6

 

Whose side is God on, anyway?

Willie Nortjé was once Eugene de Kock’s good friend and confidant. Side by side they faced – and survived – the onslaught of the Border War, and later worked together at Vlakplaas. Nortjé would become one of the key witnesses for the state during Eugene’s criminal trial in the 1990s. In my search for a better understanding of Eugene, Koevoet and Vlakplaas, it was inevitable that I would get to know Nortjé better.

By the mid-1970s Nortjé was a young policeman stationed in Springs. He came to know Eugene by chance – he was a friend of Eugene’s brother Vos.

‘On occasion Eugene visited us at the SAP canteen in Springs. He spoke a great deal about Koevoet and what they were busy doing in South West. For a young guy like me it all sounded very exciting,’ said Nortjé.

‘I am mechanically inclined and could fix any vehicle. I often repaired police vehicles at the station. Gene can’t even handle a spanner. And so in January 1981 I joined Koevoet as part of Eugene’s Zulu Delta team. He needed me to fix the vehicles and the two of us got on very well.’

Nortjé was just like the other Koevoet members – young, fit, eager to work in the unit. He, too, became a hardened and respected soldier. He and Eugene share a long history, having spent several years in Zulu Delta before eventually working together at Vlakplaas. In time, he became Eugene’s confidant. According to another former Koevoet member, Nortjé often took the radio and assumed command of Zulu Delta during contact.

Eugene’s long-time Koevoet and Vlakplaas colleague Willie Nortjé talks to Koevoet members in Oshakati some time in the late 1980s.

During our many discussions about Koevoet and Vlakplaas, Nortjé spoke candidly and answered every question thoroughly. He described his service at Koevoet as a wild and reckless time when they virtually lived on adrenalin. Koevoet only had one goal and, as in any war, rules meant very little. The fighting was intense and Koevoet members looked death in the eye on a weekly basis.

‘War … blows away the illusion of safety from death,’ writes Karl Marlantes in What it is Like to Go to War. ‘In a combat situation you wake up from sleep instantly aware that this could be the last time you awake, simultaneously grateful that you’re alive and scared shitless because you’re still in the same situation.’1

I tried to imagine what it would be like to walk out, almost daily, rifle in hand, possibly to your death. In a TED talk called ‘Why Veterans Miss War’ and filmed in January 2014, American war correspondent and documentary producer Sebastian Junger discusses warfare’s neurological effect on soldiers. He says while soldiers may be afraid before and after operations, they aren’t so during the firefight itself. Then something strange happens.

‘Time slows down. You get this weird tunnel vision. You notice some details very, very, accurately and other things drop out. It’s almost a slightly altered state of mind. What’s happening in your brain is you’re getting an enormous amount of adrenalin pumped through your system. Young men will go to great lengths to have that experience. It’s wired into us.’2

The intensity of the fighting made alcohol abuse commonplace. ‘After hours in the canteen, fights with army troops often broke out. Sometimes Eugene initiated these fights,’ Nortjé said with a twinkle in his eye.

Larry Hanton told me that in one such fight, a member of Eugene’s Zulu Delta team, Rodney Bradley, was cut on the chin by a broken bottle wielded by an army troop. Until the day he died Bradley wore a beard to disguise the scar. ‘Some of the army troops came from the East Rand, from Brakpan and Benoni, among them ducktails who fought in bars and hotels with motorbike chains. Eugene knew guys like them from his Benoni days and showed them no mercy,’ said Larry. ‘They were certainly not gentlemanly fights.’

‘But you need to look at everything, including the drinking, in context,’ Nortjé reasoned. ‘When you went into the bush, you didn’t know who would come out. If you spent too long in the bush – at Oshakati – you became reckless. I remember Gene going on holiday for two or three weeks once … when he came back he was horrified, shocked by our indifference. He was right – we had started taking chances. There were basic rules, like not driving on certain roads after dark. We had started breaking all those rules. We never took leave. You didn’t want to go away, not even for a weekend – you didn’t want to miss the action.’

I thought again about something Hennie Heymans told me about alcohol abuse in the police. ‘We took refuge in drink. It blunted us, gave us moral courage.’

The bottle was the only debriefing the Koevoet men knew. Interestingly enough, it was standard SADF procedure for any soldier involved in more than three contacts or firefights to be released from service and sent home to rest. This seldom happened in Koevoet, a police unit.

Eugene was involved in more than 300 firefights in Koevoet. ‘But even if it were only 30 without an opportunity to recover, one can only imagine what it must have done to his psyche,’ writes Maritz Spaarwater in A Spook’s Progress.3

Eugene’s former colleagues all agree that before long he perfected Koevoet’s classic tactic of tracking down and then attacking the enemy. According to Larry Hanton, it was Eugene who suggested intense mobile infantry deployment exercises for each Koevoet member. ‘This was a change from a beat-walking policeman to a light, fast and eminently mobile fighting unit of infantrymen.’4 Because Eugene’s team had, in the early years, been one one of the few groups who had tracked on foot, the terrorists had hunted them. In his report for Professor Anna van der Hoven, Eugene explains how he developed this fighting technique, and describes some of his combat experiences and challenges – including those involving his superiors.

Initially, at the beginning of our counter-terrorism action, we moved on foot. We were very well armed and usually heavily laden. Because we fought the enemy man to man, we often landed up in violent clashes, outnumbered twice or even three times. Sometimes we decided to storm with only our second last or last magazine left.

I would give the signal by standing up and giving the order myself. To the credit of every black member, only the dead or wounded failed to respond. They moved behind or with me as one man. We never surrendered so much as an inch of ground. At the beginning of 1980 we began using Unimog vehicles that were so battered they broke down where they stood.

In February 1980 I began to test the Ovambos’ tracking abilities. Three or four trackers, with only their rifles and an extra magazine, would track on the run. We reached a point at which the trackers could track while running practically at full speed. We would catch up with SWAPO – exhausted by then – and force them to fight.

More and more groups started using this technique, which increased the number of terrorists killed and captured dramatically. Koevoet became by far the most effective combat unit in South West Africa. Later, the SADF also started to work on this basis.

Two incidents in Ovamboland, however, contributed to my growing disillusionment with the attitude of those in control towards us in the bush. In the first a Constable Schreuder was shot dead after a terrorist indicated that he surrendered. The terrorist’s hands were in the air and he had no rifle with him, but we did not realise there were three SWAPO members hidden behind him. Exploiting our members’ hesitation on the ground and in the vehicles, they opened fire. Constable Schreuder was shot dead; I had another four wounded.

Top: Lukas Kilino (left) was an Angolan who joined Koevoet. For many years he and Eugene (middle) fought side by side.

Top: This gun turret on the Zulu Delta Casspir was built by Koevoet member Willie Nortjé. The weapons at the front are from left to right, an R4, .50 Browning and a Russian 12.7 mm machine gun.

Colonel Dreyer’s attitude towards Schreuder’s father, who was also a policeman, made me seriously reconsider matters. Dreyer told me to come to Oshakati from the bush to speak to the bereaved father. I arrived there to a devastated man. On reporting to Colonel Dreyer for orders, I was told to take ‘the old bugger’ off his hands because his ‘crying was getting on my nerves’. I also had a great deal of trouble securing the Police Cross for Bravery (Gold) for Schreuder, which he richly deserved for his heroism. It was all I could give to a father and mother in exchange for a fine, promising young man.

In the other incident we went to help one Sergeant Kruger with a follow-up – his relatively new group was still struggling with trackers. When we began picking up loose equipment I realised this small group of four terrorists was very professional. Experience had taught me these small groups were reconnaisance groups and that they usually, but not always, caused fatalities. I could see the helicopters landing at Ondangwa airstrip and could even see vehicles in the distance moving between Oshakati and Ondangwa. I immediately called for air support but was told that there were no officers at the base. They were at a farm just outside Oshakati, busy braaiing and drinking.

I contacted Koevoet’s SAP representative at Eenhana base and asked if he could help. He asked if I was sure they were terrorists … he was also having a braai. I needed air support to prevent the terrorists from laying an ambush or planting anti-personnel mines – which they would not be able to do if constantly forced by the helicopters to hide. The woman sergeant at the base, who was in charge of all heavily armed Koevoet groups in the bush, did not have the authority to send helicopters, because the boss was with the others, drinking and partying. Shortly afterwards we triggered a PROM-2 anti-personnel mine. I had three dead and twelve wounded.

An enemy death never hits a soldier as hard as the death or injury of his comrades. We wiped out the entire enemy group but it left a bitter taste in the mouth.

As time passed I started withdrawing from the daily discussions at the base and from any attempts to be drawn into them. I moved out on my own, deciding for myself whether I would go out and where, ensuring that I lost no more men.

Dreyer asked me one day why I had not followed a set of tracks. I responded by saying it was my call. That did not go down too well. I would dictate how I would engage the enemy. Many of the operators thought it was a big deal to round up terrorists and shoot, say, eight of them, losing some of your own soldiers in the process. In the same week on deployment I would also shoot eight terrorists, but lose no men.

Divide and then destroy the enemy. Your success lies not in the number you shoot, but in how many you kill without casualties on your side.

In another incident, at about eight o’clock in the morning we had our first contact in which we lost one SADF troop and two of my men were wounded. That day the entire group of eight or nine terrorists was shot dead, the last one dying with the last light at about seven thirty in the evening.

Top: Two crucial elements in the Koevoet arsenal were, firstly, gunships such as this Alouette, which was used in air-to-ground attacks and, secondly, a proper radio connection with the base.

Top: Koevoet member Daan ‘Radio’ du Toit sits in the radio control room.

At such times and when possible, I took enemy soldiers captive and sent them to Oshakati. A captain who helped to interpret intelligence information asked me one day why I sent so many prisoners. It transpired that I was the only one, or one of very few, who did this. However, I don’t want to create the impression that I was this great humanist. It was a tough time on both sides; mercy was neither given nor expected. You got blunted and had to take great care not to handle your enemy inhumanely.

Certain incidents I took up with Colonel Dreyer: a woman in Angola who was shot dead innocently in front of her children, and when two children died when a phosphorus grenade was thrown into a kraal. It also happened that Unita soldiers were shot dead and claimed as SWAPO terrorists. But nothing ever came of my complaints in this regard.

I reflected, sometimes, on my enemy. Many of them had died courageous and heroic deaths, leaving a permanent impression on me. Had they been on our side, they would have been highly decorated. Yet we just left their bodies in the bush, took their rifles and equipment and continued with the follow-up and the fighting. These people’s parents, or wives and children, would never know how their loved ones had fought, how brave or frightened they really were or what had become of them.

However, the empathy I felt would disappear like mist before the sun with each attack SWAPO launched. Then they had to deal – again – with our mercilessness, about which they complained.

Yes, our unit committed offences. But, without justifying it and bar a few exceptions, I had no knowledge of these offences. One case does, however, stand out. A certain captain – someone I got on well with and who was regarded as well educated – told me about a so-called contact they had had one day. He and a lieutenant had apparently shot seven terrorists. When I congratulated him on his success, he said he would tell me the story later.

Top and below: The killing fields … The bodies of SWAPO soldiers killed in action are loaded on to a helicopter and taken back to base.

Late that afternoon in the base canteen he told me there was in fact no contact: seven people had had to ‘go’. In other words, seven SWAPO members in captivity (Koevoet had its own cells) had been murdered. The captain and lieutenant had decided to ‘test’ the weapons SWAPO and our units used on these seven prisoners. They tied them up and observed the effect, for example, of shooting through the leg with an AK-47. Various rifles and calibres were tested and all seven prisoners died this way.

I don’t know why they had to test these weapons. To me it was sadism – all weapons were tested scientifically during their development. It put the personalities of the so-called security policemen in a new light. In hindsight I have come to believe that you had to be as fanatic as a PAC member to qualify as a ‘security policeman’. Yet I have also met many who were not like this.

In later years at Vlakplaas, one colleague told me openly on more than one occasion that I should rather have joined the army, that I had military aptitude. After starting at C1 (Vlakplaas), I met many individuals in the business world who offered me good positions. They felt I did not ‘belong in the police’, but in the business sector, that I was ‘wasting my time in the police’ or that the force was ‘messing with me’.

At no stage did I doubt my loyalty to the government, the SAP or my religion, but I did sometimes wonder who was right or wrong, whether there was another perspective from which to see things. Whether on the base or in the bush, we had a short service every day with scripture and prayer, a few guards surrounding us. Mine was one of the few groups, if not the only group, that did this.

Enemy weapons and ammunition confiscated by Koevoet members after an operation.

At the same time, we also shot SWAPO members who carried well-used Bibles. One Sunday morning a chaplain on the Ogandjera base read scripture and prayed, among other things, for the enemy to be delivered into our hands that day. We captured two SWAPO terrorists that afternoon, killing one. When we emptied the dead man’s rucksack we found a Bible. It occurred to me that he may have said the same prayer that very morning. He was a believer, not a communist.

Who was right and who was wrong? Whose side was God on, anyway? These questions surfaced regularly, but not their answers.

There were gruesome scenes during and after combat. The devastation of war, low-intensity or not, never left you. Over the radio, the harried and anxious voice of a driver carrying dead or wounded; the hopelessness and impotence of collecting dead comrades; watching a man die as you fight to keep him alive. A wounded soldier’s faith in you, despite your limited medical knowledge … his entrails on the ground and you washing them with water from a drip bag before pushing them back inside him. The hate that wells up when you ask for a helicopter to fetch your wounded, only to be told officers’ wives and children were being flown around a game reserve.

Then there were my heated exchanges with Colonel Dreyer about the better and heavier weapons I needed to resist the enemy more effectively, and the lame arguments offered in response. In my mind, these and many other issues raised questions about whether the people at the top – the generals and the politicians – cared, or even thought about, the people on the ground. Would we even have had a war if the politicians and their families and grandchildren were on the frontline? I doubt it …

Among other things that grated me was how the captain and sergeant would steal some of our provisions and trade them for other tasty foods. Operational members’ fresh produce was also stolen and sold in Cuca shops, and bush rations were dished out to people who were not entitled to them at the expense of the operational members. This sort of thing made you cynical about the real goals of our struggle against socialism and communism.

I also picked up problems with small but important things, such as the difference between the rations for white and black operational members. The black members received inferior rations despite working just as hard – if not harder – than the white members in the bush. The solution was simple: to give the white members the black members’ rations. The light went on very quickly …

I spent a lot of time on the ground, moving, sometimes for long periods, with the black guys to show them I would never ask them to do something I could not do – both physically and as far as being in dangerous situations was concerned. I used every tactic and plan imaginable, some highly unconventional, to avoid suffering losses. They were my men and I was responsible for them. They were more than just trackers who were being used to reap glory for the unit.5

One of Eugene’s distinguishing characteristics stands out clearly: since his days as commanding officer at Koevoet he always acknowledged unit members who had performed well. The medal for bravery awarded posthumously to Constable Schreuder on Eugene’s recommendation is evidence of this.

Eugene expands on this in his manuscript: ‘Always, without exception, I gave recognition to my people, black or white, man or woman, for service or good work. Medals or certificates of commendation or for promotion in rank or even financial compensation were duly recommended. I never asked for anything for myself. As the leader of a group the recognition was theirs because they followed me, which must have required much more courage of them than of me. I never even prayed for myself, but for those who served under me …’6

In a letter Eugene once wrote to writer and publisher Peter Stiff, two Koevoet-related matters about which he feels very strongly come to the fore. Firstly, that the Ovambo Koevoet members had never received the respect and recognition they deserved for their contribution to the war; secondly, that an abscess of corruption festered in the unit, which would later burst open. Of the Ovambo members he said, among other things, that he hadn’t known any ‘trackers’ only ‘battle-fit veterans who fought with heart and soul’ and who ‘could shoot fearlessly and accurately’. He went on to write that calling them trackers ‘detracts from the honour these soldiers richly deserved as true fighters’.

Eugene’s right-hand man and faithful Koevoet comrade-in-arms was Lukas Kilino, a former FNLA soldier who later also served in 32 Battalion. At fifteen, Kilino was trained in China in the use of heavy weapons and as a paratrooper. It was Kilino and other black Koevoet members Eugene had in mind when he wrote this letter.

The corruption in Koevoet, Eugene said, sticks in his craw. It was all about ‘head money (kopgeld) and tracking money, and money claimed from the SAP’s secret fund and from the SADF’. According to him, at that time there were all sorts of similar money-making schemes on the go.7

In Eugene’s report for Professor van der Hoven he mentions how – on three occasions, and on Dreyer’s orders – he went to bury landmines for a certain captain. Thereafter, large sums of reward money was claimed from the SADF for finding them. Half of the money went to the ‘source’, a black man who was known to Eugene, and the rest to the captain. The captain told Eugene that he and Dreyer were going to use the money to buy a farm in South Africa where Koevoet members could go to relax when they were back in the country.

‘I also saw the register of amounts to be paid out to the Ovambos for contacts in which terrorists were killed or captured and weapons reclaimed. The sums that were received – for example, R20 000 – were written in pencil and the amounts paid out were written in ink. The amounts paid out would only be R8 000 or R10 000, for example. This register was not the official claims register, but the one the group leaders had to sign to claim their group’s money.’

According to Eugene, this money was also meant for the farm in South Africa, but he doesn’t know whether the farm was ever bought.8

Another sensitive matter was Eugene’s growing disillusionment with Dreyer. He seems to have lost faith in his commanding officer’s leadership, partly because he did not agree with Dreyer’s methods and felt he was not getting the support he needed. Dreyer’s alleged involvement in certain activities did not sit well with him either.

Eugene thought the Koevoet units got too big, at the expense of professionalism. He believed all Dreyer wanted was ‘heads’ – and heads started, increasingly, to roll, with fatalities rising on both sides.

By this time Eugene and Dreyer’s work methods differed so much that Eugene no longer wanted to go to Ovamboland – not even several years later during the SWAPO infiltration just before the 1989 election. ‘I just didn’t want to serve under him again. And, at that stage I was not prepared to fight SWAPO and have people killed and maimed for the politicians to give the country away a few days later. That is exactly what happened. I was only prepared to go up and fight if we retained South West.’9

Dreyer in turn criticised Eugene’s lack of discipline, regarding him, later, as out of control. In May 1983 he sent the following telex to police headquarters in Pretoria: ‘The officer has been involved in many contacts with SWAPO terrorists. It is in his own interest to return to normal service and I therefore request his urgent transfer.’10

Eugene realised himself that it was time for a change: ‘I wanted to go, too. I had lost myself and would become a danger to my men.’11