TRC Final Report

Volume 2

Chapter 2

Subsection 31

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 THAT MR MBULELO NGONA WAS ABDUCTED AND IN ALL LIKELIHOOD KILLED BY UNKNOWN PERSONS.

305 Between 1980 and 1988, Mr Godfrey Motsepe [JB00606/02PS] was based in Brussels as the ANC’s diplomatic representative to the BENELUX countries. In a submission to the Commission, Mr Motsepe alleged that he had twice been the target of assassination attempts in 1988. In the first, on 2 February 1988, two shots were fired through the window of the office in which he was working, but missed him. In the second, on 27 March 1988, a seventeen-kilogram bomb was discovered in his office. This occurred two days before the killing of Ms Dulcie September in Paris.

306 In the course of the Belgian police investigation, Motsepe allegedly recognised Warrant Officer Joseph Klue from photographs as the perpetrator of the shooting. A former military attaché to London in the early 1980s, Klue had been expelled from Britain for his involvement in the sabotage of the ANC mission in London. The Belgian police issued an international warrant of arrest for him, but it was never executed.

307 The Commission’s investigation led it to doubt Klue’s involvement. It believes that the greater possibility is that the attacks on Motsepe and September (see below) formed part of a CCB operation undertaken in collusion with covert French right-wing elements.

308 On 29 March 1988, Ms Dulcie September, the ANC chief representative in France, was assassinated in Paris. She died instantly when hit by a volley of five bullets fired at close range. Though no submission was made to the Commission on the murder, it was identified as a priority case for investigation. A delegation travelled to Paris and elicited the co-operation of the French police, who made available to the Commission the files of the investigating judge, Ms Claudine Forkel.

309 In her summary document dated 17 July 1992, Ms Forkel stated that she was unable to identify the assassins. However, the document makes clear that it was her view that September was killed in the context of a plan by the South African state to eliminate senior ANC figures in Europe. She noted that September’s assassination had followed closely on attempts on the life of Mr Godfrey Motsepe, the ANC chief representative to the BENELUX countries, in Brussels on 4 February and 27 March 1988.

310 Ms Forkel’s interest focused on Mr Francois Richard Rouget. A former member of the French army, Rouget was said by Ms Forkel to be the leader of a group collecting information on ANC members in Europe. Another member of this group was Ms Antonia Soton, one-time companion of Rouget, who confirmed to a French journalist investigating the murder that she spied on ANC targets.

311 In 1985, Rouget joined the Presidential Guard in the Comores, an outfit funded by South Africa. At the time, the Comores was used by South African security as a listening post tracking ANC communications (mainly telex) traffic and as a conduit for sanctions-busting in general and the supply of weapons to RENAMO in particular.

312 In January 1987, Rouget left the Comores and moved to South Africa where he worked as a representative of the Europe-Africa Export company. This position required him to visit Europe frequently. Ms Forkel accepted that Rouget was not one of the killers as his looks did not correspond with the description of the two killers, but her conclusion in regard to him was that his character, history, relationship to the world of mercenaries, stay in South Africa and frequent travelling to Europe amounted to “grounds for suspicion”.

313 In an interview with the Commission in April 1998, Eugene de Kock described the September assassination as a CCB operation managed by Commandant Dawid Fourie, its deputy head, in which the two who pulled the trigger were members of the Comorien Presidential Guard. He named one of these as Mr Jean-Paul Guerrier (aka Captain Siam) who, he claimed, was also involved in the 1989 assassination of President Abdallah. The Commission cannot, however, corroborate the identity of Guerrier as one of the two assassins.

314 The Commission was able to corroborate two aspects of this information. One, that Dawid Fourie (aka Heine Muller) was responsible for the CCB’s external operations. This information was supplied to the Commission by Christoffel Nel, the CCB’s head of intelligence. Two, that in 1996 Guerrier was arrested by the French police and charged along with Mr Bob Denard and another former member of the Presidential Guard, Ms Dominique Malacrino, with the murder of Abdallah.

315 Testifying before the Commission on 18 May 1998, Christoffel Nel described the murder of Dulcie September as one of the CCBs “successes”. Pressed on this, he stated that “ … from the general atmosphere at the CCB head office whenever reference was made to Dulcie September’s death, I had never any doubt in my mind that it was a CCB operation”²¹ .

316 Asked whether the trigger-pullers could have been hired from the Comorien Presidential Guard, Nel said: “I would say it would be ludicrous for any South African group to use a South African to kill Dulcie September. I always expected that if this case is exposed that we will find that it’s a French Foreign Legion person or something in that order”²²

WHILE IT IS NOT ABLE TO MAKE A DEFINITIVE FINDING ON THE ASSASSINATION OF MS DULCIE SEPTEMBER, THE COMMISSION BELIEVES ON THE BASIS OF THE EVIDENCE AVAILABLE TO IT THAT SHE WAS A VICTIM OF A CCB OPERATION INVOLVING THE CONTRACTING OF A PRIVATE INTELLIGENCE ORGANISATION WHICH, IN TURN, CONTRACTED OUT THE KILLING.