Vlakplaas

he had become an ANC agent. His friends and family say he was killed because he sued the police after a colonel had assaulted him. The policemen say Vlakplaas man Joe Mamasela shot Busisiwe Motasi. Warrant Officer Paul van Vuuren admitted to the Truth Commission’s Amnesty Committee that he ...

... 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 ...

For a person to be guilty of a crime there must be intent and we cannot therefore say citizens who had no intention to set up Vlakplaas and kill people that they should carry the burden of this. We cannot hold responsible ordinary shunters, farmers and so on who supported apartheid because they ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

... explanation from the man in the passenger seat of this car. His name is Col Andrew Russell Taylor of the Natal Security Police, charged with former Vlakplaas head Dirk Coetzee for the 1981 murder of Durban lawyer Griffiths Mxenge. Taylor is due to tell the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that ...

By now Vlakplaas is known as the shadowy space where hit men like Eugene de Kock, Joe Mamasela, Dirk Coetzee and Almond Nofemela freely roamed and secretly planned their killer missions against the opponents of the apartheid state. Little is known though of the assassinations in their own ranks; of ...

... are disappointing to say the least. Venter has not furnished this Committee with any information in addition to the revelations made by the Vlakplaas operatives outside of this Commission. In fact he has not even associated himself with the allegations made by these operatives. ...

... When I followed De Kock’s case, De Kock did admit that he had something to do with the death of my child and Andy Taylor was the spearhead of the Vlakplaas unit in ...

... diplomat. They too disappeared without a trace. The police claimed the men had left the country. More lies. The abduction of the Pebco Three was a Vlakplaas job. Joe Mamasela was there, following the orders of Roelf Venter who told us about his involvement last ...

... you have evidence, information at your fingertips. In those cases Mr. Chairperson, and I can mention them if necessary, where I became aware … Vlakplaas operatives, I had them charged for murder sir. I didn’t hide them. ...

Joe Mamasela. Joe Tsele’s sister was not the first witness before the Truth Commission to ask about this man who has admitted to being part of the killing of more than 30 activists. Mamasela was one of the black policemen at Vlakplaas called askaris. So was Brian Ngqulunga.

... in 1989. One wonders if we would have had a Truth Commission now if it hadn’t been for the ball that he started rolling. Coetzee and two of his Vlakplaas colleagues, David Tshikalanga and Almond Nofemela will start retelling their stories in Durban this coming week when their applications for ...

... 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 ...

... 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 ...

The worst part of it is that one couldn’t get out of it, you will just disappear like Ace Moema, we don’t know where he is. Many other people that were in Vlakplaas, they just disappeared. Even if you asked … if you posed a threat to the security, you’re gone.

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 ...