Vlakplaas

the valley; I’d say about ten kilometres away from the actual murder scene. I’ve spoken to numerous operatives, I’ve spoken to the people from Vlakplaas, the guys who we arrested and who were convicted of the KwaZulu hit squads. They are unable to assist us. I’ve spoken to members of our ...

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 ...

... 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 ...

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 ...

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

... 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 ...

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 ...

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.

... 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 ...

... 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 ...

... 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 ...

from again. Today we know they were abducted from Port Elizabeth airport by Eastern Cape security branch supported by a contingent of policemen from ...

Then you went back to Vlakplaas where you gave orders to Martinus Ras, Snyman and Vermeulen to prepare for the operation. What precisely did you tell them? // I can’t give you specific details, but the gist of it was that people would be killed and specifically that policemen would be killed. // ...

Vlakplaas and the askaris did become the main instrument in the killings in the 1980s and early 1990s, yes. The Mxenge killing, I mean I couldn’t walk as a white man into a black township and I would stand out like a sore finger. So you need black guys to cooperate and do the job for you and act ...

We’ve all heard of the dramatic stories of Dirk Coetzee and Eugene de Kock’s hit squad at Vlakplaas and the shady army unit, the CCB. And there is an impression that these formed the heart of the apartheid government’s violent strategy of torture and murder against pro-democracy activists. ...

... up with parcel bombs. Former super spy Craig Williamson admitted to the parcel bombs that killed Ruth First and Jeanette and Katryn Schoon. Former Vlakplaas commander, Eugene de Kock is now on trial for murdering ANC lawyer Bheki Mlangeni with a parcel bomb in 1991. The security police had a ...