Vlakplaas

... both particularly in the South African expatriate community – you know we have information about hoteliers who gave free accommodation to Vlakplaas, we have information on restauranteurs who would give free meals to Vlakplaas operatives. It’s not an entirely one sided story, it’s a ...

... On Friday Mamasela dropped a bombshell in an interview with a weekly paper ‘New Nation.’ He said five senior ANC ministers were on the Vlakplaas payroll between 1981 and 1993. He was their pay master and they were even flown in by military helicopters to Vlakplaas to be paid and ...

... blamed the ANC, but in 1996 five former security policemen were convicted for these murders; one of them was Eugene de Kock, the commander of the Vlakplaas unit outside Pretoria. This week he spoke publicly for the first time since his trial. It was almost like a Vlakplaas reunion in Port ...

the ANC underground in Botswana. But the SADF raid was by no means as surgical as the SADF claimed. In his recent court case the former commander of Vlakplaas, Eugene de Kock testified that the commandoes involved in the raid were not able to bring back any evidence that those they killed had in ...

[Vlakplaas placed Cape Town on the map] // He was accompanied to Cape Town by this Vlakplaas colleague, Constable Thapelo Mbelo and two askaris. Shortly after their arrival in Cape Town their first high profile operation in collaboration with Cape Town security police took place, the killing of the ...

Let me ask Abraham Mzizi in Cape Town, do you think there has been a value in exposing things like Vlakplaas, the CCB, the horrors that we didn’t know. Do you think that there is a value to you as a citizen knowing those things now? // Max, nevertheless, yes, some people did not know anything ...

... who reluctantly admitted that the suspected ANC cell had been infiltrated. Then, he even more reluctantly agreed that the infiltrators were Vlakplaas askaris. The infiltrators had informed them of the planned attack. The police and the Vlakplaas operatives then planned their strategy for ...

We were instructed to make it look like a robbery. // Who instructed you? // Brigadier van der Hofen. A hunting knife was brought down from Vlakplaas, I can’t recall whether we bought the other okapi knives in Durban or whether that also came from Vlakplaas. I got a report back from him that ...

Vlakplaas in my opinion was a living hell on earth; there was torture on a daily basis, there was killings on a daily basis.

... person yourself and then to go back and interact normally with society, is a struggle. I remember two, three occasions when Minister Vlok came to Vlakplaas. On one of these he came to thank C1, members from Soweto and Johannesburg for certain operations like the bombing of COSATU and Khotso ...

... you’re a cop who takes orders and execute them without asking questions; then you’re a good cop. // You obviously heard of your colleagues at Vlakplaas who were involved in killing people as well. // Yes, that came to my attention also. // How did that advance the cause? // I don’t think ...

Former Vlakplaas boss, Dirk Coetzee declared in 1989 already that he fetched poison from the head of the forensics laboratory Gen Lothar Neethling in 1981 and gave it to two activists Vusi Mavuso and Peter Dlamini. Neethling denied this and said he never developed poison, a statement later ...

... pass laws and the hostel system and we look at truth commissions elsewhere in the world. We also bring you a special documentary on the notorious Vlakplaas death commando and their secret weapon, former guerrillas called ‘askaris.’ But we start with the past week’s hearing in Cape Town. ...

... explosives were also stored in the basement of the building. I delegated the instruction to Brig Willem Schoon who at that stage commanded Vlakplaas unit and once again emphasized the question of not putting lives at risk. The instruction was duly carried out at a later date and the ...

... supported by three former police commissioners, four other generals, and Adriaan Vlok himself. These are the 22 policemen. Many were members of the Vlakplaas counter-insurgency unit. Some have already been implicated in murder. Others like Brigadier WAL du Toit and Major Marthinus Ras were ...

... and Gerhardus Lotz are now asking for amnesty for the killings of the men who have become known as the Pebco Three. Their four co-conspirators from Vlakplaas Roelf Venter, Gert Beeslaar, Kimpani Mogoai and Johannes Koole are asking for amnesty for abduction. At this week’s hearings the ...

... terrorising of political opponents. Mr. De Klerk will have to tell us how his government gave birth to monsters such as the police death squads at Vlakplaas and the Defence Force’s Civil Cooperation Bureau, the CCB. The families of a long list of tortured and murdered activists will want to ...

... was the main witness against Gen Lothar Neethling when he sued me for defamation after the expose about the use of poison. Eugene de Kock and his Vlakplaas men decided to kill Coetzee and sent him a bomb in a tape recorder. The bomb later killed lawyer Bheki Mlangeni. At the amnesty hearing in ...

Pebco Three. The Centenary Hall in New Brighton was cramped daily by residents and activists who came to hear security policemen Gideon Niewoudt and Vlakplaas askari Joe Mamasela speak of their roles in the deaths of Sipho Hashe, Champion Galela and Qaqawuli Godolozi. // Niewoudt is a convicted ...

De Kock came clean is Mr. Justice Louis Harms. In 1990 Judge Harms led a commission of inquiry into the allegations of Dirk Coetzee and others about Vlakplaas and the death squads. His final report gave the police a virtual clean bill of health. Judge Harms then rejected virtually everything Dirk ...