Amnesty Hearings — Pretoria — 1997-02-25

GAUTENG: 75
for 20 years, for two decades ...(fast forward)
	Policemen in battle dress, armed to the teeth, rising on top of armed vehicles, called caspers.  In 
front of the caspers, a group of trackers running on the spoor of SWAPO insurgents.  These were the men 
of Koevoet, the police counter-insurgency unit, during the Namibian Bush war.
The unit with the highest kill rate, but also implicated in committing atrocities against the local people.

ADV DU PLESSIS: Mr Chairman, I show this to indicate the police's involvement in the Namibian bush 
war as well.

SCREENING OF VIDEO CONTINUES: ... wait in the base and send you out after - on a mission that 
could get you killed, and he expected you to follow him on such a mission.  People develop a hero worship 
for such a man.  (Indistinct) with his people inside the trucks.

ADV DU PLESSIS: Mr Chairman that was the evidence given about Brigadier Cronje by, as far as I 
can recall Captain Hechter and of the other applicants.  He was a similar kind of man and he was involved 
also in operations, not just behind his desk, but he was involved as a leader.

SCREENING OF VIDEO CONTINUES: ... leave Koevoet and come back to South Africa because 
"die vyand is nou hierso", the enemy is now in our backyard, not on the Angolan border.  It is strange to me 
that anybody should be surprised at what he then did and the way he would then react.

ADV DU PLESSIS: Mr Chairman, you must just please bear with me, I am finding it a little bit 
difficult in finding the right places.  I've got the correct time slots where they should be, but as I told you I 
can't find them so, please just bear with me.

SCREENING OF VIDEO CONTINUES: .... with Mozambique.  The 
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bodies of two ANC activists were burnt to ashes.  	(Indistinct) worked with both men, they were the, 
basically the armed wing of the National Party.  It was from here that Death Squads hunted down and 
killed anti-apartheid activists.  Dirk Coetzee found Vlakplaas in 1980, Eugene De Kock went to Vlakplaas 
in 1983 and became Commander two years later.  Craig Williamson knew and worked with both men.
	They were the basically, the armed wing of the National Party.  They were the National Party's 
equivalent of Umkhonto weSizwe.  They were people who believed absolutely that they had a mission, that 
they had a job that only they could do, not only for themselves, but for their country, for their people, for 
their church and for their future and for their survival and for everybody else's survival.  For their people 
and their "Volk's" survival.
	The formation of Vlakplaas signalled a new phase in the Government's campaign against the 
ANC.  Craig Williamson calls it the Secret War.  Williamson is not only a former Security Policeman, but 
he was also National Party member of the President's Council.  
	None of us who were doing that job in those years were policemen in the sense of upholding law 
and order and walking the beat, we were soldiers and we were used to fight a secret war.  
	Statements by State President P.W. Botha during the 1980's left no doubt, South Africa was in a 
state of war.  "The terrorist games of SWAPO and the ANC are the primary enemy and 
must be confronted and eliminated.
		We will not talk to these people, we will fight
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GAUTENG: 76
		 them for the simple reason that they are part and parcel of the terrorist curse besetting 
the world of today."  
	The enemy at that time was blowing us up......

ADV DU PLESSIS: Mr Chairman, I just want to draw your attention to exactly what President 
Botha said here on this video.  I am going to show it again.

SCREENING OF VIDEO CONTINUES: ... of P.W. Botha during the 1980's left no doubt, South 
Africa was in a state of war.  "The terrorist games of SWAPO and the ANC are the 
primary enemy and must be confronted and eliminated".

ADV DU PLESSIS: I draw your attention to the fact that he uses the word "eliminated".

SCREENING OF VIDEO CONTINUES: "... we will fight them for the simple reason that they are part and parcel of the terrorist 
curse besetting the world of today".
(Comments)  The enemy at that time was blowing us up and was killing us and we were blowing up the 
enemy and we were killing them.  
	Dirk Coetzee started Vlakplaas with a handful of White policemen and so called ascaris.  ANC 
and PAC guerrillas that were captured and turned by the Security Police.
	One of the first ascaris to arrive at Vlakplaas was Joe Mamasela.

MAMASELA: In my - in the years of school I became a member of SASM, South African student 
movement.  I was the Secretary General of SASM at Morris Isaacson and also the school campus, I was the 
Deputy National Permanent Organiser of SASM. 
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COMMENTARY: Mamasela joined in the 1976 Soweto uprising.  Inspired by the student 
revolution, he joined the ANC and became the Organisation's courier in Botswana.  But in 1979 the young 
activist was arrested and interrogated by the Security Branch.

MAMASELA: They put some electrodes all over my body, in my testicles, private parts, my anus - 
here, it was terrible.  I was bleeding profusely, I don't know how many times I lost consciousness.	I 
lost consciousness for several times.  The last time I fell into a deep, deep coma.

<UNKNOWN>: And why did you start working for them?

MAMASELA: There was no way I could salvage my life other than to work for them because this is what 
they emphasised.

COMMENTARY: He became an ascari at Vlakplaas.  He turned against his own people and became a 
killing machine, first for Dirk Coetzee and in later years for Eugene de Kock.

MAMASELA: My first mission that I had to kill a human being, it was through Dirk Coetzee.

COETZEE: I was prepared to kill as many people as I was instructed to kill.

MAMASELA: And if you don't do this killing, they kill you.

ADV DU PLESSIS: Mr Chairman, I was requested to make the sound louder, it is impossible.  The sound 
is at its loudest.  I believe that on the earphones, one can hear perhaps a little bit better.

HASSAN MALL: Thank you.

ADV DU PLESSIS: If there is a problem.

MAMASELA: More than six ascaris were killed.

COETZEE: We were untouchable, completely.

NEWS READER: "Goeie naand, agt swartmans is in 
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		afsonderlike handgranaat and bomontploffings vanoggend in the swart woongebiede aan 
die Oos-rand dood.  Minstens sewe is ernstig beseer.  Ten minste vier van die slagoffers 
was op pad om terreurdade te pleeg toe hulle deur hulle eie plofstof gedood is.  Die 
polisie ondersoek die moontlikheid dat van die ander vier ook moontlik op pad was om 
dade van terreur te pleeg."

COMMENTARY: The next morning violence erupted in the Duduza township.  Residents believe the 
police informant was behind the deaths of the students.  At the first funeral Archbishop Desmond Tutu 
saved a suspected informant from being necklaced.  But at the second funeral the fury of Duduza was 
unleashed on Martha Skosana, the girlfriend of one of the students.	Soon after Martha's necklacing, 
State President P.W. Botha, declared a state of emergency.

P W BOTHA: Every responsible South African has with growing concern taken note of conditions of 
violence and lawlessness which in recent times has increased and have become more severe and more cruel 
in certain parts of the Country, especially in Black townships.

COMMENTARY: More than 10 years later the memory of Martha Skosana's death has faded, but 
now Vlakplaas assassin Joe Mamasela is talking.  
	The students didn't blow themselves up by accident - it was a Security Police dirty tricks 
operation played by, amongst others, Vlakplaas commander Eugene de Kock.

ADV DU PLESSIS: Mr Chairman, this part relates to the Zero handgrenade incident, just to make it 100% 
clear.