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COETZEE, JHAge Description Like him or hate him, Dirk Coetzee was the man who started the truth process when he exposed police death squads in 1989. One wonders if we would have had a Truth Commission now if it hadn’t been for the ball that he started rolling. Coetzee and two of his Vlakplaas colleagues, David Tshikalanga ... Dirk Coetzee was the main witness against Gen Lothar Neethling when he sued me for defamation after the expose about the use of poison. Eugene de Kock and his Vlakplaas men decided to kill Coetzee and sent him a bomb in a tape recorder. The bomb later killed lawyer Bheki Mlangeni. At the amnesty ... Dirk Coetzee’s death squad revelations in the weekly newspaper Vrye Weekblad in November ’89. According to Coetzee he and his four man death squad assassinated this man, Griffiths Mxenge in 1981. ‘Nonsense’, police said. ‘The man was crazy, Vlakplaas never killed anyone.’ // A claim by ... ... This week Joe Pillay was in Canada, but he sent the Truth Commission an affidavit detailing his treatment at the hands of the police. Dirk Coetzee made no attempt to refute it. // I mean he wasn’t given VIP treatment; that I can assure you and he would have been taunted. That’s the ... To make the assassination look like a robbery Mxenge’s car was driven to the Swazi border and set alight along with his personal belongings. // 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 commander Dirk Coetzee was supposed to testify this week, but he was prevented by legal technicalities. This is what he would have told the Commission. // Nick van Rensburg and his men poisoned him upon release, poisoned him and apparently he did not add enough poison according to ... Griffiths Mxenge was murdered by Dirk Coetzee’s hit squad in November 1981. In his amnesty application in November last year Coetzee claimed that he had not questioned the order to eliminate Mxenge because it had come from senior security branch officers. // They were trying to build up a case ... They weren’t the best behaved guys we had. They all smoked and all drank heavily. And everyone that smoked also smoked dagga. // You were not smoking at that stage? // No, I was not smoking, but drinking a lot. // Pillay was delivered into the hands of Dirk Coetzee at Vlakplaas. 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. Human rights lawyer and United Democratic Front activist, Griffiths Mxenge was killed by three askaris: Almond Nofemela, David Tshikalanga and the late Brian Ngqulunga. Dirk Coetzee and David Tshikalanga were convicted for the killing. Both have been granted amnesty. 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. 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 ... 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 ... 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. ... squads in South Africa in a South African court with the South African laws. It was just impossible. And the way they dealt with people like Dirk Coetzee; they made you part of the atrocities then once they push you to the side you’re isolated. If you might stand up and speak out inside South ... ... 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. ... Grim and gory details of Vlakplaas murders, abductions and cross border operations emerged again this week. Dirk Coetzee, Almond Nofemela and David Tshikalanga who are applying for amnesty for a range of atrocities continue to spill the sordid tales of South Africa’s secret death farm. In November last year Dirk Coetzee described Sizwe Kondile’s death to the Amnesty Committee in Durban. // Now, drops were administered to Sizwe Kondile in a drink whilst we were sitting around drinking ourselves, opening beer and whatever other drinks, alcohol. And after about 20 minutes to about ... A few years ago it was still unthinkable that the force could have been involved in this. When former Vlakplaas commander Dirk Coetzee, spoke in November 1989, they said he was mad. But then came the Eugene de Kock case and an orgy of death and destruction committed by him and his men unfolded in ... |