8

 

A place called Vlakplaas

‘It’s here, somewhere,’ said Larry Hanton, bolt upright like a meerkat while scanning the surrounding area. ‘I remember the Hennops River.’

We had taken the Erasmia off-ramp on the outskirts of Pretoria and were driving up and down a dirt road looking for the farm entrance. There was no sign trumpeting ‘Vlakplaas’. After a while we stopped at a building site.

‘Do you know where Vlakplaas is?’

The workers immediately knew what I was talking about. ‘Dikoko’s place?’ One of them remembered Eugene de Kock. ‘It’s that way. Where the cattle are.’

We followed two herders who were rounding up some cattle and calves, and stopped right in front of the main entrance. The farmhouse was small, half hidden behind tall trees and overgrown shrubs. We got out, peered through the wire fence. The homestead looked deserted; the metallic taste of blood settled in my throat. I felt nauseous and dizzy.

‘Let’s just get out of here,’ I said to Larry.

‘Wait, let me take a photo of you at the gate.’

Two scraggy dogs ran up, barking hesitantly; a 4x4 and a bakkie were parked under a large lean-to. The Hennops River murmured in the background. The wind played softly through the long grass and the trees.

Top: The author at the main entrance to Vlakplaas.

Top: Former Vlakplaas operative Nick Vermeulen at Vlakplaas with the bullet-proof vest custom made for Vlakplaas members to look like civilian wear. In the background are what used to be the living quarters of the askaris.

Photos taken, I got behind the steering wheel with unsteady legs. It was 2012, my first visit to Vlakplaas, the headquarters of Section C1 – the SAP’s death squad, as it became known in the media.

Vlakplaas fell under the jurisdiction of the security police. This unit, known as Section C, was earmarked for the founding of a South African equivalent of the Rhodesian security forces unit. The unit had three divisions: Section C1, the operational wing at Vlakplaas; Section C2, tasked mainly with identifying and interrogating activists and deciding which terrorists to recruit as askaris and which to prosecute; and Section C3, involved in compiling statistics about acts of terror.1

Having read everything about Vlakplaas I could lay my hands on, my awareness now teeters on the brink of understanding. I may know the facts about the history of Vlakplaas, but a true understanding of the violence of apartheid and the abuses by the security forces still evades me. My fingers may have meshed with the fence around that farm, but I cannot comprehend the physical pain, torture and fear of death that Section C victims must have experienced. I have to force myself over the edge of innocence into the abyss of this inhumanity.

‘There’s another entrance behind the house. The chopper pad is there too,’ said Larry. ‘Maybe we can enter there.’

We found the small two-track through hip-high grass to the second entrance. The helipad was a few hundred metres from the fence. A large wooden cross had been erected beside the helipad; I photographed Larry next to it. A man unlocked the gate and allowed us to look around and take photos. He behaved like the owner of the farm; I wondered who would want to live in a place like Vlakplaas. Suddenly it looked like just an ordinary, neglected farmstead.

‘The living quarters of the askaris were here, on the left,’ Larry explained as we walked in – a brick building with a long row of rooms. We also went to the rondavel that was Eugene’s office, the farmhouse and the undercover entertainment area. It looked like a braai area you’d find on any South African farm.

The building that was once the canteen was locked. I peered through the window – no sign of pool tables, bearded men or bottles of leeutande: ‘lions’ teeth’, a mixture of liquor dregs and garlic that newcomers to Vlakplaas had to drink.

The voices of the past no longer even whispered here.

Vlakplaas is about 20 kilometres outside Pretoria. It was purchased in 1980 and registered as state property. Section C1 was established to convince members of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the ANC’s military wing, and other struggle organisations to work for the Security Branch. These men would be used to identify and capture their former comrades who had infiltrated the country. The captives would then have to choose between co-operation with the Security Branch, which included a salary and benefits, or imprisonment. Those who decided to work for the Security Branch were called askaris, a Swahili word meaning ‘fighter’.

In his application for presidential pardon in 2002, Eugene refers to a memorandum called ‘Die stigting van Vlakplaas en die Teen-Terroriste Eenheid’ (The establishment of Vlakplaas and the Counter-Terrorism Unit)2 compiled by General Johan Coetzee, a former police commissioner.3 According to the memorandum, the police rented Vlakplaas from as early as June 1979, primarily to provide central accommodation for ‘contaminated witnesses’, also called ‘makgemaakte terroriste’ (literally, terrorists who had been tamed).4

According to Coetzee, the Vlakplaas project was not initially a permanent one. Little money was put into the initiative. ‘[The] project was somewhat disorganised both as far as location and purpose were concerned and there were no clearly formulated guiding principles, especially considering that the project was initially not intended as a permanent undertaking, and was operated on rented property.’5

Later, due to the escalation of ‘the terrorist onslaught against the Republic of South Africa’, it was decided to buy the property. ‘General Coetzee’s opinion, as can be deduced from the memorandum, was that Vlakplaas’s primary goal was the fight against terrorism. The services of the askaris were used to identify terrorists, after which they were arrested and taken to court, or were persuaded to join the unit,’ wrote Eugene.6

In the last months of 1981 the Vlakplaas project became better organised after a directive, issued on 11 September 1981 to all departments and commanding officers of the various security branches, announced and outlined the objectives of Special Section C1. According to Eugene, the intention of this directive was to make the services of C1 available to other security branches of the police; it was clear that they were available for a wide variety of actions.

However, he later wrote that the amnesty hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had shown that Vlakplaas was never meant exclusively for the purpose Coetzee and others had in mind. He went on to say:

In my time as a commanding officer of a Koevoet unit in the erstwhile South West Africa, I earned the reputation of being a merciless hunter of terrorists. I never received any formal training as a security policeman, nor did I have any practical experience in investigative work related to security matters. I was not even trained as an ordinary detective. For practical purposes, I was a trained ‘soldier’ in the armed conflict against SWAPO …

The other police members of Vlakplaas, both before and after I took over command of the unit, were in a similar position in that they had no specific skills in this regard either. Most of the members, including myself, were used to conduct operations of a military nature.

Many of the men at Vlakplaas had been involved in Koevoet, the SAP’s task force or counter-insurgency unit. They were all trained in the use of explosives and had attended intelligence courses. During these courses, a great deal of emphasis was placed on the dangers that communism, the ANC, trade unions, and so on posed to the government.

These officers, including myself, were already used to the idea of violence, human pain and suffering as a result of the gruesome acts in which we participated and to which we were exposed during our service in the aforementioned units. I am therefore convinced that we were appointed as a result of our ability to deal with the threat of violence and because killing would be nothing new to us.

There is no doubt in my mind that the hierarchy in the South African Police was well aware of the requirements for police officers wanting to transfer to Vlakplaas.7

During one of my visits Eugene told me about a strange experience he’d had, which had touched him deeply. It was just after he had left South West under the cloud of his fallout with Dreyer. He was driving alone on the road between Vryheid and Babanango when something suddenly shifted in his consciousness. At that moment everything he looked at appeared completely surreal: the flat landscape, the sun, the feel of the wind against his skin. ‘I thought: how the fuck have things reached this point? Why the fuck did I end up doing what I do? How can this be possible?’

But a few weeks later he was part of a cross-border operation in Swaziland and everything was back to how it had been. Without hesitation he had lifted his rifle and shot Zwelibanzi Nyanda dead. Nyanda was a commander of MK in Swaziland and the brother of Siphiwe Nyanda, later a general and head of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF). He told me about Zwelibanzi Nyanda … an exceptionally big man. The incident took place in November 1983 at a house in Swaziland. Eugene could not get Nyanda to go down. And he was an excellent shot.

The postmortem showed that Eugene shot Nyanda nine times, from his left shoulder to his stomach. Nyanda still tried to get away. The fatal shots were the three Eugene fired into his back, causing Nyanda to crash through the garden gate. A colleague then appeared from behind the fence and fired two more shots at Nyanda’s head. But he was already dead.

From June 1983 until early 1993 – when Eugene was attached to Vlakplaas – several people died in one way or another at the hands of Vlakplaas operators. Eugene was not directly involved in all these incidents, but after his appointment as commanding officer of C1 in 1985, he saw to it that most assignments handed down to him from the SAP’s top structure were executed.

Many of the attacks on members of the liberation movements took place in South Africa’s neighbouring states. The attacks were often in collaboration with other branches of the security forces or, in some instances, with members of the defence force’s Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB).

The radio call signals for the covert police unit Special Section C1, stationed at Vlakplaas.

After the Swaziland operation in which Zwelibanzi Nyanda was shot dead and for which Eugene received the SOE (the South African Police Star for Outstanding Service)8 other murders by members of the Security Branch followed – such as those of the Cradock Four: Matthew Goniwe, Fort Calata, Sparrow Mkhonto and Sicelo Mhlauli.9 On 8 May 1985 the three community leaders known as the Pebco Three – Sipho Hashe, Qaqawuli Godolozi and Champion Galela – were abducted at the Port Elizabeth airport and murdered at Post Chalmers near Cradock. Their bodies were burnt and thrown into the Fish River.10 Eugene pointed out in one of our conversations that the Port Elizabeth Security Branch in particular was responsible for the deaths of the Cradock Four and the Pebco Three.

Oliver Tambo’s bodyguard, Sidney Msibi, was also captured by Vlakplaas operatives and assaulted. Paul Dikeledi, Cassius Make and an MK member named Viva were murdered in Swaziland on grounds of information provided by the askari Glory Sedibe.11

The activists Pansu Smith, Sipho Dlamini and Busi Majola died in Swaziland at the hands of Vlakplaas operatives. After this operation, Eugene and the others went to General Johan Coetzee’s house in the early hours of the morning to report on what had happened. Eugene later wrote: ‘I remember the general was in his dressing gown. Coetzee shook everybody’s hands. When he got to me, he said that he did not know whether he should touch my hands because they were drenched in blood.’12

Four alleged MK operatives died in 1986 in an ambush near Amsterdam on the Swaziland border.13 In the same year, four members of the Chesterville Youth Organisation were murdered,14 and a body was blown up in Pretoria by Vlakplaas members and another in Jozini. The Durban activist Sheila Nyanda, wife of Siphiwe Nyanda, was abducted in Mbabane, Swaziland, and tortured.15 According to Eugene, the Middelburg Security Branch was involved in this incident.

Eugene also applied for amnesty for the attacks on Cosatu House in March 1987; on Khotso House, the headquarters of the South African Council of Churches, in September 1988 in Johannesburg; and on Khanya House in Pretoria, the offices of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference, in October 1988.

Massive quantities of weapons were moved regularly via Koevoet from South West Africa to South Africa, and weapons were also supplied to Renamo in Mozambique.16

Top: An aerial photo of Vlakplaas.

Top: The main building at Vlakplaas can be seen on the right, with Eugene’s office on the left.

Top: Former policeman Larry Hanton in front of Eugene’s office.

Mbuso Tshabalala and Charles Zakhele Ndaba died in July 1990 after being held captive for about seven days and tortured cruelly. They were murdered on 14 July 1990 at the mouth of the Tugela River (now Thukela), their bodies thrown into the river.17 The Durban C1 branch operating under the command of Colonel Andy Taylor was responsible for Tshabalala and Ndaba’s deaths, Eugene told me.

In the words of the commissioners serving on the TRC: ‘The killers of Vlakplaas have horrified the nation. The stories of a chain of shallow graves across the country, containing the remains of abducted activists who were brutalised, tortured and ultimately killed, have left many South Africans deeply shocked. The media has understandably focused on these events – labelling Eugene de Kock, the Vlakplaas commander, “Prime Evil”. ’18

The things I read and heard were extremely disturbing. My ongoing exposure to stories of cruel murders and brutal violence plunged me into a spiral of depression. Then there was the hard reality of my visits: the knowledge that the man with the soft voice who sat opposite me had committed some of those murders with his own hands – those neatly groomed hands, resting in his lap.

It took me three, four years of regular contact with Eugene to start understanding the appalling extent of human viciousness on both sides – security forces and freedom fighters. To realise that I, too, carry the seed of evil, as we all do. To understand that there is no such thing as normal behaviour in war. The security forces’ underworld of crime and terrorism became a breeding ground for unthinkable acts.

One day I plucked up all my courage: ‘Eugene, what does it feel like to kill someone?’

He grimaced. ‘The person, the victim, gives off a smell,’ he said. ‘To this day I recall that smell. It nauseates me to the depths of my soul. It is the smell of fear bursting from the person’s pores and through their body’s fluids.’

That day, a door to greater understanding opened in my mind. At the same time, I felt something die in my soul. I experienced terrible anger and powerlessness at the thought that apartheid had been maintained for so long, so cruelly, by the death squads at Vlakplaas, the Security Branch and the defence force though their covert activities.

Torture had been the order of the day for the security forces and murder and robbery squad detectives, I gathered.

Eugene explained it like this: ‘You must understand, from the time of Koevoet onwards, we used torture to gain information. [The security guard] Japie Maponya, for example, was interrogated by others before he was brought to Vlakplaas. There he was tortured with tear gas and tubing [a form of torture in which the victim’s head is placed in a plastic bag or tied up with a piece of inner tubing so he cannot breathe].’

Eugene told me with shocking honesty how the Durban Security Branch, for example, smeared Vaseline on gas masks (to keep every last bit of oxygen out) before spraying tear gas inside them and placing them over victims’ faces. ‘The prisoner then lost control over all his bodily functions and began to talk … In Koevoet I preferred to tie a piece of cloth around a SWAPO prisoner’s hands and to pull him up until his toes were just touching the ground. You use his own muscles against him, everything cramps and later the muscles become stiff. Then he starts talking.’

In A Long Night’s Damage Eugene admits it became part of their modus operandi to kill activists to protect the information obtained during interrogation. The identities of informants also had to be protected. ‘Part of my job was to gather information about ANC members or collaborators. If necessary, the people I questioned had to be eliminated to prevent them from exposing security force members or the location of Vlakplaas. Sometimes we had to conceal the crimes of the security police.’19

Legislation that the National Party government put in place in the 1960s created a fertile breeding ground for the police’s abuse of power. In 1963, John Vorster – minister of justice, police and prisons at the time, and later prime minister – pushed the General Laws Amendment Act through Parliament. This made provision for 90 days’ detention without trial, extended to 180 days about 20 years later. It marked the decline of the constitutional state and made some police members believe they were above the law. Countless detainees died in detention. It was a mindset that led some policemen to mercilessly track down enemies of the state and to take it upon themselves to murder them.20

The Sharpeville Massacre on 21 March 1960 – which saw panicked policemen open fire on unarmed demonstrators, killing 69 – preceded Vorster’s legislation. Sharpeville was a watershed in SAP history, claims former brigadier Hennie Heymans. In the aftermath of the shooting, the ANC and PAC were banned and went underground. The era of police death squads had begun.21

Vlakplaas operators worked not only in death squads, but also to cover up the transgressions of the security police.

In 2002 Eugene wrote in his application for presidential pardon how in June 1984 Brigadier Jack Cronjé had ordered him to supply activists with hand grenades and limpet mines from which the fuses had been removed. The activists – Congress of South African Students (Cosas) members from KwaThema – were suspected of attacking the homes of police members in the Springs district.

‘The intention of removing the hand grenades’ timing mechanisms was to injure or kill their users. To ensure that the leader of the group of activists would not be able to identify Joe Mamasela – the askari who would hand over the hand grenades – a limpet mine from which the fuse had been removed was given to him, which would explode and kill him. These activities show once again that Vlakplaas was unquestionably the operational wing of the security police in the struggle against the terrorists.’22

Vlakplaas was also roped in as a ‘clean-up’ unit: ‘Vlakplaas was used to assist in the concealment of crimes committed by members of other branches of the security police and to avoid the serious embarrassment that would result if [police] involvement in such crimes was revealed. When security branches found themselves in a dilemma, an appeal would be made to Vlakplaas to assist them,’ Eugene writes. ‘Usually C1’s commanding officers would be approached, but in some cases I was approached for help directly. Examples include the [Johannes] Mabotha, [Japie] Maponya and Goodwill Sikhakhane incidents.’ 23

Eugene also told of how he had been approached by Lieutenant Schoon of the Jozini Security Branch to help with the kidnapping of an unidentified activist from Swaziland. Gert Schoon was the brother of Brigadier Willem Schoon, Vlakplaas commander and later the head of Section C. ‘With Brigadier Schoon’s blessing, we had a situation, once again, in which other security police used Vlakplaas to do their dirty work. The activist was handed over [by C1 officers] to the Security Branch at Black Rock or Island Rock. I understood the man was badly hurt during interrogation. He was then killed and Gert Schoon blew up his body on the missile range near the sea.’24

Vlakplaas’s obligation to other security branches did not sit well with Eugene. A former Koevoet member and Vlakplaas operative with whom I spoke told of how Eugene once said to a police officer, ‘We are not a butchery. We can’t just do your dirty work for you.’

Eugene’s dissatisfaction with this type of work did not prevent him and his colleagues from performing another part of their job: being a death squad. This may be because they were militarised policemen, trained not in normal policing but in wiping out the enemy.

As a former Koevoet member and Vlakplaas operator Johnny (pseudonym) put it: ‘We left Ovamboland [Koevoet] with a certain mentality – we were losing the war there, but it had shifted, as we saw it, to South Africa. This, among other reasons, was why we acted so aggressively. We were soldiers, it was ingrained in us. Ordinary policemen did not have that mindset – they had families and stable jobs, they were in comfort zones. So, we were used to do the dirty work that these ordinary policemen were not prepared to do.’

‘That being said, at Vlakplaas we were all volunteers,’ Eugene remarked when I mentioned Johnny’s comment to him.

Committing ongoing acts of violence and heinous crimes leaves scars, Karl Marlantes writes in his book What it is Like to Go to War: ‘The violence of combat assaults psyches, confuses ethics, and tests souls. This is not only the result of the violence suffered. It is also the result of the violence inflicted. Warriors suffer from wounds to their bodies, to be sure, but because they are involved in killing people they also suffer from their compromises with, or outright violations of, the moral norms of society and religion.’25

A close bond between Koevoet and Vlakplaas was inevitable. It was important for C1’s activities to remain covert so, in the late 1980s, Eugene received orders from Brigadier Schoon to fetch weapons from Ovamboland and to store them at Vlakplaas.26 The weapons included machine guns, mortars, automatic rifles, small arms, landmines, hand grenades, ammunition and large quantities of military explosives.27

TRC hearings revealed that much of the weaponry supplied to the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) prior to the 1994 election came from Koevoet. Several Vlakplaas operatives applied for amnesty for the transport of weapons from Namibia (previously South West Africa) to Vlakplaas. It would appear that this occurred on Brigadier Schoon’s orders. The weapons came from Koevoet stores and from the SADF’s Oshivelo base. It included AK-47s and ammunition, M26 and Russian hand grenades and explosives, SADF explosives, Russian and SADF limpet mines, light machine guns, SAM7s, mortars, RPG pipes and ammunition, and various other items.

‘The weapons were not recorded in the weapons register. No official registers were held in respect of the nature and extent of weapons stored. Initially, I attempted to keep records, but later stopped doing so, largely because no officers appeared to be interested in these details or ever requested to inspect such records.’28

As commanding officer at Vlakplaas, Eugene had total control over these weapons. The purpose of having them, he said, was to carry out Vlakplaas operations. Over and above the Ovamboland weapons that had been sent to Vlakplaas, any weapons and ammunition of Eastern Bloc/Soviet origin that the security brances had seized were ordered to be sent there. According to Eugene, ‘we used these kinds of weapons when we deemed it necessary to create the impression that terrorists were involved in violence and killings. Vlakplaas was also free to request commercial explosives from the SAP’s task force, and did so on occasion.’29

According to Eugene, Brigadier Schoon sometimes accompanied him when they went to fetch weapons that had been seized but could not be fed back into service in the SAP. ‘Among other things, some of these weapons were used on request of the SAP and SADF to build arms caches which, when discovered, would justify attacks on ANC bases in neighbouring states’.30

‘[H]and in hand with total onslaught went total denial. Under no circumstances should the state be seen to be involved in, or responsible for, violent unrest. The government attributed violence in black townships to radical elements in the townships and not to state-affiliated operatives. Denial was so important that we received orders from high-ranking officers to kill some of our own comrades when they threatened to spill the beans,’ writes Eugene.31

I thought again of David Klatzow’s words in Steeped in Blood: The Life and Times of a Forensic Scientist: ‘The truth was a complete misnomer in the turbulent 1980s. The state propaganda machine trumpeted out “official” versions of events, portraying the “successes” of the government in fighting the total onslaught in an attempt to brainwash the public at large. Unbeknown to most average South Africans, a common denominator in many of the political stories at the time was a place called Vlakplaas. It was truly a place from hell … No law applied here other than the eleventh commandment: Do not get caught. The men from Vlakplaas lied, raped, murdered and thieved their way around the country …’32

When I go through the TRC reports, read book after book, and study Eugene’s documents, a movie plays out in my mind – one that illuminates the dark corners of the human psyche. One of Eugene’s favourite sayings when plans were being laid was ‘Just between us sparrows on the roof …’

Eugene and the Vlakplaas operators did everything they could to keep the existence of Vlakplaas, the presence of the askaris and the nature of their activities hidden. To maintain this guise of anonymity no official police vehicles were used on the grounds and the officers were not uniformed. Two armed men guarded the grounds by night, and an officer with a concealed weapon by day. Anyone without official authority or business was refused entry.

Great care was taken to ensure that Vlakplaas operations could not be traced to us or to the SAP. False alibis were created; we used vehicles that could not be traced to the police, false registration numbers and weapons of Eastern origin.

[The askari] Brian Ngqulunga was shot dead in Bophuthatswana with AK-47 rifles to create the impression of a revenge killing by ANC members. We also believed Bophuthatswana lacked the resources and skills to investigate his death. The officers involved in this incident and I booked rooms in a Braamfontein hotel to create an alibi.

[The askari] Goodwill Sikhakhane33 was also shot with an AK-47. [Krugersdorp security guard] Japie Maponya34 was killed in Swaziland. False travel and accommodation claims were submitted to create the impression that at the time of his kidnapping and murder, Vlakplaas members were in Jozini.35

I was stunned by the Vlakplaas operatives’ cloak-and-dagger lives. According to Vlakplaas operator Riaan Bellingan, their work was intelligence-driven. It was not the art of killing – ‘it was the art of staying out of shit’.

I gathered that police units also hid things from one another. For example, Eugene mentioned how the heads and commanders of the various security police units met daily in Pretoria to discuss security matters. These meetings were referred to as the Sanhedrin.36 According to him, the heads of C2 and C3 attended these meetings regularly, but he was never invited.

‘I believe there were two reasons for this. Firstly, with Vlakplaas being the operational arm of the security police, I could make no valuable contribution to security matters. Secondly, as commanding officer of Vlakplaas I might report on matters not meant for the other security branches’ ears.’37

I wondered anew about the levels on which life-and-death decisions were made. In his application for presidential pardon it was important for Eugene to show that most Vlakplaas operations were ordered by higher authorities – or, at least, that his commanders were aware of them.

He wrote: ‘During December 1985 Vlakplaas was involved in another attack upon so-called activists in Lesotho. I received the order from Brigadier Schoon and he led me to understand that he had received it from “the top” – that is, from the state president, Mr PW Botha. As far as I can recall, approximately seven people were killed in this attack.’

Eugene also indicated that General Johan van der Merwe, former commissioner of police, had admitted in his testimony before the TRC that he had known about C1 operations in neighbouring countries. General Van der Merwe testified: ‘I had used the C1 unit and knew personally that we were involved in cross-border actions in some cases. The members of C1 were very experienced and competent, had undergone counter-insurgency training and were capable of working under difficult circumstances with clear minds. They were essentially the only operational unit in the security forces.’38

Eugene mentioned the high praise he and his team members received for their actions, although he refers to the medals as ‘trinkets’. How proud he must have been, though, when – at last – he received the recognition he had craved as a child on the highest level. As he pointed out, it is inconceivable that these awards would have been made without the police hierarchy’s full knowledge of the reasons for them.

‘The SOE [Police Star for Excellent Service] was awarded to me for the London bombing [1982] and the Nyanda/McFadden incident, and I received the Silver Cross for Bravery for the Lesotho incident [1985]. We were were also congratulated on a number of occasions for other incidents. General Johan van der Merwe testified before the TRC that I was one of the most highly decorated policemen in the force. In addition to cross-border operations, Vlakplaas was involved in a number of domestic incidents in which people were killed, injured or assaulted or had their property damaged.’39

As far as former brigadier Hennie Heymans can establish, Eugene is the country’s most highly decorated post-war policeman for bravery and military expertise. There were also several covert operations for which Eugene received no recognition, for obvious reasons.

The large sums of money channelled into Vlakplaas also gave Eugene the impression that the apartheid government approved of the unit’s activities.40

Some police generals knew what was going on at Vlakplaas, or must have had a very good idea. The nature of C1 had to be kept secret right up to the top – but at the same time it became apparent from my discussions with Eugene and former Vlakplaas members that all the senior members of the Security Branch in Pretoria, and of the security branches countrywide, knew about Vlakplaas and had even visited the facility. Likewise, the police generals’ political heads must have had some kind of idea of what happened at Vlakplaas – but the politicians, in particular, accepted no responsibility in their TRC submissions.

In an open letter written in 2014, Eugene alleged that decisions about life and death were made on three government levels. He said the decision-making began in the Counter-revolutionary Information Committee (Trewits), which consisted of members of the security police, military intelligence service and national intelligence service. ‘This group was the first of three levels at which it was decided who would be shot dead or abducted and who would live. The recommendations of this committee were seldom, if ever, turned down.

‘The next two levels were the Co-ordinating Information Committee and the State Security Council. When an action or operation was approved, the group or unit to which the task would be assigned for execution was decided.’41

According to Hennie Heymans, however, this allegation is incorrect: ‘I can swear to this under oath because as a policeman I was seconded to the secretariat of the State Security Council. The Counter-revolutionary Information Committee (Trewits) never decided who should die! Their task was, among other things, collecting information about where bases and things were located, how things were looking there and the best attack methods – tactical information, mostly. [For example] should the SADF decide to take out a house in Matola in a reprisal operation, this inter­departmental task team knew how things looked there.

‘The Co-ordinating Information Committee (CIC) met under the chairmanship of the director-general of the national intelligence service. Its aim was to co-ordinate the collection of information – who does what, training, sources, that kind of thing.

‘Then there was the working committee of the State Security Council. The heads of the security forces and information services met here and only two weeks after this meeting would the State Security Council meeting be held under the state president’s chairmanship. The working committee would go through everything thoroughly before putting it before the state president and the State Security Council.

‘It was never decided at Trewits, the CIC, the working committee or the State Security Council who would be killed. It just wasn’t done this way. Yes, some highly secret ad hoc meetings were held at which it was decided to neutralise some individuals politically or to eliminate them, but these meetings were extremely, extremely secret and operated on a need-to-know basis.’

General Johan van der Merwe published two reactions online in July 2014 to the objection raised by a Democratic Alliance (DA) spokesperson that Eugene was still sitting in prison while those who had issued the orders were free.42 In an open letter to DA leader Helen Zille, Van der Merwe writes that there was ‘not a single case for which Eugene de Kock was sentenced in which there was any evidence at all that he had acted on instructions from a superior.’

In an article – ironically enough – that issued a plea for De Kock to be pardoned, Van der Merwe wrote that the impression that Eugene de Kock was left with the mess while the generals walk free stems from ‘ignorance of the facts … There is no evidence whatsoever that any of the generals were implicated in any of the murders for which Colonel De Kock was found guilty.’43

Eugene’s response in his open letter was that all statements for the various commissions of inquiry – particularly the Harms Commission, which examined Vlakplaas operations among other things – were drawn up by General (then brigadier) Krappies Engelbrecht. ‘We just had to sign it. We compiled none of our own statements. Claims registers, travel and accommodation registers, documents such as security reports and every vestige of evidence was traced and then removed or destroyed. In effect we had to wipe out all the records and documentary evidence that [later] may have indemnified us …

‘General Van der Merwe claims that no general ever committed perjury or defeated the ends of justice, or committed murder and/or a series of other offences. To think that I – who knew so little because I was held in the lowest esteem before the change of government, and then had, so prominently, to become the scapegoat for the old dispensation – knew so much. How much more, then, do you and the others know, General Van der Merwe?’44

‘The offences were committed over a long period and covered a wide range of crimes. Many were committed in a way that falsely implicated innocent people. In some cases, officers who had acted as executioners on the orders of the accused or other senior officers were rewarded financially for their transgressions. In addition to the concealment of offences, courts and commissions were misled by false testimony. Witnesses were discredited freely.
Some of the victims must have experienced mortal fear for considerable periods before their murders. No mercy was shown to victims. The violent crimes must have caused the victims’ families deep suffering and pain. The weapons used in the commission of certain offences were efficient and destructive and may have been in the accused’s possession illegally. The accused’s actions surrounding the fraud charges were cunning and deceitful and led to the accused and others acquiring money to which they were not entitled.’

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