Special Report Transcript Episode 15, Section 6, Time 34:18

It was 1 am, December 20, 1985. A few days earlier their daughter Phoenix had her 1st birthday. Leon was in the bathroom when the house was attacked. Jacqui was murdered first. We could later see how Leon tried to break off the burglar bars. Bullets lay strewn in the bathroom and there were bullet holes in the walls. The bathroom floor was covered in blood, as were the hallway and kitchen. In the kitchen there was blood and human tissue because Jacqui was shot in the chest. South African newspapers reported that the Lesotho Liberation Army was responsible. But it later appeared to have been a fictional organisation because Leon did not die immediately. He crawled to the neighbour and told her: the Boers killed my wife. He said they spoke Afrikaans. They blackened their bodies but the white skin showed under the shirtsleeves. My brother and his wife did not deserve to die without dignity. He was a loving and concerned person and unselfish in his loyalty to the ANC. With Cliffie Brown he was a member of our church’s youth organisation. I find it unacceptable that his brilliant life and future were cut short so that apartheid could be maintained. I do not have the right to prescribe to the TRC, but I plead that children of fallen ANC members should have free access to schools and universities, because their parents’ blood flowed for the liberation of this country. W/O Willie Nortje, a former member of the police death squads at Vlakplaas, made a sworn affidavit to Pretoria Attorney-General Jan D’Oliveira in which he explains the whole attack. The TRC Special Report exposed the whole story. Nortje states that the attack was planned and led by Eugene de Kock, commander of Vlakplaas, who is on trial for murder in Pretoria. They were helped by a police agent who lived among the ANC people in Maseru. The other Vlakplaas people who were involved apart from Nortje and De Kock, were Steve Bosch, Snor Vermeulen, and an unknown number of askaris. There were also policemen from Ladybrand: Joe Coetzer, Anton Adamson, Douw Willemse. Nortje says Coetzer, Adamson and the police agent murdered Leon and his wife. All the policemen involved received the police star for bravery from Commissioner Johan van der Merwe. I would like to know why the TRC did not get the Nortje statement from Dr D’Oliveira to give to the victims’ next of kin. And why Nortje or any of the others were never subpoenaed to come and expose the facts. The Commission has heard the stories of several victims but has never bothered to establish the truth. You have the right to call witnesses. The question we as family want to put to you in all humility, is why don’t you do it? Thank you very much.

Notes: Dawn Botha (sister)