Vlakplaas

... 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 ...

Mrs Gonile, Cynthia Ngebwa, Irene Mxinwa and Eunice Miya, four of the mothers of seven young men who were shot dead in Gugulethu ten years ago still don’t know the full truth behind the death of their sons. // But the worst part was to actually see this in the newspapers and the TV. When we saw ...

Griffiths Mxenge was murdered by Dirk Coetzee’s hit squad in November 1981. In his amnesty application in November last year Coetzee claimed that he had not questioned the order to eliminate Mxenge because it had come from senior security branch officers. // They were trying to build up a case ...

De Kock gave instructions that we should go and help Port Elizabeth Police, because there were some chaps that were making Port Elizabeth ungovernable and those people had to be eliminated.

In Pretoria, Mbokodo’s rampage was becoming a headache and its leader, Piet Ntuli an embarrassment. // Piet Ntuli was originally placed there by the government to become the next chief minister, however he went out of control and it was clear that the government could not detain him in terms of ...

When he addressed the Committee, Dirk Coetzee stuck to his story that Sizwe Kondile had been killed because the Eastern Cape security police had not wanted another Steve Biko case on their hands. // Getting rid of him was because he sustained injuries while being tortured, dived through a window ...

McNally was appointed to lead evidence at the Harms Commission. Louis Harms also found that Coetzee had lied and was mentally unstable. Despite the fact that two of Coetzee’s death squad members David Tshikalanga and Albert Nofemela also admitted their complicity in the murder of Mxenge, nobody ...

Back to the amnesty process now. Four Eastern Cape Security Policemen this week told the amnesty committee that Port Elizabeth activist Sizwe Kondile had to be eliminated because he was a trained ANC terrorist who knew too much about their intelligence network. The men all claim that they were ...

His commander in 1985 was Colonel Eugene de Kock. He is now on trial in the Transvaal Supreme Court on more than a hundred charges ranging from murder to fraud.

I was forced to kill my own people, the people that I devoted my life into liberating. // We believed in what we were doing as killers, we were seeing it as a war situation. // Our job was to hunt cadres, whether PAC or ANC, and we kill them. If we think they are useless, we kill them, but if we ...

and economic reparation, improving people’s lives, etc. etc. How can gestures on a national level like for instance turning … what do we do with Vlakplaas, as a way of making sense of the past? // You burn and show it live on television. You burn it so it disappears, I mean it’s like why ...

Cross-border raids, a way for police and soldiers to earn medals. To exiled South Africans living in neighbouring states, it only meant death and destruction. This is the tragic story of Jaquiline Quin, her husband Leon Meyer, also known as Joe, their daughter, Phoenix and a close family Quin. The ...

Jacques, why should we believe this man, Joe Mamasela? // Mamasela has been cooperating with the Transvaal Attorney-General for several months now. He has given them invaluable information, he has made a full confession to them, and as a result of this confession they have launched a number of ...

It seems as if the road to truth has finally arrived for many askaris who have led secret lives for the past decade and maybe yet another journey towards forgiveness and reconciliation will unfold.

After the upheavals of 1976 many of the younger generation left the country. Some of them like Mpho Mashoeng never returned alive. // The report said they were found dead in a forest in Swaziland. But the death certificate that we got was that the body was riddled with bullets. They said they found ...

So is it correct then that your mission clearly was that you should go out there and that you should kill the Freedom Fighters? // According to the situation, yes it was so. // Bearing in mind what is in our opinion, when the opinion of the families a poor attempt to arrest these individuals and ...

Here is the place which they then later built where the ministers and Basie Smit and them braaid, had their Chivas Regal whiskey, congratulated the guys where the ‘potjiekos’ was made, you can see big fireplaces. If you have all the liquor and the meat that was absorbed here you can open a ...

I am Maide Selebi. I am here today due to my younger brother, Bimbo. // My name is Emily Gumede. I’m here on behalf of my brother, what happened before he died. // I am Psholofelo Leboke. I’m here on behalf of my brother being Bimbo Matabane, relating to his death. My brother Ntshingo Matabane ...

I see in your manifesto, and I quote you what you just said: the National Party does not kill people, the National Party does not threaten people and again I’m sure the relatives of Steve Biko and Dulcie September and David Webster and Anton Lubowski would want me to ask you, when did you change ...

... his story and name names in two weeks’ time. The week after that the military generals will appear before the Truth Commission and then former Vlakplaas commander Dirk Coetzee will stand before the Amnesty Committee. In the mean time, former minister of police, Adriaan Vlok and several ...