TRC Final Report

Volume 2

Chapter 2

Subsection 32

317 On 7 April and 13 October 1988 respectively, Mr Albie Sachs [KZN/JD/001/AM] and Ms Joan and Mr Jeremy Brickhill [KZN/JD/001/AM] were severely injured in separate car bomb explosions in Maputo and Harare. Both of these operations were undertaken by Special Forces covert operatives. Based on its investigations and the amnesty application of Henri van der Westhuizen, the Commission believes the attack on Mr Sachs to have been the work of a covert unit under the control of a senior Special Forces operative. However, Van der Westhuizen suggests that the target of the operation was not Sachs but Mr Indres Naidoo, ANC diplomat in Maputo. The bomb was placed in Naidoo’s car which, unbeknown to the operatives, Sachs had borrowed on this particular day. Nonetheless, as Sachs was a high-profile ANC member and target, the operation was regarded as a success. The operative who placed the bomb was paid R4 000 for his work.

318 The Brickhill bombing was carried out by South African covert agents in Zimbabwe. Mr Christopher ‘Kit’ Bawden and his brother, Mr Guy Bawden, are known to have been involved in this particular operation. Kit was the leader of a covert unit linked to South African Special Forces, which had operated since Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980. Guy only became peripherally linked to the group when he moved to Zimbabwe in November 1986. Surveillance of the Brickhills was done by Mr Philip Conjwayo.

319 According to press reports, Kit was promised R75 000 for a successful operation. In a filmed television interview in November 1991, Jeremy Brickhill and Guy Bawden met and the latter apologised for his involvement in the attempted killing.

320 No amnesty applications were received for direct involvement in these attempted assassinations.

THE COMMISSION FINDS THAT SOUTH AFRICAN SPECIAL FORCES AGENTS WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ATTEMPTS TO KILL MS JOAN AND MR JEREMY BRICKHILL AND MR ALBIE SACHS. THEY WERE ALSO RESPONSIBLE FOR THE INJURIES SUFFERED BY CIVILIANS IN THE VICINITY OF THE EXPLOSIONS. THE GROUP RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT ON THE BRICKHILLS WAS LED BY MR CHRISTOPHER BAWDEN.

321 In March/April 1989, a joint Vlakplaas-SADF Special Forces group attacked an ANC transit facility at Ramathlabama, approximately ten kilometres inside Botswana. According to De Kock, information on this facility was passed to South Africa by Botswana’s intelligence service. After keeping the facility under surveillance for a week, Brigadier Loots, head of the security police in the Western Transvaal, authorised the assault. It was led by Captain Martiens Ras [AM2735/96] and included De Kock [AM0066/96] and Willie Nortjé, all of whom have applied for amnesty, and three Special Forces members who cannot be named as they did not submit amnesty applications.

322 The house was blown up in the attack and, according to the amnesty applicants, three unnamed ANC members were killed in the operation along with one security guard. The ANC list of members killed in operations outside the country contains no names of members killed in Botswana at this time.

323 On 15 April 1989, nearly ten years after a parcel bomb attack on Ms Phyllis Naidoo and others (see earlier), her son Mr Sadhan Naidoo and a fellow ANC member, Mr Moss Mthunzi, were killed in Lusaka, Zambia. They were shot while watching television on an ANC farm outside Lusaka where Naidoo was the manager and Mthunzi a labourer.

324 According to information supplied by Eugene de Kock and Sergeant Daniel Izak Bosch, a Zimbabwean and former member of the Selous Scouts, Chris Kentane, was contracted for this operation. He was recruited by De Kock and was handled by Bosch. He was, according to De Kock, paid an unspecified amount for this killing and for that of an unnamed and unknown ANC member he claimed to have killed “on a road between Plumtree in Zimbabwe and Gaborone in Botswana”.

THE COMMISSION CAN MAKE NO FINDING ON THE KILLING OF MR SADHAN NAIDOO AND MR MOSS MTHUNZI DUE TO THE FACT THAT THE AMNESTY APPLICATIONS RELATING TO THE KILLING WERE PENDING AT THE TIME OF REPORTING.

325 In 1989, the Secretary General of the South African Council of Churches, the Reverend Frank Chikane [JB03725/01GTSOW], became seriously ill while on a visit to the United States. When he was admitted to hospital, it was discovered that he had been poisoned by a chemical substance sprayed onto his underwear. According to Eugene de Kock,²³ members of the SADF had gained access to Chikane’s suitcase at an airport and applied the toxic substance. Other information has attributed this operation to the CCB. No amnesty applications were received for this incident.

326 A statement given to the Commission under oath by a former member of the security police, Mr Manuel Oliphant, confirms that Chikane was a target for possible elimination. Oliphant states that he was instructed by a member of the SIU and two members of MI to undertake photographic reconnaissance on Chikane’s house, as an instruction had been received from security police headquarters in Pretoria that Chikane “should be assassinated”. The reconnaissance was done but, while Oliphant was waiting for “a go-ahead” on the operation, he read of Chikane’s attempted poisoning. In the absence of corroborated evidence, the Commission could make no definitive finding on this case.