HLONGWANE, DE

In the Truth Commission process there are victims and there are perpetrators of human right violations. Patrick Hlongwane was both. // Hlongwane left South Africa in December 1986 to meet with the leadership of the ANC in exile. He had been part of the Port Elizabeth Black Civic Organisation, but ...

Half-truths: Police spy Pat Hlongwane

Patrick Hlongwane, a perpetrator and victim of human right violations

After presentation by Matthews Phosa, now premier of Mpumalanga, and a protracted hunger strike charges against Hlongwane were withdrawn and he returned to South Africa in August 1991. On his return he found that his mother had been necklaced as a result of his activities. // The issue of my ...

Now Pat Hlongwane has confessed that he was not telling the whole truth and has admitted that he was being used in a campaign to discredit certain ANC members of Parliament. When he returned from exile after 1990 he became the chairman of an organisation called the Returned Exiles Committee. He ...

But Hlongwane was also a victim. He claims he went to see the ANC to explain why he had started working for the security police. After telling them his story, he was sent to ANC camps in Zambia, Angola and Uganda. There he was repeatedly beaten and tortured and in February 1991 was sentenced by an ...

... by the late Chris Hani and also the late Secretary-General of the ANC, Thomas Nkobi. So, those were lies, but also within my statement that I made, my statement was also based on truth that I was really tortured by the ANC. And I was in the ANC camps as an ANC prisoner. When we returned back ...

I still remember Mr. Nzo came there, presently a foreign minister of South Africa, Mr. Alfred Nzo. He also came there and I had the hope that he was going to help me, he also dealt with me physically.

At one of the first human rights violations hearings last year, self confessed police spy, Pat Hlongwane told the Commission how he was tortured by senior ANC officials. This is what he said.

... one prosecution that we’ve had so far is just the foot soldiers. And they have killed. I mean, you talk about Eugene de Kock, someone like Israel Hlongwane has killed dozens of people, I mean there are dozens of Eugene de Kock’s running around this region and nobody is paying any attention to ...

... fore grounded this week with the arrest of CCB agent Ferdi Barnard. The episode also includes segments on former police spy and ANC detainee, Pat Hlongwane?s admission to lying to the TRC; on the kinds of abuse directed at detained women; and on the evidence of former police informer Nelson ...