TRC Final Report

Volume 2

Chapter 2

Subsection 18

147 The evidence of the CCB’s intelligence head, Christoffel Nel, is regarded by the Commission as important corroborating evidence of the CCB’s role.

148 It is well established that the CCB was set up as a covert grouping with the purpose, among others, of killing political opponents. So, too, is the fact that prior to Lubowski’s killing, such opponents were subject to extensive ‘target identification’ or intelligence-gathering operations. It has been established that Lubowski was the subject of such an exercise, an operation conducted by the West Front (South West Africa and Angola) section of the Directorate of Covert Collection (DCC) then headed by Brigadier Koos Louw. His deputy, Major Geoffrey Burton Price (aka Arthur Wilshire), was in charge of the South West African arena.

149 The actual eavesdropping operation was undertaken by Lieutenant Johan Frederich Verster, who provided this information to the Commission¹². Verster was still running the surveillance/eavesdropping exercise at the time Lubowski was shot. He told the Commission that he was shocked by the killing “because we were busy recruiting him and it was the wrong person ever to have shot”. He was instructed to return to South Africa immediately after the shooting.

When I got into Pretoria I was summonsed to go and see Koos Louw … and also Tolletjie Botha [head of DCC]. I explained to them what had happened … They went to an office with me … he [Botha] picked up the telephone and he phoned South West Africa, the head of the Prison Department and also the Police and he said we’ll have to use the old boys network … they phoned up the Brigadier in South West Africa and asked what happened, have they got Acheson? They said yes, they have …

150 This would seem to lend credence to the view expressed by Judge Levy that Acheson was the assassin. The Commission had some reservations about this view. Its investigation suggested that, although Acheson may have been the intended killer and was certainly in the vehicle used for the operation (probably the driver as he had hired the vehicle, a red Toyota Conquest), the fatal shots may have been fired by a passenger, who was probably his CCB handler for this operation. The Commission has been given the handler’s name but lacks the corroborative evidence to name him as the killer.

151 In a statement to the police which is in the possession of the Commission, Acheson denied that he killed Lubowski. He confirmed that he had been recruited by Chappies Maree and Ferdi Barnard into an organisation which he later learnt was the CCB, and deployed to South West Africa, where he said that one of his tasks was to kill Ms Gwen Lister, the editor of The Namibian newspaper, regarded by South African security as a pro-SWAPO organ. He was to use “slow acting poison which could be injected into her toothpaste, placed on her Tampax or put into anything she would eat or drink … she would keel over in forty-eight hours”. Although he tried to fulfil his assignment, he said he was unable to access her household. After his release and return to South Africa, Acheson said he was paid R20 000 and US$ 4 000 and sent to a hideout in the Greek islands where he remained for several months.

152 The allegation that Lubowski was a paid informer for MI was first voiced by General Magnus Malan in 1990 – in Parliament, where he enjoyed the protection of parliamentary privilege. Appearing before the Commission in 1997, he repeated the statement. One of Malan’s sources for this allegation may have been Brigadier Koos Louw, the head of the West Front of DCC. When Louw was interviewed by investigators from the Commission, he claimed to be Lubowski’s handler. He refused, however, to divulge the names of any other handlers and stated that all the documents pertaining to Lubowski had been destroyed.

153 Louw also stated that he paid a sum of R100 000 into Lubowski’s account in June 1989 through Global Investments, an MI front company. Despite the alleged destruction of the Lubowski documents, Louw was able to produce the original microfiche of the bank clearing house that processed the payment. Further, Lubowski never used this money. This would seem strange given the claim put out by MI that he was in financial difficulties, a factor which they claim was used to recruit him.

154 The allegation is not universally accepted, even by some MI members themselves. Verster, who worked in Louw’s DCC section, claims that the documentation was forged:

Signatures were made by Anton and that was carefully changed by artists inside Military Intelligence to make it look like Anton was an agent of ours. But the reports that I had given in, also the tapes and the conversations that I had listened to, was never (sic) that Anton was an agent. Because why, if Anton was an agent, why would Bleny (nickname for Army Intelligence, GS2), the heart of it, want all the tapes and information about him, and the inside stuff.

155 Verster’s doubts were echoed by Major Nico Basson, who was running a disinformation campaign at the time of the killing. Basson’s view is based on the fact that Lubowski had rejected his offer of R250 000 to leave SWAPO and join the DTA. Operative Clive Brink, who operated in South West Africa in the pre-election period, also expressed scepticism and stated that the paying of money into bank accounts to compromise recipients at a later date was a not unusual intelligence practice.

156 This latter view is shared by Mr Julian Knight, the Lubowski family lawyer, who argued that the payment was made either as an anticipatory cover-up, a pre-arranged alibi for the planned assassination, or fraudulently as part of a post-killing cover-up.

157 Finally, the Commission took note of two factors. The first is the lack of consensus on this issue among those connected to MI structures in South West Africa. The second is a question as to why the agency would have paid a considerable sum of money to someone they were on the point of killing.

THE COMMISSION FINDS THAT THE ALLEGATION THAT MR ANTON LUBOWSKI WAS A PAID INFORMER OF SOUTH AFRICAN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE IS UNPROVEN AND THAT HE IS CLEARED OF THE ALLEGATION. THE COMMISSION FURTHER FINDS THAT THE ACTIVITIES OF THE SADF AND THE SAP IN THE FORMER SOUTH WEST AFRICA BETWEEN 1966 AND 1989 LED TO GROSS VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS ON A VAST SCALE. THE COMMISSION FINDS THAT SUCH ACTIVITIES CONSTITUTED A SYSTEMATIC PATTERN OF ABUSE WHICH ENTAILED DELIBERATE PLANNING ON THE PART OF THE FORMER CABINET, THE SSC AND THE LEADERSHIP OF THE SAP AND SADF. THE COMMISSION FINDS THAT THESE INSTITUTIONS AND THEIR MEMBERS ARE ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE AFORESAID GROSS VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS.