7

 

Brothers in arms

As I see it, there are two ways of looking at Koevoet: as an outsider or as part of the inner circle. These perspectives are hard to reconcile.

I watched the former Koevoet members closely when they got together – square-shouldered men who fondly recalled the ‘old days’. They would joke a lot and get nostalgic when they listened to ‘Green Boots’, the Koevoet song.

One of the countless interviews I conducted the past four years was with Eric Winter, one the first Koevoet members. Winter told me that Koevoet’s cult status made many policemen want to go to the Border to be glory boys. Those who did not fit in were spat out.

Inside Koevoet there were also subcultures. The Alpha and Bravo groupings came about when Dreyer realised the men were not getting enough rest. He divided the teams into two groups, deployed in alternate weeks. Eugene was the automatic and undisputed leader of Alpha. The Alpha guys, I gathered, were the rough guys – the drinkers and troublemakers, the dedicated supporters who worshipped the ground Eugene walked on.

Bravo, of which Winter was part, was the more moderate group of older men. Yet some Bravo men embraced the Alpha culture. There was intense rivalry between the groups – it was all about the successes ‒ the number of kills ‒ also for Eugene. According to Winter, Eugene saw everyone as competition. He only socialised with the group of guys close to him.

Top: During the Border War, the Onhangwena border post between South West Africa (today Namibia) and Angola was one in name only.

Top: Koevoet members cross the border unperturbed in their Casspirs.

Time and again after being around the former Koevoet men I felt a sense of discomfort. My intuition told me that much had been left unsaid. The brotherhood of silence was alive and well: ‘What happened in Oshakati stays in Oshakati.’

Will we ever know the truth?

And how do you differentiate between justifiable actions and misconduct in war? To what extent are some actions ever justifiable in war? In his application for presidential pardon in 2002, Eugene wrote as follows: ‘I was part of a war without rules, conventions or decrees. Everything was admissable in the struggle against the enemy and the effort to defeat it … I testified in court that the terrorists who were captured and interrogated and refused to co-operate were executed and buried. They were the enemy, they showed no mercy and we showed no mercy. They cut people’s throats with bayonets. We used this to justify killing them but we knew that what we were doing was wrong.’1

In her evaluation report Professor Anna van der Hoven wrote that Eugene learnt on the Border to fight the enemy in an ‘unconventional manner’ using ‘guerrilla tactics’. In this way he ‘learnt to disregard the rules to survive in a situation where no rules or laws applied’.2 According to her, this mindset might well have influenced his later deeds.

Van der Hoven also mentions the Church Street bombing that took place during one of Eugene’s visits to Pretoria and the significant impact it had on him. It was his first encounter with the methods of the ANC. In his words, the liberation movement had shown ‘total disregard for the lives of innocent people, whoever they may be’. According to Van der Hoven, it was after this incident that he vowed to fight the ANC in every possible way.3

I still struggle to imagine what it must feel like to be in a life-or-death combat situation. What would I do? Would I be able to pull the trigger? Could I get fired up for the contact? Would ideology and an unshakeable conviction have driven me to kill someone in the name of a greater struggle? Would I also have seen the enemy as ‘the other’?

In Koevoet, Eugene became involved in covert operations for the first time.4 In 1982 he and Captain John Adam, another Koevoet member, were approached by former spy Craig Williamson5 to bomb the ANC’s head office in London. During a visit Eugene told me more about this operation:

Craig knew John Adam, so he came to Oshakati to recruit people for the destruction of the ANC head office in London. Jerry Raven [of SAP intelligence], among others, was also there that evening at Oshakati. Williamson stayed in the background. They were looking for someone who could kill with his bare hands if there was trouble, as it wouldn’t be possible to get weapons through customs.

I could use my hands very well. I could kill a man with the point of a pen, with a shard from my glasses, with a chain around my neck, a piece of wire, anything. I also had my blue belt in karate and was accomplished in free fighting, a sport where blows and kicks are not retracted before you make contact with your opponent.

We went to England with a great deal of money. Each of us had about ₤12 000 in cash and more in traveller’s cheques. The name on my passport was Alexander Knox. The cash was in case we had to split up quickly to get away. Additional passports were ready for us at the South African embassy.

The rest of the group – we were eight in all – got through customs easily and quickly, but I got caught up in a group of Chinese or Taiwanese tourists. So, there I stood in the middle of the European winter, over six foot tall in the middle of this group, tanned and with wide shoulders – I stuck out like a sore thumb. Whereas everyone else went through easily, I was held for four hours and interrogated. To make things worse, without me noticing John Adam had slipped his ₤12 000 into my bag.

The money was discovered but I denied all knowledge of it and said it must have happened by mistake: ‘How must I know? The luggage must have got mixed up,’ I said to the customs official.

‘Oh, so you’re flippant,’ he said to me.

I had no clue what ‘flippant’ meant so I just said ‘no’, hoping it was the right answer. After that I tried to keep a low profile in the interrogation. Eventually they let me go, but allowed me to stay for only two weeks while the others were allowed to stay for six months. In London we were followed almost everywhere: you know, guys on bikes, on street corners, in strange places. Adam told me I was neurotic – I responded that my survival in the bush depended on my observation skills, so I trusted my intuition.

We met Craig Williamson in a London pub called Dirty Dicks that overlooked the backyard of the ANC’s head office. It was the kind of place that dated back to the 13th or 14th century, complete with a dusty rat in the corner. We watched the ANC office for two weeks from the pub. On the night of the operation, bangers and mash was on the menu. To get there Jerry Raven, Vic McPherson [with Williamson at police intelligence], John Adam and I had to switch trains to shake two people off our trail. That night the gates of the ANC office were locked for the first time since we had started our watch.

Raven was the first over the gate, then me. McPherson sat across the road from the pub on the pavement, and Adam was further down the road. When we were both over the gate Raven realised the rucksack with the explosives was still lying on the pavement. I called McPherson to give it to us. Meanwhile, I searched the grounds for tramps – if I found one I would have had to take him out. I had a screwdriver and a Parker pen with me for the purpose. We placed the explosives behind an old bench and got out of there. Adam was only just visible in the misty distance – he was not wasting any time getting away. Williamson came to collect us in a vehicle.

On the morning of 14 March, the explosion rocked the suburb of Islington. Windows in buildings up to 360 metres away were shattered and an ANC volunteer who lived in a flat above the office was lightly injured.6 Johan Coetzee, the former head of the security police and later police commissioner, Williamson, Eugene and another six were granted amnesty for the incident by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

In his criminal trial Eugene implicated Williamson in another international incident. He claimed the apartheid spy ‘played a role’ in the much-publicised assassination of the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme in 1986.7 Eugene testified that Operation Long Reach, a military intelligence project headed by Williamson, played a role in Palme’s death.

Palme’s murderer has never been brought to book.

‘Can you tell me more about Craig Williamson’s alleged involvement in the assassination of Palme?’ I asked one day.

I realised I was taking a chance by broaching this sensitive subject, and watched Eugene closely.

‘I have nothing to add to what I said in my trial,’ he said, withdrawing.

According to many former Koevoet members, Eugene shared virtually everything with his friend and colleague Willie Nortjé. ‘If Gene was involved in any way, he would have told me about it,’ Willie told me.

I left it at that.

After the successful mission to London, the Security Branch at the police headquarters in Pretoria sat up and noticed Eugene. He received the South African Police Star for Outstanding Service for his part in completing the operation, then returned to Koevoet.

Zulu Delta’s Casspirs were often parked opposite Eugene’s house in Klein Angola in Oshakati.

In 2013, with Larry Hanton and Paul Fouché of the Koevoetbond, I visited General Dreyer and his wife Marietjie at their home in a Rooihuiskraal housing complex. Dreyer had photos of Eugene and allowed me to work through all of his albums and to make copies of his Koevoet video tapes.

Before long we were talking about the past. Dreyer told me how he and his first wife regularly had Eugene and some of the other unmarried men from Klein Angola,8 a suburb of Oshakati, over for Sunday lunch.

Eugene’s manners were impeccable: he would never arrive without a bunch of flowers or a little gift. In Dreyer’s voice I heard his pride in his men, the men who brought in the kills for him.

I asked him about his request to have Eugene removed from the theatre of operations. ‘I wanted to protect him. I wanted to get him out of the bush and out of Ovamboland. The man was completely battle-weary. He should not have been exposed to further combat situations,’ said Dreyer.

He did say, however, that he blocked two requests for Eugene to transfer to South Africa when he realised what the Security Branch wanted to use him for.

In January 1983 Eugene told Dreyer that he was seriously considering returning to South Africa at the end of the infiltration period, usually around July and August. He wanted a transfer to the counter­terrorist department of police headquarters, because he ‘knew the work’. Dreyer did not think this was a good idea. He offered to get Eugene out of the bush and keep him busy with other assignments.

‘He thought I was battle-weary,’ said Eugene, ‘but I didn’t think so at the time. I had just had enough of everything at Oshakati and was disillusioned by what Koevoet had turned into. I could see how more and more people were starting to run it as a business for personal gain. This was one of the main reasons for the big fallout between me and Colonel Dreyer. I stood firm on my point that the misuse of funds was wrong and in the process Dreyer’s attitude towards me started to cool.’9

The final showdown took place in Dreyer’s office in Oshakati. The tension, under the surface for a long time, flared after an incident the previous weekend. Willie Nortjé was party to the build-up and was present on the day of the altercation.

‘The previous week, Eugene and I had been to Etosha, to Namutoni, with a few others. When we returned from the pans on the Sunday, there was drinking at the new Ongediva base. It got rowdy and the guys ended up tearing the place up. Eugene only stayed for a short while. He had nothing to do with the fighting. Back at the base the guys made more trouble, and started shooting in the base,’ remembered Nortjé.

According to Nortjé, Dreyer had listened to all the versions of the incident beforehand. ‘The impression was created that Eugene had instigated the whole thing. At that time Eugene already believed that the welfare of the guys in the field was no longer a matter of much concern – that there were other priorities. He was very angry about this. Dreyer, however, was angry with Eugene about what had happened at Ongediva.

‘Eugene eventually walked into Dreyer’s office with an R5 over his shoulder,’ said Nortjé. ‘We had come straight out of the bush from the Ogandjera side and drove straight into the base in the one Casspir. The other Zulu Delta Casspir was parked outside in the street. Gene was agitated; he told us to shoot at the slightest sign of resistance. I didn’t hear everything they said, but there was shouting and swearing.’

When I discussed the fallout with Eugene he admitted that he was also partly to blame. ‘In my last days at Oshakati people may have got the impression that I hated Colonel Dreyer. I didn’t – it was more a question of being disappointed in him. I didn’t make things easy for him, either. Some of my own actions were wrong … uncalled for, such as the arguments and physical reaction to any criticism that was directed at the unit or its members. I also started to butt heads with others, especially other Koevoet members. I put that down to a lack of proper social infrastructure in Oshakati.10

Eugene told me at that time he had already submitted a request to be transferred to the Western Cape rather than the Pretoria Security Branch. ‘I knew I was fucked. I was tired of war. Too much war. I wanted to get away from the bush, from the East Rand, from Pretoria.’

However, his request was turned down; he was transferred to Pretoria. He left Ovamboland in May 1983. The business with Dreyer meant that he arrived in Pretoria under something of a cloud; his new commanding officer did not exactly welcome him with open arms.

Today Eugene thinks differently about a number of aspects of his time in Koevoet. His blind loyalty to certain individuals and a specific cause has made way for a desire to speak with greater honesty about his time in the bush and what it did to his spirit.

‘The myths about Koevoet must be put into perspective and tempered by the truth. I expect much criticism, because I have kicked the sacred Koevoet bull in the testicles. I intend to keep kicking the bull so that all this worship of heroes with feet of clay comes to an end. I want to stop young people from making this mistake, from finding themselves in my position one day having chased false glory.

Eugene (second from left) with Captain George Steyn (on the ground) and Brigadier Hans Dreyer, commanding officer of Koevoet.

‘History must not be repeated.’11

On Sunday, 15 July 2012, at 09h00, Eugene and his former commanding officer General Hans Dreyer met once again – this time, at Pretoria Central. Earlier, Eugene had indicated that he wanted to make peace with the general, but was uncertain which course such a meeting would take. It was an emotional moment for both men.

‘Our paths separated 29 years ago. It was a very bad time. I would like you to be there,’ Eugene had said in a phone call the day before the meeting.

The traffic flowed free on the motorway to Pretoria. My thoughts turned to the oath every policeman takes – the same oath Hans Dreyer and Eugene de Kock once swore: I dedicate myself to the enforcement of law and order, the prevention of crime and the maintenance of the internal security of the Republic … So help me God.

I found a parking place in the shade. My friend Carina had come with me. We filled in the visitors’ form and walked through the first turnstile. You could smell the many hands that had touched the metal. Eugene had arranged for his friend Daan du Toit, who had been a radio operator at Oshakati, to bring Dreyer. We got into the small bus that took us to Medium B. It dropped us off at a group of warders. They watched us, closely. I got out, looked past them at the prison’s sports fields to the right, then left at the high brick wall behind which Eugene spent his days. The monstrous building stared back at me, as if blindfolded.

We bundled forward to hand our visitors’ forms to the warder. Black women with head scarves, young women with bags, brothers and fathers. To one side, people hung around in the sun. I looked closer and saw Dreyer and Du Toit, waiting on a wooden bench. The general’s face was stern, his cap pulled low over his eyes. Du Toit’s beard was snow white. He was wearing a tracksuit.

You wait for anything from ten minutes to half an hour before being called. I spoke to a young man from Benoni who was visiting his uncle. He came once a month, he said. Then he tried to be positive: his uncle only had two years left to serve. Who was I coming to see?

‘De Kock,’ I said.

‘De Kock? Is he a changed man now?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I think so,’ I said. Nearly twenty years is a long time.

Brown uniforms filled the stairs. Hopeful, everyone looked up.

‘Jansen! Dreyer!’

We walked through the heavy wooden front door. That day, the female warders searched us thoroughly. I showed my ID book and they peered at the see-through bag in my hand – my car keys and lip balm. Through the final gate and out into the square. A few rays of sunlight managed to squeeze through the gaps in the corrugated-iron roof. I looked left to the door that separated us from the prisoners and saw Eugene through the steel railings.

‘Where is he?’ General Dreyer looked uncomfortable, tense. I pointed to the gated room beyond the warders who shepherded the prisoners through. When he saw Eugene coming forward, Dreyer’s face transformed into a broad smile.

Eugene signed in, set the stopwatch on his wrist, then strode over quickly to Dreyer, hand outstretched. Their eyes met. Dreyer swung his right arm in a wide gesture; the two hands clamped tight. They clapped one another on the upper arm, pulled together, embraced. The general took Eugene’s hand again.

‘You are going to break my hand,’ laughed Eugene.

‘You look good!’

Was I imagining it, or was the general suddenly standing taller? They went to sit opposite each other, knees almost touching. The rest of the group comprised me, Carina, Du Toit and another prisoner whom Eugene had arranged to join us because each prisoner was only allowed two visitors at a time.

The general sat very quietly. His left side leant forward, his gnarled right hand holding his right knee. His khaki cap was pulled down low over his eyes and his bifocals. His eyes did not leave Eugene’s face for a second. For an hour and fifteen minutes he sat beside him, looked at him, listened to everything he said.

Eugene had much to tell in very little time. How things were in jail; how the discipline he had learnt in the police and Koevoet was standing him in good stead. How, for two years and ten months in C-Max, they had not been able to break him; how he had emerged even stronger. How it helped to live a clean life inside. How he was never involved with drugs, sodomy or any other dubious activities.

Then Eugene leant forward. The general changed hands. The eyes behind the glasses narrowed. Eugene spoke more slowly, softly. Their private conversation. Saying thank you, saying sorry. Making right.

‘What you taught me helped me to survive,’ said Eugene. ‘The things you cannot learn in books, but from the person who was there himself.’

He looked down for a moment. ‘I’m sorry. Sorry about all the things that happened.’

General Dreyer patted him on the leg, his eyes calm. ‘It’s over, son,’ he said, patting his leg again. ‘It’s in the past now, that.’

I sat very quietly, then handed Carina a R100 note. The tuck-shop queue was short. She rose to take our orders.

‘Who is that man?’ the general asked Eugene, nodding towards the other prisoner who was part of our group. ‘Is he a policeman?’

Eugene explained. The conversation turned to Koevoet and Operation Vlakvark.

‘How many kills, again?’ asked the general.

‘That was Piet Stassen,’ said Eugene. ‘He was the most successful that day. Thirty-eight kills.’

The general’s body rocked back, his head nodding in recollection, the ice broken. They looked like father and son.

Carina came back with the Melville Koppies murderer, who was carrying the tray for her. He placed the tray on my lap and greeted me. The general took a Coke, but forgot to drink it. The guy carrying the tray only has one eye, whispered Carina. There’s a story to that, I whispered back. Her eyes widened. She turned to the other prisoner at the end of our bench, gave the blue mark on his wrist one look and leaned forward.

‘Show me your tattoo,’ she said.

He squirmed, embarrassed, then unbuttoned the top of his orange overall to show us. A big bicep, and a big tattoo.

Carina sighed. ‘A thing of beauty will always be beautiful.’

I egged her on: ‘Show him yours.’

‘This is all I can show,’ said Carina. She lifted up the hem of her shirt, a fig leaf with two tendrils just visible on her stomach.

The prisoner could not believe his eyes. Then he threw his cropped head back and laughed a belly laugh. ‘Now this one’s a real woman!’

The general shifted the brown, calloused hand on his knee. ‘Who is this man?’ he asked Eugene again. ‘Is he a policeman?’

Eugene explained again, then his words became automatic rifle fire. He told of the workshop in the prison, the books he read, everyday life in jail. The general listened without moving a muscle.

I looked at Eugene, at his neat profile. Who is Eugene de Kock? To his Koevoet and police colleagues he was a dispassionate soldier, a comsummate hunter of men. A member and, later, commander of Vlakplaas. In the Pretoria Central hierarchy he was classified as an ‘assassin’, which set him apart from the others.

A prison guard came past and asked Eugene for his ticket. The piece of paper, dirty from overuse, fell. He bent down to pick it up. Number 50.

I remembered an earlier visit when the paper square had also fluttered to the ground and landed under the bench. ‘Fuck off,’ he had said under his breath when a greasy-looking guy sidled too close to our bench. Paedophile, he told me. He had no respect for them.

‘It’s time,’ said the warder. ‘Sorry.’

‘That’s fine,’ said Eugene. ‘We had fifteen minutes extra today.’

It is in the focus of his eyes that Eugene shows his emotion, I realised. It is when he really looks at you that you see the soul of a tempered man.

‘How should I approach Eugene?’ I had asked Piet Croucamp after my second visit in July 2011.

‘Quietly,’ Piet had answered. ‘He is a bit like an abused child – unsure how to handle compassion.’

A year later, everything was different.

We moved towards the exit. Around us, people came and went through the security gates. The general pushed his hand into his trouser pocket and fished out a wallet. He counted off a roll of notes. Thrust a thousand rand into my hand.

‘For Gene,’ he said. ‘For whatever he needs. Contact me any time, meisie. I’ll gladly help.’

He shook my hand and walked out with Daan du Toit and Carina.

I stayed for a moment with the man whose eyes were shining. His hair, still dark and neatly cut. Each hair smoothed flat. The orange overall immaculate and neatly ironed. Hi-Tec boots polished bright for the visit. His skin looking like it belonged to someone far younger than the 63-year-old who stood before me. It was the skin of someone who gets no sun.

‘How was it?’ I asked.

“Good, very good. Please tell the general I am sorry for everything I got up to.’

He talked fast, looking back at the door to the gated room.

‘You know it’s not necessary,’ I said. ‘Those things are over.’ He put his left arm around me, hugged me firmly – looked back, again.

‘Tell him anyway. I’m just sorry things came between us as they did. It felt as if my heart was too big for my chest. He was a mentor, just like my father; he taught me how to be and how not to be.’

His eyes were empty, as if the wind blew through them.

‘The court then summarised the aggravating circumstances taken into account in respect of the seriousness of the offences. The offences had been planned and executed with meticulous precision. There had been time to recant.
Nevertheless, the offences had been committed and attempts were made to conceal the offences and prevent their being traced back to the police. Some of the offences were cold-blooded and cruel, with no compassion for the victims or respect for their bodies after their deaths. Innocent people, who had not constituted a threat to the accused or other members of the police, were killed.
In certain cases, the victims’ only offence had been their intention to reveal crimes committed by the police. Even members of the SAP or askaris who had worked with the police were victims of violence and killings.’

– QUOTED FROM JUDGE WILLEM VAN DER MERWE’S SENTENCING PROCEEDINGS IN EUGENE DE KOCK’S CRIMINAL TRIAL, 30 OCTOBER 1996.