TRC Final Report

Volume 6

Section 3

Chapter 1

Subsection 8

Ambushes

74. The Amnesty Committee received amnesty applications for seven ambushes. Five ambushes took place between 1986 and 1988. Informers and/or agents played a role in five cases. In the remaining two, captive MK personnel were used to lure targets to the place where the ambush took place. The following cases illustrate the nature of these violations: a Two unknown MK Special Operations operatives were killed in the Western Transvaal in 1972. The incident followed the arrest of a number of Special Operations personnel, one of whom was allegedly induced to lure two operatives into South Africa. The applicant, Willem Schoon, was granted amnesty [AC/2001/193]. b On 14 August 1986, two MK operatives, Jeremiah Timola (aka Tallman) and Mmbengeni Kone (aka Bernard Shange), were killed by C1/Vlakplaas and Eastern Transvaal Security Branch operatives while infiltrating South Africa. A Security Branch source, Shadrack Sithole, responsible for their transport, was also killed. At the same time, the two MK operatives responsible for transporting them to the Swaziland border were ambushed on the Swazi side of the border and one of the two, Mr Mzwandile Radebe, was killed. The survivor, Mr Vusumuzi Lawrence Sindane, escaped but was captured a day later. All of the applicants were granted amnesty for the killing of the MK operatives, but three applicants were refused amnesty for the killing of Mr Shadrack Sithole, the Security Branch sourc e .^{3 6} c Ms Lita Mazibuko was responsible for the transport arrangements of two g roups of MK personnel in June 1988. Her handlers at Piet Retief Security Branch provided transport and drivers. Both groups were ambushed and killed on 8 and 12 June 1988 after which Mazibuko was paid for her services. She was subsequently apprehended by MK intelligence and severely torture d. Her handler, Flip Coenraad Theron, testified that, on her return to South Africa, she reported to him and was paid a further sum for her involvement.

Deaths in unknown circumstances

75. According to an MK list, 197 combatants died inside South Africa during the Commission’s mandate period, the overwhelming majority of them being killed in combat situations. The MK list includes the names of the twenty-eight people for whose killings amnesty applications were received.

76. The Commission accepts that many operatives infiltrating South Africa were armed and that in this process, situations of combat arose. However, the possibility that some of these were not actually skirmishes but ambushes cannot be ruled out. Aside from the element of surprise, the security forces were able to choose the ambush ground, the targets were outnumbered and the security forces were able to deploy highly-trained personnel in the form of Special Forces, C1/Vlakplaas or the Special Task Force. In short, claims of deaths during attempted arrest should be regarded with scepticism.

77. In many instances, those who were killed were not identified at the time and were buried as paupers. Some were identified but their families were not informed of their deaths. As a result many postmortems and inquests were not properly conducted or subjected to independent scrutiny.

Entrapment operations and incidents in which weapons had been tampered with

78. Entrapment operations often involved supplying ANC and MK operators with modified weaponry such as hand grenades, limpet mines, landmines, guns and ammunition. Members of the Technical Section of Security Branch Headquarters admitted in amnesty hearings that a common modus operandi was to modify weaponry to make it lethal to users by such methods as zero timing. There are numerous instances of combatants being killed by their own weaponry.

79. The Amnesty Committee received applications for seven entrapment operations in which forty-five youth activists were killed. These operations tended to target youth groups like South African National Student Congress (SANSCO) and the Congress of South African Students (COSAS), which were active in townships that the Security Branch regarded as hot spots. Such youth groups were infiltrated with a view to identifying and eliminating key leaders.

80 Using askaris posing as MK operatives, the security forces offered young men arms, training and transport out of South Africa. The askaris then lured them into ambushes or gave them zero-timed explosive devices with which they blew themselves up. Arrest was not regarded as an option in any of these operations: the intention was always to kill.