TRC Final Report

Volume 2

Chapter 7

Subsection 25

The right wing and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP)

293 The AVF and the IFP became formally linked by the formation of COSAG in 1993, and its successor, the Freedom Alliance. Officially, the Freedom Alliance (FA) was a political pressure group, consisting of the AVF, the IFP, the Ciskeian and Bophuthatswana homeland governments, and the Conservative Party. All its members had pulled out of the multi-party negotiations at the World Trade Centre at one stage or another. The FA was united around the rejection of a unitary state and advocated a strong regional agenda.

294 Even before COSAG and the FA came into existence, AWB groups in KwaZulu (the North Coast in particular) and to a lesser extent the West Rand, were working closely with the IFP, providing training on their farms and often sharing membership.

295 One IFP amnesty applicant from Durban, Mr Alan Nolte [AM2501/96] claims to have been ‘on loan’ to the AWB when he set out with four other AWB members, on orders from the AWB, to poison the water supply of Umlazi with cyanide during 1993/4. The Commission found no evidence that this was executed. Nolte was later convicted of illegal possession of arms and explosives.

296 The Commission received several applications for amnesty from right-wing operatives involved in the procurement of arms which indicates co-operation and/or involvement of the IFP. Amnesty was granted to Mr Gerrit Phillipus Anderson [AM8077/97], an AWB member whose cell in Natal co-operated with the IFP in the procurement and hiding of weapons.

297 AVF/AWB member Mr JN Visser [AM 5199/97] described how weapons were bought from an IFP member and distributed to the AVF. Another AVF member, Mr JW Van Rensburg [AM5666/97] claimed he provided advice and military training to the IFP at Empangeni during 1993. An AWB amnesty applicant admitted that he was working as a security police informant in late 1993 and that during this time he was asked by the AWB to approach the IFP with a view to joint weapons’ heists on police stations in the East Rand (T Chadwick [AM5193/97]). The weapons’ heist at the Eastern Cape Flagstaff police station in March 1994 was thwarted when the police were warned of the impending attack by an informer and AWB commander Patrick Pedlar. The AWB applicants were granted amnesty in respect of the murder of policeman Mr Barnabas Jaggers, the attempted murder of Mr Wele Edmund Nyanguna and Mr Mzingizi Abednego Mkhondweni and theft of a police vehicle. The Amnesty Committee found that they were given the order to obtain arms to be used by the IFP’s self protection units in their war against the ANC.

298 Nevertheless, in a section 29 investigative enquiry at the Commission’s Durban office, Mr Walter Felgate, former IFP leader, said that the IFP declined most right-wing offers for joint operations to procure weapons.

Links with international right-wing groups

299 The first link between ultra-right terrorism and foreign agencies came to light in 1982 when Mr Fabio Miriello, Mr Massimo Bollo and Mr Eugenio Zoppis, all white foreign expatriates known as the ‘White Commando’, were convicted of the 1979 bombing of the offices of prominent academic Dr Jan Lombard. Originally Mr Koos Vermeulen and Ms Monica Hugget (a foreign right-winger) were arrested with them, but Huggett turned state witness and Vermeulen was released after a few days. Huggett’s name was subsequently linked to the shoot-out in March 1994 between the SAP and three German right-wingers in the Donkerhoek area. One German right-winger, Mr Stephan Rays was arrested, Mr Thomas Kunz was shot dead, and a third, Mr Horst Klenz [AM0316/96] later arrested. A fourth, Mr Alexander Niedneleun, was later charged in the Cullinan magistrate’s court for illegal possession of a fire-arm.

300 Mr Robert Mahler [AM6397/97], an American citizen, claims in his application to have been recruited by the former SAP to act as firearms instructor. Mahler was caught in the United States, after he illegally imported a large cache of weapons to South Africa, using fraudulent names and passports. He claims allegiance to the CP, and said he had contact with other groups like the AVF and the AWB. He also said he was the USA fund-raising representative of the AWB.

301 The HNP, Avstig and the AWB were active in Namibia, particularly around the time of independence in 1989. South African right-wingers helped extensively with the provision of weapons across the border through AWB/BWB smuggling networks, mostly based in Pofadder. It is alleged that the CCB and possibly other members of the former security forces were also involved in these networks.

302 Intelligence sources claimed that several right-wingers, including AWB and BWB members, were involved in gun-running from RENAMO to South Africa. An AWB member allegedly tried to get funds for the movement in Europe, under the cover of fund-raising for the ‘development’ of Mozambique. A group of RENAMO soldiers was allegedly recruited by the right wing in mid-1993 to serve on the AVF’s Volksleër, along with several former CCB, Koevoet and 32 Battalion members. Some amnesty applicants claimed that the right wing obtained arms from RENAMO and UNITA with the help of Special Forces members. This was corroborated by NIS source reports.

Violations committed by the right wing

303 In the pre-1990 period, the right wing was mainly associated with isolated incidents of racial and other violence. The earliest example of a right-wing violence in any amnesty application is that attributed to Mr Eugene Terre’Blanche [AM7994/97] for the tarring and feathering of Professor Floors van Jaarsveld in 1979 after his ‘liberal’ speech in Potchefstroom.

304 Between 1982 and 1985 various AWB members, including Terre’Blanche, were charged with illegal possession of weapons and explosives.

305 In 1988, Wit Wolwe member Barend Strydom massacred seven people in Pretoria in Church Square. Strydom initially applied for amnesty for this incident, but subsequently retracted his application.

306 In December 1988, Ms Linah Masesi Mazibuko [JB04588/01ERKWA] was assaulted and left to die by a named CP member near a shopping complex in Brakpan. In the same month, Mr Matthews Mokoena was set alight with petrol by an AWB member in Petrus Steyn, Orange Free State. Mokoena died later in hospital.

307 In August 1989 a black taxi driver, Mr Potoka Franzar Makgalemele, was fatally stabbed and shot by two right-wingers. A member of both the AWB and the radical Orde van die Dood applied for amnesty for the killing (CJ Lottering [AM1004/96]) saying he was under orders to kill various political figures, and committed this murder ‘as initiation’ to find out whether he was capable of it. He was denied amnesty for the act.