COETZEE, DJ

... was killed yes, certainly and for that reason it’s important for us to at least protect his version in that respect. // On this aspect Mr. Coetzee would be an essential witness. ...

McNally was appointed to lead evidence at the Harms Commission. Louis Harms also found that Coetzee had lied and was mentally unstable. Despite the fact that two of Coetzee’s death squad members David Tshikalanga and Albert Nofemela also admitted their complicity in the murder of Mxenge, nobody ...

... tomorrow. But yesterday three former police commissioners had a voluntary meeting with the Truth Commission. Generals Mike Geldenhuys, Johan Coetzee, and Johan van der Merwe said they represented a large group of former ...

When he addressed the Committee, Dirk Coetzee stuck to his story that Sizwe Kondile had been killed because the Eastern Cape security police had not wanted another Steve Biko case on their hands. // Getting rid of him was because he sustained injuries while being tortured, dived through a window ...

But for a witness like Dirk Coetzee the nightmare that started eight years ago when he first spoke out is still continuing. // There might be an attempt at any time on my life so I’m always armed. At home of course it’s always a problem because then I’m on my own.

... to activists in order to eliminate them. It was a specific instruction from him. He told me that the instruction had been approved by General Coetzee, with the knowledge and approval of Minister Louis Le Grange and President PW Botha. ...

Gen van der Merwe’s predecessor Gen Johan Coetzee said that he had no knowledge of unlawful operations being carried out within the country and denied ever having issued an illegal instruction. // I did not, I did not sir, give any policeman any illegal instruction, unlawful instruction: kill a ...

I don’t expect the Mxenge family to forgive me because I don’t know how I ever in my life would be able to forgive a man like Dirk Coetzee.

Former Vlakplaas boss, Dirk Coetzee declared in 1989 already that he fetched poison from the head of the forensics laboratory Gen Lothar Neethling in 1981 and gave it to two activists Vusi Mavuso and Peter Dlamini. Neethling denied this and said he never developed poison, a statement later ...

The killing or murder of Sizwe Kondile was callous as all security police killings and one wishes that you had never taken part in it.

I went and looked at just a school dictionary, initially about the word ‘elimineer.’ Then I went to a more authoritative dictionary sir, the HAT as we call it in Afrikaans and there on page 194 it says ‘elimineer’ means ‘uitskakel’ or ‘verwyder’ and it gives an example there of a ...

Mxenge was observed by Almond Nofemela and Joe Mamasela. A few days before the murder they poisoned his dogs. // It was to leave the decision for the place of the actual murder in the hands of the operatives. You could either do it at work if the occasion was right, it was late enough, if it was ...

You have said that you would like one day to meet Mrs. Kondile and look her in the eye. // I would like to do that in future, yes sir. // Mrs. Kondile asked me to convey to you that that is an honour that she feels you do not deserve and that if you were really remorseful you would have not applied ...

There’s one thing that I will have to live with till the day I die, it’s the corpses that I will have to drag with me to my grave, of the people whom I’ve killed. Remorse, I can assure you a lot, a hell of a lot.

It was ANC cadres that infiltrated the country on operations that were caught by the police, by the security police. Then they had the difficult option of facing court cases and long interrogation, third degree methods used, electrical shocks, smothering with a wet bag over the head or decide to ...

Politics has got something to do with it. That’s my feeling, my gut feeling. Because, you must also remember that my application for amnesty was submitted by hand to Dr Alex Boraine at quarter to three on the 5th of March this year in Cape Town, and I took Albert Nofemela’s application with, as ...

Well, I don’t know whether it was his first killing, but he was in a way forced into it, yes. Because, I mean, once the blacks were involved in the planning of an assassination and they would refuse to participate. It means that it’s a negative element who might spill the beans later, and would ...

Boipatong, Vlakplaas job. I can assure you that Brig van Heerden and Snor Vermeulen, two of the Vlakplaas guys involved, blackened with these things that they use in plays and balaclavas, orchestrated … Boipatong, Vlakplaas job.

The Harms Commission did not believe his story. // If a judge goes to the extreme where he says in public, and I quote ‘how must I believe this crap you’re talking?’ I mean what chance did I have in South Africa against honourable generals, all church going generals, elderly in the church, ...

I do believe in myself. I want to get truth, what happened in those days and in future, our children must know what happened in those days when our parents were still alive. All I remember is that in the morning the neighbours, I think the neighbours next door to me, came to the house and look me ...