By Norm Dixon
JOHANNESBURG — The African National Congress has called on the National Party government and its leader, F.W. de Klerk, to come clean about its knowledge of the criminal political activities planned and committed by the most senior officers of the South African Police (SAP) in league with the KwaZulu Police (KZP) and the Inkatha Freedom Party. The charges include large scale gun-running, murder and fomenting random violence on trains and in townships.
"The question that all South Africans should ask themselves is did President de Klerk and [law and order] minister [Hernus] Kriel in fact know about the activities of senior members of the police — in fact how could they not have known?", the ANC demanded.
On March 18, Justice Richard Goldstone released an interim report revealing that the SAP's top commanders instigated political violence that has claimed the lives of more than 15,000 people since 1989. The report is based on information supplied by a security police officer identified only as "Q".
The ANC said that the report proved "the existence of a sinister conspiracy committed to the destabilisation of the country and the subversion of the transition to democracy. It confirms the charge the ANC has made many times that there exists a Third Force engaged in murder and other criminal activities in pursuit of anti-democratic aims."
Goldstone revealed that the SAP's Unit C1 — later renamed C10 — was under the control of Colonel Eugene de Kock from 1989 until he left the SAP last year. Overall command of the unit's operations was in the hands of the SAP's second highest officer, deputy commissioner Lieutenant General Basie Smit, and the SAP's head of counter-intelligence, Major General Krappies Engelbrecht. Another high-ranking cop, Lieutenant General Johan le Roux, was directly involved in the operations.
The Goldstone Commission found evidence that Unit C10 was involved in:
- The manufacture of guns at secret premises near Pretoria, which were then distributed to Inkatha leaders in the PWV region. Acting as intermediary between C10 and Inkatha was Dries "Brood" van Heerden, chief of security for Amalgamated Banks of South Africa, one of the country's major banks. It is alleged that van Heerden employed only Inkatha Freedom Party members as security guards in ABSA banks throughout Johannesburg, and that they were a virtual private army.
- The distribution of AK-47s, grenades and rocket launchers from the former Koevoet unit in Namibia and from Mozambique to Inkatha leaders. The report recounted that Inkatha Transvaal leader Themba Khoza was arrested at a roadblock while driving to a hostel in Sebokeng in 1990 after AK-47s were found in his car's boot. Unit C10 arranged for his bail and legal fees to be paid. Khoza was acquitted.
- De Kock and a member of the SAP's security branch, Willem Coetzee, acting on orders from Basie Smit and Krappies Engelbrecht, orchestrated random train violence in the PWV. Askaris (Umkhonto we Sizwe fighters "turned" by the police) and van Heerden's ABSA/Inkatha hit men, armed by C10, entered trains to hack and shoot people between stations. The intention was to ignite conflict between township residents and IFP-aligned hostel dwellers.
- After his retirement, de Kock continued to supply arms to Inkatha in collaboration with the SAP via an arms company, Honeybadger Arms and Ammunition. De Kock, whose nickname is "Prime Evil", has been linked to the violent or suspicious deaths of at least 13 liberation movement activists during the 1980s.
- Former KwaZulu police commissioner Major General Jack Buchner was deeply involved in the gun-running network. The commission revealed his unsavoury background. He was in the Rhodesian army in the 1960s, then joined the SAP security branch, where he was in charge of the work of askaris. While he was head of the security police in Natal from 1987 to 1989, there was a huge surge in political violence and many allegations of police complicity with the IFP. He became KwaZulu Police Commissioner in 1990 and retired in 1992.
- Inkatha members were trained in the use of firearms and grenades. The commission said there was "convincing" evidence that the KwaZulu Police "have been and still are involved in hit squad activities in Natal and the Transvaal". A subcommittee of the commission found that many of the KZP members involved had been trained by South African security forces in unconventional warfare in Namibia's Caprivi Strip in 1986.
- The subcommittee found that South Africa's top police officer, Police Commissioner General Johan van der Merwe, twice blocked investigations of allegations of police misconduct in Natal.
- Upon learning that the commission was investigating Unit C10's activities, Major General Krappies Engelbrecht ordered the destruction of all documents and files related to involvement with the IFP. He also ordered that unit operatives "obtain any information which could be used to compromise Judge Goldstone for the purpose of 'persuading' him to cease the investigation".
Following the revelations, ANC national chairperson Thabo Mbeki said: "From what we know, which is not in these reports, the investigations are going to reach rather sensitive people ... in the sense that they have actively been involved in the carrying out of this campaign of destabilisation".
Transkei leader and ANC candidate Major General Bantu Holomisa went further and said what most people here now suspect. He called for the dismissal of law and order minister Hernus Kriel, who is also the NP's candidate for premier of Western Cape Province. "Kriel must resign, now that the killing machinery has been traced to his doorstep."
Holomisa added that de Klerk, as head of the State Security Council, must have known about "the general's dirty tricks".
The commission found that Colonel de Kock, other members of Unit C10 and several askaris were given golden handshakes of between 400,000 and 1.2 million rand by the SAP "to keep quiet" about their activities. De Kock pocketed the 1.2 million. The payments were approved by de Klerk's cabinet.
De Klerk has for many years dismissed the existence of the Third Force despite evidence from former security police officer Dirk Coetzee in 1989, and former Inkatha official Bruce Anderson in 1992, each identifying the same senior police officers. De Klerk has ignored eyewitness accounts by survivors of violence, and by respected local and foreign journalists, of the SAP escorting Inkatha impis to and from attacks.
De Klerk refused to take action, claiming that successive investigations failed to produce conclusive evidence of the existence of a Third Force. The naming of Major General Krappies Engelbrecht as jointly in command of Unit C10 may explain this. Engelbrecht, as head of the SAP's counter-intelligence department, was in charge of all major investigations into state involvement in political violence and assassinations of anti-apartheid activists. This is in spite of his having been named by Dirk Coetzee in 1989 as involved in a police hit squad and the release of an official report in 1992 that said Engelbrecht had been accused at least three times of covering up hit squad activity.
On March 23, 11 of the police named in the commission report, including Krappies Engelbrecht, were suspended "with full pay and privileges" by police commissioner Johan van der Merwe. Van der Merwe grudgingly said he had "conceded to the wishes of the state president". Basie Smit and Johan le Roux, despite being put on compulsory leave by de Klerk on March 18, have defied the president and remained at their posts pending "discussions" with Hernus Kriel.
An international panel of investigators will arrive soon to work through "mountains" of unpublished evidence. Max du Preez, the former editor of the progressive Afrikaans-language weekly Vrye Weekblad, which broke many stories on the Third Force over the years, told Radio Metro on March 22 that the Goldstone revelations "are just the eyes of the crocodile. The rest of the crocodile is under the water."
The ANC said on March 21 that "the NP government and the police have persisted in blaming political intolerance between the ANC and IFP for the violence" while "they were not only promoting the violence but using the intolerance argument to conceal their own involvement ... The NP cannot be trusted to end the violence. The very people that they have relied on to address the violence are, according to the Goldstone Commission, the ones involved in provoking violence ... Clearly the NP cannot be trusted with peace or any other aspect of our lives."