Amnesty Hearings — Pretoria — 1997-02-25

CAPT MENTZ: As I gave evidence yesterday in the incident of Brian Ngqulunga, the date which I gave 
was 1987 and 1988, in the meantime I have found out it was the 19th of July 1990.
	An instruction was issued by General Van Rensburg from Security Headquarters who at that stage 
was in charge of
unit C at Vlakplaas.  His instruction, I was not present when he issued the instruction, but it was passed on 
by Colonel Eugene de Kock to Colonel Baker to say that Brian Ngqulunga was transferred from Vlakplaas 
to Unit C2 at Security Headquarters in Pretoria.
	The instruction was that Brian Ngqulunga was to be eliminated.  Colonel de Kock gave Colonel 
Dave Baker instruction to execute the instruction.  He then took myself, Colonel Bellingham, Colonel Piet 
Botha and Simon Dubele instructions to execute the instruction.
	The instruction which was given to me was the Ngqulunga was working at Unit C2 at Security 
Headquarters as I have already said and that from there he had secret documents and secret information 
about the Security Police which he was passing onto the ANC.
	The impression was thus that he was a double agent.  
PRETORIA HEARING	AMNESTY/

ADV DU PLESSIS: 108

CAPT MENTZ: The information which he was to have been leaking, was that the SAP members and their families were 
being subjected to intimidation.  Especially the Black members, their houses were attacked and they were 
sometimes stoned and in some instances they were killed.
	Reporters were identified who were intimidated and some of them were killed by being necklaced 
as we saw on the video footage and the community was intimidated not to cooperate with the Security 
Police anymore and not to give them information any longer.
	The identification of ascaris was also done and the exposure of covert operations.  Ascaris were 
afraid that if they were identified they and their families would be murdered.  That is the information which 
I received from Colonel Baker and Bellingham and that is the information
which Brian Ngqulunga was alleged to have been leaking.
	I do not have any specific knowledge of any specific incidents about which Brian Ngqulunga was 
to have leaked information, it was conveyed to me in a general manner.
	The instructions which we received from Colonel De Kock, as I said yesterday in my evidence, 
were to put a spade in covert defence and defence activities.  Colonel De Kock received direct instructions 
from the Commanding Structure at Security Headquarters.
	I never participated in any planning of any couvert operations, I was merely a foot soldier who 
executed instructions as though they had been approved by Head Office.
	I am now on page 55.  The operations were planned after we had agreed that Simon Radebe 
would point Ngqulunga out to us at a point where we would pick him up.  I never 
PRETORIA HEARING	AMNESTY/

ADV DU PLESSIS: 109

CAPT MENTZ: personally knew Brian Ngqulunga.  He had already been transferred to Unit C2 from Vlakplaas before I 
started at Vlakplaas.
	A kombi was hired from Avis and balaclavas and gloves were issued to us.  Radebe was waiting 
on a gravel road near Vlakplaas in a red Golf and that was the road which headed to Vlakplaas, and we 
would pass Vlakplaas, reach a T-junction and turn right.  This gravel road then led back to Attridgeville 
where you met up with Church Street and then proceeded into town.
	We approached the Golf from behind in this kombi, Colonel Baker was driving, Botha and I were 
sitting in the middle and Bellingham was sitting in front on the left.
We put on the balaclavas and ran to the car, we went to where Ngqulunga was sitting on the left of the 
vehicle,
dragged him out of the vehicle.  We wrestled with him a bit and in the wrestling I remember very well that 
he screamed and said, no comrades, no comrades, I am one of you, I am one of you.
	At that stage and because we were disguised he must have thought that we were ANC members.  
That is the conclusion which I reached.  And the conclusion was that he was still an ANC supporter 
although he was an ascari with us.
	We brought him under control by manhandling him and in the process we assaulted him.  In the 
vehicle, when we put him in the kombi we closed his mouth, we tied up his hands and feet and we went - 
we drove in the direction of Brits.
The exact place is not as shown in the footage, it is not in Soshanguve.  If you drive from Brits in the 
Lehabele area and head towards Bophutatswana, that - somewhere along that 
PRETORIA HEARING	AMNESTY/

ADV DU PLESSIS: 109

CAPT MENTZ: road, I do not know the name of that road, but it is somewhere in the Lehabele area.   
	We stopped, Bellingham opened the kombi door for us and Piet Botha and I dragged him out of 
the kombi and threw him in the field.	Bellingham fired several shots, I cannot remember how many.  To me 
it sounded as though he had emptied the whole magazine on Brian Ngqulunga and killed him.  I cannot 
remember, but I later heard that Piet Botha had also fired several shots at him with a pistol.  I looked away, 
because I could not handle it.
	When we got back into the kombi I became nauseous.  We went to a place near Pretoria North 
among the plots where we cleaned the kombi inside, because Ngqulunga had urinated and so forth and we 
then cleaned up.  And from there we went to the Wonderpark Shopping Centre where we met up with 
Johnny (Chet)(?) who had a vehicle with secret compartments.
	We handed the firearms that we had used to Johnny Chet who concealed them in his vehicle and 
from there we went to the Pretoria Holiday Inn in Beatrix Street.  We met Colonel De Kock and other 
members there.
	In the process when we were driving from the scene, I know that Colonel Baker was in radio 
contact with De Kock and he had informed him that the operation had gone off well.
	I cannot remember specifically who was there, but once again it was De Kock's confidantes and 
others.  We met him at the Holiday Inn where he ordered drinks for us.  We drank up and I cannot 
remember exactly, but we went to a restaurant somewhere near there, I think it was at the Sterland 
complex.   I also had something to eat.
	Thereafter he informed us that we were booked in at a 
PRETORIA HEARING	AMNESTY/

ADV DU PLESSIS: 110

CAPT MENTZ: hotel in Johannesburg, if I remember correctly it was the Braamfontein Hotel and the reason for this was 
that we would be at this hotel and if anyone was to have enquired they should have seen that we were at 
this hotel and not elsewhere.
	This was a very shocking experience for me and it has left emotional scars on my life.  I never 
ever want to become involved in anything like this again.  
	Since receiving the instruction from De Kock and the others that Ngqulunga was an informant 
and was leaking secret information from Headquarters, I accepted it, but in 1995 I read in press reports as 
result of allegations made by Dirk Coetzee, Joe Mamasela who we saw in video footage, that Ngqulunga 
was involved in the murder of Griffiths Mxenge and that he was a potential witness who could have given 
evidence against Dirk Coetzee, Almond Nofomela, Brigadier van der Hoven and Colonel Andy Taylor.
	I also read in the press reports that Ngqulunga was one of the persons who had killed Griffiths 
Mxenge - these  after allegations that had been made.
	I then got the impression that because he had been killed and, according to what we had been told, 
he had leaked information, one reason was possibly that it could have been used as evidence that he was 
indeed a witness and that he had to have been eliminated so that he could not testify against Coetzee and 
van der Hoven and Nofomela and Company.
	The conclusion which I made, although it has never been proven to me, was if Colonel Taylor or 
any of the other people involved should come and admit to it, I would say that it is also one of the reasons, 
but those are mere PRETORIA HEARING	AMNESTY/