TRC Final Report

Volume 2

Chapter 2

Subsection 30

291 In September 1987, an attempt was made in Harare on the life of Ms Connie Braam, the head of the Dutch Anti-Apartheid Movement. Checking into the Bronte Hotel after a conference, Ms Braam found two jackets hanging in a cupboard in her room.

292 Later that evening, Ms Braam wore one of the jackets for about an hour while she wrote a report. She awoke in the early hours with severe abdominal pains and was seriously ill for several days, but recovered. It was only after she heard of the attempt to kill the Reverend Frank Chikane through the contamination of his clothes that Ms Braam began to suspect she had been a victim of a similar poisoning attempt.

293 The Commission has been unable to corroborate that Ms Braam was subject to an assassination attempt, but accepts that she could well have been a target for elimination by poisoning. This view is based on evidence before the Commission on the use of poisons as a method of elimination by South Africa’s security services and on the testimony to the Commission by Christo Nel that he was twice asked to arrange for the supply of poisons to the NIS for use in Zimbabwe. Further, the Commission has considered evidence from Mr Leslie Lesia that, whilst in Chikurubi prison, he was held with South African agents imprisoned who told him that “they took their apparatus into Zimbabwe by plane. This apparatus included poison, bombs … ”²⁰ . Court papers filed by Mr Guy Bawden in support of a damages suit against the Minister of Defence, General Magnus Malan, included a statement to the effect that in December 1987 he was asked by his cousin, Mr Barry Bawden, to collect materials parachuted onto his farm by the SADF. What he found was grenades, firearms, clothing and chemicals. This pick-up occurred three months after Ms Braam was ‘targeted’, but is indicative of the use of contaminated clothing.

294 Questioned about the Braam case, Nel stated that: It sounded or resembles the typical type of chemical operation where a substance could have been sprayed onto such items of clothing. It was known to me that such capabilities existed due to a planning cycle that we went through to explore the possibilities of contaminating a consignment of clothes destined for Dares Salaam.

295 On 10 January 1988, Mr Obed Amon Mwanza, a Zimbabwean, was killed and six ANC members injured when the truck Mwanza was driving exploded outside an ANC transit house in Bulawayo. This was a South African security operation undertaken by agents located in Zimbabwe. One of those agents, Mr Philip Masiza Conjwayo, a former member of Zimbabwe’s Special Branch, made a statement to the ANC in which he said that he was handled by Captain Mary Baker of the South African security police.

296 According to the ANC document, another South African agent, Mr Henry Thompson, gave Conjwayo Z$8000 for this operation, to acquire a vehicle and to find a driver. Mwanza was hired at the Bulawayo Employment Exchange and was paid Z$20.00 to drive the truck. Before he took possession of the truck, it was booby-trapped by Mr Kit Bawden and Mr Michael Smith. They then followed Mwanza as he drove the vehicle to a designated address. As he parked the vehicle, Bawden detonated it by remote control.

297 According to information given to the Commission by one of those involved in the operation, this was a CCB project. The orders were given by a member of the CCB’s inner circle, a senior Special Forces operator who did not applied for amnesty and so cannot be named. The orders were passed on to the Zimbabwean agents via Mr Gray Branfield and Mr Alan Trowsdale.

298 Conjwayo, Michael Smith, Barry Bawden and the head of the Bulawayo CIO, Kevin Woods, were arrested for this operation and sentenced to death for murder. The sentences were commuted to life imprisonment after five years. Kit Bawden managed to evade the net by fleeing to South Africa at the time of the first arrests. Woods was not directly involved in the operation and was not even in Zimbabwe at the time of the attack. He also denied being formally recruited but admitted that “he gave a hand” when asked to do so – largely in the form of intelligence. For this, he was paid a retainer, reimbursed for expenses and given ‘perks’ like a holiday in Durban.

299 Woods applied for amnesty for his role in this and other operations. He claimed that his role in operations inside Zimbabwe was limited to providing intelligence and logistic and surveillance (photographic) assistance for sabotage attacks on ANC facilities in Harare and Bulawayo. He passed his information on to his runners, whom he names as Mr Alec West (NIS) and Mr Alan Trowsdale (DMI).

300 All attempts by the Commission to gain access to Woods and other agents gaoled in Zimbabwe were blocked by the Zimbabwe government.

IN REGARD TO THE MURDER OF MR AMON MWANZA, THE COMMISSION ACCEPTS THE VERDICT OF THE COURTS IN ZIMBABWE.

301 On 13 January 1988, the body of ANC member Mr Jacob Molokwane was found in a car on the road between Francistown, Botswana, and the Zimbabwe border. He had been shot several times. His name appears on the ANC’s list of members killed in exile. No amnesty applications were received for this killing and the Commission was unable to uncover any conclusive information on it, or to make a finding.

302 Mr Mazizi ‘Mpilo’ Maqekeza and Mr Mbulelo Ngona (aka Khaya Kasibe or KK) were underground MK operatives in the Transkei in the mid-1980s. In January 1988, Ngona fled to Lesotho. Sometime thereafter he was joined by Maqekeza.

303 On 25 February 1988, Maqekeza and Ngona, along with a University of Lesotho student, Mr Thandwefika Radebe, were stopped at a roadblock in Lesotho by a group described in different press statements as “Basotho police” and “a group of armed men”. After being searched, the three were apparently told by the group they had orders to shoot them. Ngona managed to escaped but Radebe was killed and Maqekeza left for dead on the side of the road. On 15 March 1988, Maqekeza, recovering from his wounds, was shot and killed in his hospital bed. The shooting occurred shortly after his bed had been swapped with another patient and he had been moved under an open window. Uncorroborated information given to the Commission has attributed the shooting to a member of the Ladybrand security police.

304 The fate of Ngona is unknown to the Commission. His mother appeared before the Commission in Port Elizabeth and said that, within days of the shooting, he was seized from his hiding place in Roma, Lesotho, by four men, placed in a vehicle and “tied like a dog between the seats”. He has never been seen again.

THE COMMISSION FINDS THAT MR MPILO MAQEKEZA AND MR THANDWEFIKA RADEBE WERE KILLED BY UNKNOWN PERSONS, ACTING ON THE INSTRUCTIONS OF UNKNOWN PERSONS AND