February 1974, when, within two weeks of each other, MK founder member John Dube (aka ‘Boy’ Mvemve) and former SASO founder member Abraham Onkgopotse Tiro were killed by letter bombs in Zambia and Botswana respectively.

213 The Commission received no amnesty applications for these two killings. Former BOSS agent, Mr Gordon Winter, alleges¹⁶ that the killings were the work of BOSS’s recently formed covert unit, the Z-squad. At a Commission briefing, a former BOSS and later senior NIS and NIA member confirmed the existence of the Z-squad and named amongst its small band of original members Mr Phil Freeman, an explosives expert, and Mr Dries Verwey.

214 Another former BOSS agent, Mr Martin Dolinchek, also confirmed Z’s existence. In an interview published in the New Nation (9 August 1991), he named Kuhn and Verwey as “among those responsible for his [Tiro’s] death”. In an interview with the Commission, Dolinchek stated that Tiro was killed by the insertion of an explosive device into a package addressed to him from the Geneva-based International University Exchange Fund (IUEF). At that time, all mail destined for Southern Africa (including the BLS states, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique and the Seychelles) passed through the airmail sorting office in Germiston near the then Jan Smuts airport. The actual running of that office was contracted out by the Post Office and, according to Dolinchek, South African Airways (then a state corporation) deliberately bid low to gain the contract so that the security police could have easy access to the millions of pieces of mail, including diplomatic traffic, that flowed through it annually.

215 According to Dolinchek, in the 1970s and 1980s some 400 police, mostly retired officers, worked in the facility, amongst them Security Branch officers. Dolinchek claims that Tiro’s package from the IUEF was “doctored” at this facility. That particular item of mail would have been a strategic choice as the IUEF, an international anti-apartheid non-governmental organisation (NGO), worked closely with SASO and was channelling funds to the organisation. Tiro was in regular contact with the IUEF and a package would not have aroused suspicion.

216 In the case of the Mvemve letter bomb, it seems the postal service was not used as, according to Winter, the parcel bomb was posted in Lusaka. It must then have been prepared in South Africa and carried to Lusaka. This is similar to the method used in the letter/parcel bomb killings of Ms Ruth First and Ms Jeanette and Katryn Schoon (see below).

16 In his book ,Inside BOSS.

VOLUME 2 CHAPTER 2 The State outside South Africa between 1960 and 1990 PAGE 100