Protesters to greet Blair

TONY BLAIR will be hounded by angry Muslims on the left and irate conservative Afrikaners on the right when he makes his first official visit to South Africa tomorrow.

Muslim groups plan to pester the Prime Minister with demonstrations over British participation in air attacks on Iraq last month; Afrikaners are demanding an apology for alleged ethnic cleansing and war crimes dating from the Boer war, the centenary of which will be remembered this year.

Blair is scheduled to arrive in Pretoria tomorrow. Muslims against Global Oppression (Mago) will hold a mass demonstration on Thursday in Cape Town with further protests planned elsewhere. "We don't agree with the bombing of Iraq and are disgusted at the killing of innocent women and children," said Moaim Achmad, a Mago spokesman. "We will follow Blair wherever he goes."

Meanwhile, the SA Press Association reported that theHerstigte Nasionale Party had dismissed a statement from 10 Downing Street expressing sorrow about the many deaths in the Boer war and insisted on an unqualified apology for the suffering caused to Afrikaners during the conflict.