By Norm Dixon The announcement in late October by the South African safety and security minister, Sydney Mufamadi, that former apartheid regime defence minister General Magnus Malan and ten senior defence officers are to be charged with murder in connection with the activities of "Third Force" security hit squads, has refocussed attention on who else in the National Party (NP) was responsible. The role of deputy president FW de Klerk is certain to come under the spotlight as is Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) leader Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi. The 11 are charged with the vicious massacre of 13 villagers in Kwazulu/Natal in 1987. Those charged include: former South African Defence Force (SADF) chief General Jannie Geldenhuys; former army head General Kat Liebenberg; former navy head Admiral Dries Putter; and former military intelligence director General Tienie Groenewald, now a senator for the far right Freedom Front. The charges come from the investigations of a special team — dubbed the "untouchables" — into hit squads operated by the former KwaZulu bantustan administration which was controlled by Buthelezi. The arrests of former senior political and military figures of the apartheid era — together with mounting evidence from a variety of inquiries, leaks and admissions — add substance to the widely-held belief that the violence in South Africa, which snowballed after the 1990 unbanning of the liberation movements and the release of Nelson Mandela, was organised by the highest levels of the state to weaken the ANC and strengthen the IFP. De Klerk said he was "shocked" at the charges against his former colleagues: "I must express my deep concern ... I believe it can have far-reaching repercussions for national reconciliation", and he promised to defend "all my people". On November 1, Mandela issued a veiled threat to de Klerk: "I want to know whether it was the policy of the NP to slaughter innocent civilians including seven children, a priest and members of his congregation. The courts must find out whether it was NP policy to gun down innocent people." De Klerk has every reason to fear for his future, and those of current and former NP ministers, should the ANC-led government allow the investigations to run their course. It is inconceivable that de Klerk was unaware of the decision to establish the hit squads that carried out the 1987 murders. Nor are these the only killings in which de Klerk and his colleagues would have been involved.
Repressive state
From 1985 de Klerk was a member of the State Security Council, the key structure of the repressive National Security Management System. Conceived in 1978 with the election of PW Botha to the presidency, NSMS' objective was to "defeat the revolutionaries and regain the [political] initiative" in the wake of the 1976 Soweto uprising. The NSMS, with the SSC at its head, were not even accountable to the whites-only parliament. In reality, these bodies were the actual government of apartheid South Africa. The permanent members of the SSC included: the state president; ministers of defence, foreign affairs, constitutional development, finance and justice; the chiefs of staff of the SADF, army, navy, air force and SADF medical services; the director of the National Intelligence Service (formerly the infamous Bureau of State Security — BOSS); the commissioner of police; chief of the security police; the director of security legislation and the director-general of the office of the state president. In all 12 of the SSC's 24 permanent members were unelected security officers. Eleven regional Joint Management Centres gathered information about political activists and their organisations. The regional centres made recommendations to the SSC and implemented its decisions. In May, 1992 the progressive South African weekly
New Nation ran an exposé on how this system worked. It published a leaked document addressed to the SSC, dated June 7, 1985, which gave details of a telephone conversation between the commander of the Eastern Cape Joint Management Centre, Brigadier CP van der Westhuizen, and General Van Rensburg of the SSC secretariat. They were discussing the need to "permanently [remove] from society as a matter of urgency" Matthew Goniwe, Fort Calata, Sicelo Mhlauli and Sparrow Mkonto — leaders of the Cradock Residents' Association and the anti-apartheid United Democratic Front. The plotters said they expected a similar reaction as the protests, a month earlier, which were sparked by the disappearance of three leaders of the Port Elizabeth Black Civic Organisation. This suggested that the activists were eliminated by the military. Their mutilated and burned bodies were found less than a month after the message was relayed between the NSMS and the SSC. Members of the SSC at that time included the then foreign affairs minister Pik Botha, the current mines and energy minister, Magnus Malan and FW de Klerk, who had recently been coopted to the SSC. The man responsible for implementing the death warrants, General Van der Westhuizen, was later promoted to chief of staff of military intelligence, a post he held until his retirement just before the 1994 election. Given that the Cradock activists were killed within weeks of the Eastern Province Joint Management Centre's assassination proposal being made to the SSC secretariat, it is highly likely that the full SSC, chaired by President PW Botha and attended by de Klerk, sanctioned the deadly course of action. The structures through which the 1985 assassinations were decided and carried out remained in place — although renamed — after de Klerk's rise to power. It is these structures that many believe were the guiding force behind the covert operations of the Third Force. Prior to the latest charges, Mufamadi's untouchables had already arrested senior Inkatha and military figures involved in the same 1987 massacre. They include: Zakhele Khumalo, IFP deputy secretary general and former personal secretary to Buthelezi; Brigadier John More, director of the state-controlled arms manufacturer Denel, and formerly of military intelligence; and police colonel Louie Botha, who was the link between Buthelezi and the security police in the 1991 "Inkathagate" scandal when security police were found to be secretly funding Inkatha. Khumalo and Buthelezi were the only signatories to the Inkathagate funds.
Links unravelled
As the "untouchables" continue to scrutinise the hit squad allegations and evidence emerges in the trials, the links between top apartheid politicians, the security forces and Inkatha are likely to unravel further. KwaZulu/Natal security minister Celani Mthethwa, who has already been accused of receiving arms from the security forces used in random terror attacks on trains, is under the spotlight. Earlier this year a Durban court heard evidence from two self-confessed KZP hit-squad killers, that Mthethwa personally delivered crates of AK47s to IFP offices in the north of the province. The Johannesburg
Sunday Times in mid-October revealed that Mthethwa and the IFP's top leaders in Gauteng province, Themba Khoza and Humphrey Ndlovu, were paid police informers. Their pivotal role in gun-running between the apartheid state's security apparatus and the IFP party has been confirmed by the Goldstone Commission. Khoza and Ndlovu were first linked — along with 16 senior KwaZulu policemen — to hit-squads by a March 1994 Transitional Executive Commission report that said Khoza and Ndlovu "were involved in the planning" of a massacre of 11 people at Nqutu, northern Natal in November 1993. Khoza and Ndlovu were found to be the recipients and distributors of guns manufactured and supplied by C10, a secret police squad based at a farm, Vlakplaas, near Pretoria. The report said Khoza had been recruited by Vlakplaas operatives, and that C10 had paid Khoza's bail and legal fees when he was arrested with weapons at a road-block in September 1990.