This allegedly took place in July or August following allegations of a plot to kill Holomisa. In March 1990, two Transkei security policemen were arrested by Ciskei security forces near King William’s Town; over a year later Ciskei announced that the two had admitted to being on an official mission to abduct or kill Duli or Mbotoli at the time.
160 Sometime in mid-1991, the TDF abducted key coup plotter Vulindlela Mbotoli from Johannesburg and took him to Transkei where he subsequently stood trial with the other coup plotters. This snatch was carried out with the assistance of Austrian businessman Mr Rainer Maria Moringer [AM0434/96] who said he had assisted the TDF MI since 1988.
161 In May 1991 the Transkei government passed a decree which amended the Criminal Procedure Act to allow for the prosecution of those taken across borders without their consent.
162 In late 1992, coup suspect Vulindlela Christopher Shologu disappeared from South Africa to re-appear in custody in Umtata.
163 In an abortive snatch two years later, three men apparently unconnected to the coup attempt were killed. The Commission received amnesty applications from TDF members Ntobeko William Matyolo [AM6078/97] and Mr Lungelwe Lupuwana [AM6371/97] in connection with the failed attempt to snatch Charles Wanase from his King William’s Town home on 21 May 1993. Wanase was away at the time; instead the abductors snatched three young men, Lindile Kula, Nkosinathi Tuku and Nathaniel Koto and, when they could not say where Wanase was, killed them. Both Matyolo, who was a captain in the TDF’s Army Intelligence at the time, and Lupuwana named Papama Mgudlwa [AM6081/97], a TDF source who applied for amnesty in connection with another killing, as the killer. Matyolo stated in his amnesty application they had been instructed to abduct Wanase by the then Transkei military ruler, Major General Bantu Holomisa. Both Maytolo and Lupuwana were charged with the killings in an East London court.
Further coup attempts against Transkei: Operation Abbot
164 Attempts to overthrow the Transkei government did not end with the abortive Duli attempt. The following year the SADF’s Operation Abbot referred to expectations that Transkei civil servants would not be paid as usual on 15 June 1991 due to a financial crisis in that government, and drafted a plan ostensibly to deal with
any violence resulting from this. The Abbot plan included a phase of initial deployment in the region, a second phase involving the closure of the Transkei border on receipt of the code-word “close-up” and the third phase involving entry of South African forces into Transkei on the code-word “sort-out”. Third phase planning was done both for a scenario in which the SADF entered Transkei with that administration’s permission and a scenario in which entry was carried out without permission, involving overcoming resistance by the Transkei security forces. An armed invasion into Transkei did not take place. On 12 June, the day Abbot was scheduled to start, members of One Parachute Battalion from Bloemfontein had arrived in the region to participate in what the SADF called at the time a group command control area protection exercise which was “straightforward routine” and not part of a troop build-up.
165 SADF call-ups for this period indicate additional troop movements. There were three consecutive “detached duty” call-ups for Operation Tonto in Komga (the nearest South African town to the main southern Transkei border post) for a constant period from 3 June to 30 August 1991 – three of sixteen detached duty call-ups run by Group 8 in East London over the three years from 1989–91. There was what appears to have been an additional “monthly camp” for 8 June to 2 July to the Kaffrarian Rifles in East London. There was also an “ops duties” call-up for the East London Commando from 13 to 27 June involving one company for “Ciskei stabilisation”. The availability of additional troops in the region during the Abbot time period was greater than during the period for the November 1990 Duli operation.
166 In the run-up to the expected 15 June payday crisis, there was an increase in tension between the Transkei and South African authorities, including:
a In mid-May, Holomisa denied allegations that he had appointed Chris Hani as Transkei’s Minister of Police and Defence and that Hani was amassing guerrillas in Transkei;
b On 24 May, Holomisa denied allegations that his government had made a loan to MK from the civil servants’ pension fund;
c Foreign Affairs Minister Pik Botha gave weekend newspapers a press conference on Transkei’s financial affairs and Holomisa accused him of deliberately provoking a financial crisis in Transkei in order to encourage a coup attempt. Holomisa claimed the South African government had delayed passing the Transkei budget;
VOLUME 2 CHAPTER 7 Political Violence in the era of Negotiations & Transition 1990-94 PAGE 620