Vlakplaas

... 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 ...

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 ...

... 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 ...

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.

... 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 ...

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 ...

... 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 ...

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

... 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 ...

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 ...

... 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 ...

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.

... 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 ...

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 ...

... 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. ...

... 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 ...