Vlakplaas

Piet Retief ambushes. Vlakplaas death squad kills nine ANC members.

Amnesty hearings in Durban: Dirk Coetzee, Almond Nofemela, David Tshikalanga. State complicity (FW de Klerk on Vlakplaas)

... years sentence for murder and fraud. The nerve centre of these men’s death commando was this beautiful, scenic 44 hectare farm outside Pretoria, Vlakplaas. The secret of the success of this unit was the Koevoet recipe, but at Vlakplaas they were called ...

... policemen, Jacques Hechter, Wouter Mentz, Paul van Vuuren and Roelf Venter are applying for amnesty for more than 40 murders. These were mostly Vlakplaas operations. Vlakplaas and the death squad activities of the police have been the focus of the most recent exposes of state atrocities. The ...

... three categories. What appears from investigations thus far is that there were farms which were used as headquarters by the security police or by Vlakplaas-type units. We had Vlakplaas; we had Andy Taylor’s Camp Adon, a farm he used as headquarters. We had a similar sort of headquarters in ...

The most obvious generals De Klerk would have asked about Vlakplaas are Generals Basie Smit, Krappies Engelbrecht, Johan van der Merwe, Nick van Rensburg and Johan le Roux. We have learned from the affidavits of several Vlakplaas men that General Basie Smit was a regular visitor to Vlakplaas. They ...

... Krappies Engelbrecht. They and the other police officers named in the report were placed on immediate leave. Police units implicated were the old Vlakplaas units C10, the East Rand Murder and Robbery Squad and the Durban Security Branch as well as the KwaZulu police. The report is based on ...

... time they were joined by the family of murdered askari, Johannes Themba Mabotha, who it was claimed was Winnie’s lover. The former commander of Vlakplaas, Eugene de Kock, who described Winnie as a thorn in the flesh of the security forces gave a chilling account of how he later murdered her ...

The news bulletin never mentioned who the policemen were: convicted murderer Col Eugene de Kock and his Vlakplaas death squad. As always the men didn’t take any prisoners; no survivors to tell the tale of death. A former Vlakplaas policeman Sergeant Leon Flores told us his version of the incident.

repression and liberation. But this week we heard something that I personally feel is nothing but naked evil. During the Shell House hearings former Vlakplaas policeman Brood van Heerden, mentioned a plan to spread AIDS among black people in Johannesburg. He’s not the only policeman who told ...

The second Maseru is a different operation. It was a Vlakplaas operation; it was led by Eugene de Kock. The operatives were all Vlakplaas operatives, a number of whom have applied for amnesty. The second raid occurred at a time in December of 1985 when the South African government was extremely ...

... or even before that. // Van der Merwe is now asking for amnesty for his part in the cover-up of the Bopape murder. Last week it became known that Vlakplaas satellite groups in KwaZulu-Natal murdered ANC activists as recently as 1994. That was towards the end of FW de Klerk’s term as president ...

... the 21st of August last year I asked Mr. De Klerk again why he allowed the killings to go on. // What has now come out in court is that that unit [Vlakplaas] continued to murder people… // Which is wrong, which must be absolutely… // Bheki Mlangeni was killed by that unit recently. You did ...

... was talking crap. The police said Coetzee was mad, Nofemela was trying to save his own skin and Tshikalanga was nothing more than a gardener at Vlakplaas. The Harms Commission became a farce. // This was the man investigating Coetzee’s allegation, General Krappies Engelbrecht, recently ...

... the East Rand were seething. Six COSAS leaders died in July in 1985 after being lured into launching an attack with hand grenades, booby trapped by Vlakplaas policeman Joe Mamasela. At one of their funerals Maki Skosana was fingered as the informer who gave him away to the police. Even the people ...

... for. It was not the only element of the third force, the army special forces took part in train violence in the 1980s as part of a third force. And Vlakplaas and the army’s Directorate Covert Collection also acted as a third force in attacks such as the Boipatong massacre. We can only hope that ...

... of the state started working together to eliminate those who oppose the National Party state. On the police side it was the security police and Vlakplaas, on the military side it was special forces, Military Intelligence, the Directorate Covert Collection and that sinister band with the ...

During 1991 Vlakplaas investigated gun running from Mozambique to ANC and PAC units in the country. A plan to ambush and arrest four gun smugglers turned into a shooting spree. The four men were killed in cold blood, but the official story was that they were killed in self defence.

... to Coetzee he and his four man death squad assassinated this man, Griffiths Mxenge in 1981. ‘Nonsense’, police said. ‘The man was crazy, Vlakplaas never killed anyone.’ // A claim by a former police captain that he led a hit squad that eliminated government opponents has been firmly ...

In November 1989 Dirk Coetzee informed the world and I suppose De Klerk of the existence of Vlakplaas, a police unit on a farm outside Pretoria which specialized in assassinating government opponents.