Special Hearings — Mandela United Football Club Hearings — 1997-11-24

MR HUGO: You refer further to the introductory part of your amnesty hearing where you give an expose of the background and your involvement with Vlakplaas and you attach this as annexure EAK 1, is that correct?

MR DE KOCK: Yes.

MR HUGO: And you just attach it for completeness purposes and as background.

MR DE KOCK: Yes that's true.

MR HUGO: Then you say with regard to the interrogation and the death of Themba, you say that you have applied for amnesty for the murder upon Mr Mabota for which you among others were responsible.

MR DE KOCK: That's right.

MR HUGO: And you attach a copy of your sworn statement which forms part of the amnesty hearing with regard to the murder of Mr Mabota, it is called Annexure EAK 2.

MR DE KOCK: That is correct.

MR HUGO: Then you deal with the so-called interrogation and consequent death of Sizwe Sithole.

MR DE KOCK: That's right.

MR HUGO: And you say that you had no knowledge of that whatsoever.

MR DE KOCK: Yes no knowledge.

MR HUGO: Then on page 6 you say that Vlakplaas made a wide use of informers and infiltrators to find information on the liberation movement activities.  You confirm that Mr Johannes Mabota was generally used as an informer who gleaned information with regard to his former ANC comrades.  You add however that Mr Mabota was never used by Vlakplaas as an informer regarding Mrs Winnie Madikizela-Mandela or the Mandela United Football Club.

MR DE KOCK: No Mr Chairman.

MR HUGO: Then finally in this paragraph you say that Mr Mabota had deserted from Vlakplaas and that according to your knowledge, there had been liaison between Mrs Winnie Mandela, Mr Mabota and that this information had been relayed to you via the security branch at Soweto, is that correct?

MR DE KOCK: Yes.

MR HUGO: Then you deal with the so-called abduction and assault of Stompie Sepei in '88 and information related to that and you say that you had no knowledge of that.

MR DE KOCK: That's correct.

MR HUGO: Then you talk about the working methods used between the various branches of the South African police, that is the security branches, Murder and Robbery and the Stratcom units.  Can you please at this point just tell the Commission how administratively and legally speaking this worked when for instance a division such as Murder and Robbery made use of the services of askaris based at Vlakplaas if they wanted to make use of such people.

MR DE KOCK: They would have worked via the local security branch or division to the security head office and the commander of C 1 Brigadier Schoon would be approached and he would give us the instruction.  It was not a long time- consuming process, it could be done in three or four minutes because it was telephonically.

MR HUGO: You say with regard to the other aspects in your witness subpoena that you had no knowledge of the intelligence material which was available to the intelligence services with regard to Mrs Mandela and for the Football Club. Is that correct?

MR DE KOCK: Yes that is true.   I would like to qualify, I might have made a conclusion later but there's nothing that I had by way of knowledge of that.

MR HUGO: Then I want you to move to Annexure A which is - do you have that in front of you?  You say that there was an Askari named Johannes Mabota who found himself at Vlakplaas for service.  Can I ask you when was the first time he got to Vlakplaas?

MR DE KOCK: Mr Chair I'm not sure.  At that stage we had quite a couple of askaris.  There were quite a volume of them coming in at on a regular basis.  I had no idea but he wasn't there long by the time he deserted.

MR HUGO: So you realised that he had deserted and when did you for the first time again hear of his doings?

MR DE KOCK: I didn't know immediately that he had deserted.  The first time I heard he had deserted was when I was called by the Soweto security branch and the reason  for this was that certain of the Askaris, not all of them, had left social habits, if you can call it that, they would stay away for a month or so and drink a lot and so on, so that wasn't a sign of alarm to us.  We gave them reasonable leeway.

MR HUGO: You say that you were called by Col Grobelaar and that he told you that Mr Mabota had been arrested by the Soweto Security Branch.

MR DE KOCK: Yes that's right.

MR HUGO: Then you say that he was involved again in illegitimate operations and that he got involved with Mrs Mandela and her so-called Football Club?

MR DE KOCK: Yes that's correct.

MR HUGO: You say in the following paragraph that you and Mr Bellinghan, Col Grobelaar and Chappies Kloppers as well as another member went to Marble Hall, met each other there where Mabota was also present.

MR DE KOCK: Yes that's correct.

MR HUGO: Then you went to a farm in the vicinity where Mr Mabota was found outside a hut. Can you tell us in your own words what then happen

MR DE KOCK: Mr Chair, if I remember correctly, at this place, this farm or plot, we reached it about 9 o'clock in the morning and his interrogation immediately started but in the hard way.  This interrogation finished at between three and four, it could be later but there was no interruption.  When one group was tired then another two, the groups were two, then another group took over, he was in a blanket, his clothing had been taken off so that it would not get urine on it, that it was not torn or blood stained or anything.  The blanket was his so that no marks would be shown, despite friction.  He was strangled, he was hit he was kicked, care was taken that no bones were broken and care was taken that his face was not harmed badly although his nose and his mouth did bleed, but it was not a continual run of blood.  He was also strangled, I don't remember if it was a wet sack or rubber, he was also hung upside down, he was seriously assaulted.
 Seriously does not necessarily mean that you bash open his head or break his back.  That afternoon he was a tired, broken, hurt man nevertheless he stuck with his report that he had been kidnapped and had been detained and that was when he told me later that he was being kept as a sex slave.  That was new to me in my career, I just couldn't accept that because he had a chance of running away.  That was what Mabota went through that day.  
 I have been a part of many interrogations of different degrees, difficult ones, easier ones, normal conversational ones, it depends on the operators and of the person being interrogated, whether he cooperates immediately, whether he's a hardened person, whether he would rather die than to testify and according to that such a person would then be interrogated on the grounds of whether he cooperated.  Unfortunately I had the experience upon occasion but seldom to see security policemen and observe them who enjoyed with a form of sadism interrogating such a person even if that person knew nothing.

CHAIRPERSON: The camera people please to observe some privacy and respect here. I'm sorry Mr de Kock.   Mr de Kock please continue, I'm sorry to interrupt you.

MR DE KOCK: I conclude on that note. That is the basic foundation of what his interrogation was.  That was rough and it was bad and any other person considering him or herself fit for us to demonstrate on such a person and to see what he would feel like, I can assure you we had a very injured person on our hands afterwards.

MR HUGO: Is it correct that you yourself participated?

MR DE KOCK: Yes Mr Chairman.

MR HUGO: You were one of five or six  who kept on for a couple of hours?