Vlakplaas

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 ...

Joe Mamasela, self-confessed political serial killer was one of the Vlakplaas askaris who participated in this operation. // It was brutal; it was what in Afrikaans people call ‘broekskeur.’ It was terrible. // Were they tortured? // They were tortured severely. They were savaged; they were ...

One of the most notorious askaris was Glory ‘September’ Sidebe. He aided the Vlakplaas operatives in capturing and killing MK cadres from Swaziland.

... 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 ...

... 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 ...

... of the existence of such a ‘third force’…The Government never adopted a policy to promote ‘black-on-black’ violence…I had heard of the Vlakplaas installation but was under the impression that it was a facility for the reorientation of captured ANC cadres who wished to work for the ...

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 ...

... who told CCB members in detention not to talk about CCB activities and Louis Harms who was able to find that no hit squads operated out of Vlakplaas and who in my mind steered his commission so firmly away from the ...

Black policemen at Vlakplaas were called askaris, they did most of the killing for Eugene de Kock, yet their lives were worth nothing and they were executed as easily as they killed opponents of the apartheid government. // Talk about a dog that feeds on its puppies; that was De Kock. He fed on his ...

A few years ago it was still unthinkable that the force could have been involved in this. When former Vlakplaas commander Dirk Coetzee, spoke in November 1989, they said he was mad. But then came the Eugene de Kock case and an orgy of death and destruction committed by him and his men unfolded in ...

Wouter Mentz was a Vlakplaas policeman who had killed several people including one of his own colleagues and two deaf children in a Botswana raid. // I didn’t know that there were children, and if I recall they were two deaf-numb children. That was evil in killing them, because they caused no ...

Former Vlakplaas commander Dirk Coetzee was supposed to testify this week, but he was prevented by legal technicalities. This is what he would have told the Commission. // Nick van Rensburg and his men poisoned him upon release, poisoned him and apparently he did not add enough poison according to ...

started a whole new trend. But few people know about the events which led to this killing frenzy in Duduza on the East Rand. // Joe Mamasela, former Vlakplaas operative, was the first to explain his complicity in the gruesome deaths of eight people on the East Rand in 1986. But he is not the only ...

... and why. We’ll give some background to the unpleasant infighting in the Truth Commission and we introduce you to some of the victims of former Vlakplaas policemen Dirk Coetzee, Almond Nofemela and Joe Mamasela. But we start with a special story about forgiveness. The Azanian People’s Army ...

Vlakplaas was also at a certain stage then disbanded when allegations became substantially, almost, you couldn’t prove, you could no longer say that it was just rumours and we then took steps as information came to the fore.

... also serve as a powerful warning to future generations not to repeat the mistakes of the past. But how do we in South Africa do this? For instance Vlakplaas, the death squad headquarters, could be turned into a public park or Steven Bantu Biko’s gravesite into a national monument. Robben ...

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 ...

... 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 ...

... house of horrors is also the place where the security police killed two other Eastern Cape activists: Siphiwo Mtimkulu and his friend Topsy Madaka. Vlakplaas it seems is not the only farm of death. Thank you for staying with us. The amnesty applications of the Chris Hani killers continue in ...

... 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. ...