TRC Final Report

Volume 6

Section 3

Chapter 1

Subsection 19

Soweto Security Branch

194. A key component of the Soweto Security Branch was the SIU^{7 5}, which ran a number of covert agents and sources both inside and outside the country.

195. Twenty-two members of the Soweto Security Branch, including three divisional commanders and at least eleven members of the SIU, applied for amnesty for twenty-nine incidents committed between 1980 and 1992. These incidents involved at least twenty-two killings, two abductions/torture and approximately fourteen sabotage and/or credibility operations.

196. Four of the killings resulted from Soweto Security Branch operations. Soweto Security Branch members either provided intelligence for or participated directly in the other operations.

197. Most of the incidents applied for were so-called ‘credibility operations’, conducted by members of the SIU in order to build up the credibility of sources or to facilitate infiltration by deep-cover agents. These operations covered a range of activities such as the establishment of arms caches, the sabotage of offices and installations and attacks on homes and hostels.

198. Amnesty was granted in seventy-six instances, refused in four, conditionally granted in five and granted/refused in three. No decision was handed down in one instance, in which the applicant had died.

199. During the hearing concerning the abduction of Ms Nokuthula Simelane, aka Sibongile, a 23-year-old University of Swaziland student and member of MK’s Transvaal Urban Machinery, sharp differences emerged between the various applicants as black members of the SIU challenged the version of white applicants.

200. The Amnesty Committee heard evidence that, in the early 1980s, two deep cover agents of the SIU, RS269 (Sergeant Langa, aka Frank or Big) and RS243 ( Sergeant ‘Terror’ Mkhonza, aka Scotch) infiltrated MK’s Transvaal machinery with the help of an informer, SWT66 (Nompumelelo).

201. Early in September 1983, Mkhonza was instructed by his MK contact to meet Sibongile (Ms Nokuthula Simelane) at the Carlton Centre, Johannesburg. After the meeting, Mkhonza led her to the basement parking area where they were seized by waiting SIU members and bundled into the boot of a car. Ms Simelane was, according to all applicants, severely assaulted and brutally beaten.

202. She was subsequently transferred to a farm near Northam in the current North West. Here she was held in a room in an outside building for a period of approximately four to five weeks. Lieutenant Willem ‘Timol’ Coetzee, Warrant Officer Anton Pretorius and Sergeant Frederick Barnard Mong were tasked with interrogating and recruiting Ms Simelane. When she was not being interrogated , Ms Simelane was under constant guard by black members of the SIU. At night, she was cuffed and chained to her bed with leg irons. The black members, who were responsible for guarding her, slept either in or outside her room .

203. Black SIU applicants, Constables Veyi and Selamolela, testified that she was repeatedly and brutally tortured throughout her stay on the farm, finally becoming ‘ unrecognisable’. The white applicants denied this vehemently.

204. According to their evidence, the victim had been severely assaulted during the first week and had, on more than one occasion, been put in a dam after soiling herself while being tortured. However, they alleged that, after the first week, she agreed to work for them and that they spent the remaining weeks of her ‘detention’ preparing her for her work as an agent. Thereafter, they claimed that they returned her to Swaziland with the help of Sergeants Mothiba and Langa, both since deceased. After that they lost contact with her.

205. This testimony was challenged by Veyi and Selamolela, who testified that the victim’s physical state made it extremely unlikely that she could have been in a fit state to be returned to Swaziland. Constable Veyi testified that he had last seen Ms Simelane bound and in the boot of Lieutenant Coetzee’s car and that Sergeant Mothiba had told him that she had been killed.

206. In refusing amnesty to applicants Coetzee, Pretorius and Mong, the Amnesty Committee said of Ms Simelane:

During her detention for a period of approximately five weeks, she was continuously and very seriously assaulted by the group of Security Police, under the command of Coetzee, who held her captive. All attempts to extract inform a t i o n c o n cerning MK or its operations as well as attempts to recruit her to become a Security Police inform e r, were fruitless. Due to the prolonged and sustained assaults, Ms Simelane’s physical condition deteriorated to the extent that she was hardly recognisable and could barely walk. Ms Simelane was last seen w h e re she was lying with her hands and feet cuffed in the boot of Coetzee’s vehicle. She never re turned to her familiar environment in Swaziland ... and has disappeared since. It is not necessary for the purpose of this matter to make a definitive finding on the eventual fate of Ms Simelane. [AC/2001/185.]

Witwatersrand Security Branch

207. The divisional headquarters of the Witwatersrand Security Branch was based at John Vorster Square in Johannesburg. Seventeen of its members sought amnesty for various offences committed between the late 1970s and 1992. Two members of the Eastern Transvaal Security Branch, one of whom was the divisional commander, applied for amnesty for assisting with the disposal of the body of Mr Stanza Bopape, a detainee who died in Witwatersrand Security Branch custody.^{7 6}

208. The nature of the violations for which amnesty was sought included scores of Stratcom operations (see below); eleven specified acts of torture and/or assault and a number of unspecified acts of torture and/or assault; numerous instances of attempting to cover up offences committed by the police; involvement in some seven acts of sabotage and bombing (including the bombings of Cosatu House and Khotso House); several attempted killings; several instances of supplying weapons to the IFP in the early 1990s, and one killing.