESBURG -- The indictment in South Africa of 10 Afrikaners this week for high treason has revived fears of right-wing militancy in the country, something last seen in the dying days of apartheid.

Eight years after South Africa's peaceful transition to democracy in April 1994, police across the country raided the homes of the men after a year-long undercover sting dubbed "operation zealot", arresting four men in April and seven others last month.

One of the accused subsequently turned state witness and four of the 10 others have been released on bail of 1,000 dollars each. Five were still in prison waiting for their high treason trial to start in February next year.

The men, of whom three are senior officers in the South African army, stand accused of plotting to topple the African National Congress-led government, to attack military installations and "chase black people out of the country".

The men were also allegedly planning to stage jailbreaks for former police Colonel Eugene de Kock, currently serving a 212-year prison sentence for carrying out assassinations "under orders from the very top"; militant rightwinger Willem Ratte; and two men accused of killing Communist leader Chris Hani, murdered in his driveway in April 1993.

State prosecutors told the Pretoria regional court that the right-wingers' coup plans were outlined in a dossier called "document 12", divided into five phases and drawn up by Mike du Toit, one of the accused.

It included references to "creating chaos to ensure freedom of movement", "taking over secondary targets", chasing Blacks out of the country and setting up a new government, using some 3,700 members of South Africa's rural and mainly White part-time army commando system.

If convicted, the men could face life imprisonment.

An analyst at South Africa's Institute for Security Studies (ISS) said he did not believe that that the men represented a reemergence of South Africa's militant right, which wreaked havoc before elections in 1994.

"I don't think that there is any rightwing threat.

After 1994, these groups split apart and there is no one grouping that is dominant. These groups have also lost much of their support base," Martin Schonteich told AFP.

Prior to 1994, the tough-talking right, under the umbrella of the Afrikaner Weerstands Veweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement), managed to break up political meetings and cause small-scale disruption.

But just before the April 1994 elections, the group staged a Brazen coup in Bophuthatswana, an apartheid-era South African homeland for Blacks, that ended with three of their members being executed at gunpoint by a Black soldier.

Today, the AWB is virtually non-existent and its leader, Eugene Terre Blanche, is serving a six year jail sentence for assaulting two Black men.

But Schonteich warned that rightwingers, sometimes jokingly referred to as the "brandy-and-coke brigade" because of their penchant for the drink, should not be ignored.

"You don't need a large group of people to cause an immense amount of damage," said Schonteich.

Two years ago, right-wing fanatic Jan Gabriel de Wet Kritzinger boarded a bus filled with Black South African commuters on their way home, pulled out a gun and shot dead three people.

Four others were wounded in the attack.

Kritzinger, 30, was only arrested this year after spending two years on the run from police who had cast a country-wide net to catch him.

Said Schonteich: "People who are sympathetic to Kritzinger are few and far between and the support would be stronger in rural areas than in the cities. "The fact that it took so long to catch him should make the government take note and not completely ignore these people."

Police spokesman Ronnie Naidoo said it was investigating a well-organized group which had been trying to recruit more members.

"These guys are well organized and some of them were involved in the army. Even though it looked like they could not accomplish much, they still are a serious threat," Naidoo told AFP.

"These are what we call `Maverick' groups," a police source told AFP.

"Some people might argue that they were just talking about planning something. But say just one plan, like blowing up a nuclear reactor, succeeds: What then? We have every right to arrest these people," the source added.