TRC Final Report

Volume 2

Chapter 2

Subsection 28

1986–1989

261 On 4 June 1986, a senior MK operative, Mr Philip Nwanematsu (aka Pansu Smith), and two other ANC members, Mr Busi ‘Mzala’ Majola and Mr Sipho Dlamini, were killed in a raid on a house in the Dalraich section of Mbabane, Swaziland. Pansu was believed by the security police to be running an ANC cell involved in the movement of weapons and giving short courses on the use of limpet mines. Members of the Soweto Intelligence Unit (SIU) had succeeded in infiltrating the cell.

262 After the raid its leader, Eugene de Kock, drove through the night to report directly to police commissioner Johan Coetzee. At a 05h30 meeting at Coetzee’s home, at which Willem Schoon and Colonels Schalk Jan Visser (head of the Eastern Transvaal Security Branch) and Tiekie de Jager of the SIU were also present, a report was given to Coetzee¹⁸. The then head of the security police, General van der Merwe [AM4157/96], applied for amnesty for this operation, although he gives no details of his precise role in it. Mr Chris Hlongwane gave the Commission a statement on his role as an informer in this operation. He states that he was paid R7 000.

263 The attacking party comprised a combination of Vlakplaas, the SIU and Eastern Transvaal Security Branch members. They included Captains Willem ‘Timol’ Coetzee and Anton Pretorius, along with De Jager from the SIU, Colonel Deetlefs and Captain Paul van Dyk from Ermelo and Sergeant Douw Willemse from Vlakplaas.

264 On 14 June 1986, Special Forces commandos attacked a house in Gaborone and killed an ANC member, Mr Matsela Pokolela, and injured two other Batswana citizens. Few details are available on this operation other than that, in 1990, a Special Forces member named Mr Willie van Deventer claimed to have participated in the raid as a member of the CCB.

THE COMMISSION HAS BEEN UNABLE TO VERIFY THIS CLAIM AND MAKES NO FINDING ON THIS ATTACK.

265 Willem Schoon’s amnesty application contains details of an operation he authorised in Ramoutswa, Botswana late in 1986. The targets of the operation were two MK members Mr Aubrey Mkhwanazi (aka ‘Take Five’) and his wife, Ms Sadi Pule. Both were believed by the security police to be members of MK’s Special Operations Unit. The raid, for which the head of the Western Transvaal Security Branch, Brigadier Wickus Loots, has applied for amnesty, was undertaken by members of the Zeerust Security Branch. Aubrey Mkhwanazi and Sadi Pule were out at the time of the raid, but a seventy-two-year-old Botswana citizen, Ms Thero Segopa, was killed.

266 On 12 December 1986, a sixteen-strong team of Special Forces operatives conducted an operation in Swaziland in which the head of the ANC’s Natal Regional-Political Military Council, Mr Shadrack Maphumulo [KZN/NNN/632/DN], and a thirteen-year-old Swazi national, Danger Nyoni, were killed. Four other foreign nationals were abducted. They were Danger’s father, Mr Welcome Nyoni, a Swiss couple, Ms Corrine Bischoff and Mr Daniel Schneider, and Ms Grace Cele, the Swazi representative of a Canadian NGO. After protests from the Swazi and Swiss governments, all the foreigners were released and returned to Swaziland. Cele was, however, held for over two months and intensely interrogated and tortured before being released.

267 In the attempts to capture Maphumulo, his house was blown up and destroyed. Resisting arrest, he was shot and wounded. He died en route to South Africa. Eugene de Kock said that Commandant Corrie Meerholtz ,who commanded the operation, shot Danger Nyoni while the boy was trying to protect his father. This information has not been corroborated.

268 Information on this raid was supplied to the Commission by three sources, Eugene de Kock, Christoffel Nel and one of the participants in the operation, Mr Felix Ndimene (aka Rob Dickson and Bob Dixon).

269 The latter was a Mozambican who was himself a victim of a cross-border operation on 23 August 1982. On this occasion, South African Special Forces commandos wearing FRELIMO (Mozambique Liberation Front) uniforms abducted him and another Mozambican by the name of ‘Fernando’ (who, according to Ndimene, was later poisoned and killed at Phalaborwa) from the Mozambican/Swazi border village of Namaacha. In this raid, two Mozambican civilians (Mr Arnaldo Mahanjane and Mr Aurelio Duzentos Manjate) who, according to Ndimene, “happened to be in the way” were killed. In addition, a Portuguese citizen, Mr Antonio di Figueredo, was shot and killed in one of the houses entered during the raid. After a year of detention, Ndimene was ‘turned’ and became one of the first black members of Special Forces.

270 In testimony to the Commission, Christoffel Nel stated that he was present in the operations room at Special Forces headquarters on the night of this planned attack. As a mission involving more than one arm of service, Nel claims, “the President would know about it and sanction it”¹⁹. He stated that one of the coordinators of the operation was then Brigadier (later General) Chris Serfontein. He further states that a number of other senior military officers, including three generals, were present in the room during the operation.

271 Defending the Swazi raid, the South African government revealed it had been undertaken to pre-empt operations planned to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the launch of MK’s armed struggle four days later. When Foreign Minister Pik Botha was asked if he regretted what had happened, he replied: “I do not regret it. If the decision were to be made again, I would make the same decision”.

272 This Swazi raid was one part of a two-pronged operation, the other part of which was a planned seaborne raid by Recce 4 members on Maputo, where twelve ANC targets (including Mr Albie Sachs, Mr Indres Naidoo and Ms Sue Rabkin) were targeted for elimination in attacks on ANC houses. The operation was called off when the submarine party stationed at the entrance to Maputo harbour failed to make contact with Mr Dave Tippet, the Special Forces agent in Maputo, who was to guide the operatives to their target.

THE COMMISSION FINDS THAT THE OPERATION OF 12 DECEMBER 1986 IN SWAZILAND WAS AUTHORISED BY THE SOUTH AFRICAN GOVERNMENT AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL AND CARRIED OUT BY OPERATIVES OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN DEFENCE FORCE’S SPECIAL FORCES WHO ARE ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE UNLAWFUL KILLINGS AND ABDUCTIONS. IN THE CASE OF THE ABDUCTIONS OF MR FELIX NDIMENE AND A CIVILIAN KNOWN AS ‘FERNANDO’ AND THE MURDER OF TWO MOZAMBICAN CITIZENS AND ONE PORTUGUESE CITIZEN IN MOZAMBIQUE IN AUGUST 1982, THE COMMISSION FINDS THAT UNKNOWN SADF SPECIAL FORCES’ OPERATIVES WERE RESPONSIBLE.