Vlakplaas

... the man who was called ‘Prime Evil’ by his own colleagues. During his seven year reign of terror as commander of the police death squad at Vlakplaas, Eugene Alexander de Kock killed, bombed and tortured with conviction and enthusiasm. He has already been convicted for multiple murder and ...

... 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 ...

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 ...

So much has been said about Vlakplaas, so much has been written about the place and this is the very first thing that a tangible thing that we can say we have discovered on Vlakplaas, Brian Ngqulunga’s remains, which were exhumed today.

... the arrests of two of them and on Friday they appeared in court charged with the same acts they wanted to confess to next week. The men are former Vlakplaas commander and Northern Transvaal security police chief Brigadier Jack Cronje, Captain Jacques Hechter, Captain Wouter Mentz and Colonel ...

The existence of Vlakplaas was exposed by Dirk Coetzee and Almond Nofemela in a Vrye Weekblad interview in November 1989. It was met with flat denials from generals and police officers. These lies were repeated under oath to the Harms Commission of Inquiry into state death squads. Vlakplaas was ...

[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 ...

Eugene de Kock rejected it. I was actually living on Vlakplaas. Williamson didn’t know I was living on Vlakplaas at that time. As soon as he left, Eugene called me and said the guy has just been here and asked me to kill you. And he told him that if he wanted to kill me he should do it. But ...

... 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. ...

... around the Bisho massacre where Oupa Gqozo at last gave evidence and the Truth Commissioners clashed publicly and emotionally with the former Vlakplaas policemen. // Your callousness, your coldness and insensitivity shows us the kind of leaders that the South African government chose. // No ...

... 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. ...

... 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 ...

Schoon told the TRC that he’d never been disciplined for authorizing actions of an illegal nature and said that former Commissioners and Ministers of police such as Louis Le Grange, Adriaan Vlok, Johan van der Merwe and Johan Coetzee had all visited Vlakplaas.

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.

Vlok used to come there, Commissioner van der Merwe used to come there, Kriel used to come there, Hernus Kriel used to come there at Vlakplaas, a lot of ministers used to come there.

‘Tokkie Bezuidenhout, the ‘Tube Specialist’ of Vlakplaas, on the tricks of his trade.’ // Okay, it’s very simple. You put him down on his stomach, you handcuff him, you put your knees on his back, you stabilize, and you just take the tube and you pull it over his face; in other words you ...

What difference does it make when a perpetrator does seem to be genuinely remorseful? In the 1980s Eugene de Kock was the commander at the notorious Vlakplaas and one of the security police’s most powerful and efficient operatives. He is now serving life plus 212 years in Pretoria Central Prison. ...

... 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 ...

In May 1990 on the instructions of Eugene de Kock we organised jobs in Johannesburg for four askaris on Vlakplaas who had AIDS, namely Ndam, Sebole, Stretcher and Vietnam. We had a problem with them on the farm because other black members did not want to use the same facilities. Dries had a friend, ...

... 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 ...