TRC Final Report

Volume 2

Chapter 2

Subsection 44

■ UNCONVENTIONAL MILITARY OPERATIONS

The attempted overthrow of the Seychelles government

493 On 25 November 1981, a mixed group of mercenaries and SADF members failed in an attempt to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Rene of the Seychelles. Intercepted entering the country via Mahe airport, the mercenaries engaged in a brief gunfight in which two people were killed. One was a Seychellois citizen, the other was one of the plotters, SADF Recce 2 member Johan Fritz. While the group was headed by a well-known mercenary figure resident in South Africa, Colonel Mike Hoare, one of the coup’s planners and participants, former BOSS/ NIS agent Mr Martin Dolinchek, stated that it had cabinet authorisation.

494 There is no prior reference to the operation in the SSC minutes or in any of the SSC’s documentation. The failure of the operation, however, was reported to the SSC on 2 December 1981 and discussed briefly. The Minister of Police was authorised to handle the matter.

495 The forty-three were never charged with hijacking but with lesser offences relating to air traffic regulations. During the course of the trial, General Malan, in his capacity as Minister of Defence, invoked section 29(1) of the General Laws Amendment Act barring twenty-five of the accused and/or witnesses (all of whom were current or reserve members of the SADF) from giving evidence on matters concerning their involvement in SADF operations prior to 24 November 1981. Without their testimony, only eight of the forty-three accused were convicted.

496 The Commission cannot establish conclusively that this operation was undertaken on the instructions of the Prime Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs or the heads of the relevant intelligence agencies. This cannot, however, absolve them of representative responsibility for the fact that senior National and Military Intelligence officers and senior officers of the SADF were involved.

497 The following factors led the Commission to believe there is prima facie evidence of high-level state involvement in this operation:

a In his evidence to the Commission, Martin Dolinchek stated that, while attached to the Durban office of BOSS, he was instructed by his divisional head, Mr N Claasen, to link-up with Colonel Mike Hoare and to ask him to prepare a plan for the overthrow of the Seychelles government. The plan, it is alleged, was submitted to the cabinet and rejected. However, according to Dolinchek, the plan was amended and subsequently approved at cabinet level.

b Dolinchek claims that planning responsibility for the coup was transferred from NIS (the successor agency to BOSS) to MI at this point, but that he remained the NIS liaison to the operation and was in frequent contact with Hoare. The involvement of Mr Claasen of NIS is confirmed by the fact that he was dismissed from the service after the failed operation.

Dolinchek’s view of the take-over of the project by MI is supported by Mr Joseph Leyleveld, then a foreign correspondent resident in South Africa. Writing in the International Herald Tribune on 11 May 1982, Leyleveld reported that intense infighting between the NIS and MI over control of the project had ultimately been resolved when Prime Minister PW Botha “allocated planning for the Seychelles’ coup operation to MI, while the protests of the civilian intelligence services were mollified by the appointment of Martin Dolinchek as a liaison officer on behalf of the NIS”.

The contact between Dolinchek and Hoare is confirmed by the official United Nations investigative report into the coup attempt. It records three meetings between them at Hoare’s home near Pietermaritzburg in September, October and November 1981. Thereafter, Dolinchek left for the Seychelles as part of an advance party.

In his judgement at the trial of the coup participants, Mr Justice James stated that, while there was no proof of the South African government’s involvement, he accepted that senior SADF and NIS members were involved in the coup’s planning. He did not, however, address the question of how such senior security officials could be so involved without either political authorisation or without the government being or becoming aware of their involvement.

c The South African government paid President Rene three million dollars to secure the release of Dolinchek and the other plotters captured during the coup attempt and subsequently given long prison sentences. Dolinchek was initially sentenced to death, but this was later commuted to life imprisonment. In testimony to the Commission, Mr Pik Botha confirmed the payment, although he could not remember the exact amount and mentioned a figure in the region of R20 million.

d The profile and composition of the individuals involved in the coup attempt: of the fifty-four participants, only eleven seem to have had no ties with either the SADF or the Rhodesian military. The other forty-three were either serving or reserve military personnel – twenty-five South Africans, members of one or other of the SADF’s Reconnaissance Regiments, and eighteen former members of such Rhodesian military units as the Selous Scouts, SAS, Rhodesian Light Infantry (RLI) or the Special Branch. One of the former Congo mercenaries, Mr Jeremiah Puren, was named by a former SADF general and high-ranking MI officer in a discussion with the Commission as an “NIS agent”.

Although they were prevented by the Minister of Defence from giving testimony in court, the SADF reservist members of Recce 2 claimed that they joined the coup attempt because they believed it had the backing of the government. Reinforcing this view was the fact that a number of them claimed to have received call-up papers from the SADF and this is what brought them into the operation.

Speaking in Parliament on 13 February 1984, Defence Minister Magnus Malan confirmed that those involved in the coup attempt included “men who were or are employed” by the SADF, but he refused to give any further details on them or their role in the coup.

e The well-established links between various agencies of the South African state and the Seychellois exile community in South Africa from the time of the overthrow in 1977 of the government headed by Mr James Mancham.

Evidence obtained from the archives of the Department of Foreign Affairs reveals high-level and regular contacts from 1978 between officials of the Department and leaders of the exile community. Two documents²⁹ drafted by a senior DFA desk officer in Pretoria, Mr Carl von Hirschberg, refer to several meetings between the Department and various exiles, and makes it clear that both the DFA and MI were well aware of the intention by the followers of Mancham to attempt a coup and that much of this planning was being done in South Africa.

In his written submission to the Commission, Mr Pik Botha does not actually deny the fact of the government’s involvement in the operation. Instead, he quotes at length and without contradiction the conclusions of the UN Commission of Enquiry into the coup. This found that the NIS had been aware from the outset “of the preparations for the mercenary aggression” and that a number of factors clearly established the fact of South Africa’s involvement. Amongst these were the SADF’s delivery to Hoare of the arms, ammunition and other equipment to be used in the operation (the delivery took place on 6 October 1981 and was made by a Sergeant Major van der Merwe); the participation of an unnamed SADF officer in the preliminary discussions, and the participation by members of 2 Recce in the operation itself.

498 In the light of these and other facts, the UN Commission concluded that “if responsible ministers were not at least aware of what was going on, this indicates both a remarkable lack of control by the South African government over its own agencies and a lack of awareness that is hard to reconcile with the tight and effective control exercised by the security authorities in South Africa”.

499 Clearly the UN Commission did not fully accept Prime Minister PW Botha’s statement to Parliament on 29 July 1982 that “neither the South African government, the cabinet , nor the State Security Council were aware of the coup”. However, like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, they could not establish conclusively otherwise.

THE COMMISSION FINDS THAT THE ATTEMPT TO OVERTHROW THE SEYCHELLES GOVERNMENT WAS AN OPERATION UNDERTAKEN BY SENIOR OPERATIVES OF THE NIS AND THE DEPARTMENT OF MILITARY INTELLIGENCE WITH THE COLLUSION OF ELEMENTS WITHIN THE SADF. AS SUCH, IT WAS A VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW AND AN INFRINGEMENT OF THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEYCHELLES GOVERNMENT. THE DEATH OF A SEYCHELLOIS CITIZEN IN THE OPERATION WAS A GROSS HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION.

FOR THESE ACTS, THE COMMISSION FINDS THE FOLLOWING TO BE ACCOUNTABLE IN THEIR CAPACITIES AS HEADS OF AGENCIES OF THE STATE DIRECTLY INVOLVED IN THE OPERATION: PRIME MINISTER PW BOTHA, MINISTER OF DEFENCE GENERAL MAGNUS MALAN, HEAD OF THE OFFICE OF CHIEF OF STAFF INTELLIGENCE LIEUTENANT GENERAL PW VAN DER WESTHUIZEN, AND THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE SERVICE.