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By Norm Dixon More details have emerged about how the apartheid state collaborated with Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party to murder its opponents. Former defence minister General Magnus Malan and 10 former security officers appeared in court on November 3 charged with the murder of 13 people in 1987. They were arrested after the Investigation Task Unit uncovered top-secret documents linking them to hit-squads established by the Inkatha-controlled KwaZulu bantustan. According to the South African Weekly Mail and Guardian, the documents reveal that the decision to establish hit squads was made by a secret subcommittee of the State Security Council (SSC), the semi-secret state structure that oversaw the defence of apartheid in the wake of the 1976 Soweto uprising and the upsurge in the struggle in the 1980s. The SSC approved all significant security operations including assassinations. Malan and his co-accused served on the subcommittee of the SSC. The highest officials of the apartheid state sat on the SSC including the state president; ministers of defence, foreign affairs, constitutional development, finance and justice; the chiefs of staff of the South African Defence Force (SADF) army, navy and air force; the director of the National Intelligence Service; the commissioner of police; and the chief of the security police. Senior members of the National Party who served on the SSC and remain in positions of power include the deputy president, FW de Klerk, Government of National Unity minister Pik Botha, and premier of the Western Cape province, Hernus Kriel. The SSC subcommittee organised the training and arming of at least 200 Inkatha loyalists to counter the growing popularity of the United Democratic Front and the African National Congress' military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, in KwaZulu/Natal during the 1980s. The group was trained by the SADF special forces in the Caprivi Strip in Namibia in 1986. The course included lessons on urban and guerrilla warfare, the use of explosives and demolition methods. These highly trained hit men are accused of the gruesome 1987 KwaMakutha massacre during which 13 civilians, including six children, were slaughtered. The widely held view that Buthelezi also was involved in the hit squads has been echoed by the leader of the far-right Freedom Front, General Constand Viljoen, a senior military official at the time, who has said he was sure Buthelezi knew of the involvement of Malan and military officers in operations designed to beef up Inkatha's military strength. "I am sure this was dealt with by the previous National Party government ... and the KwaZulu homeland government. Surely they should have discussed it", Viljoen told reporters. "They have been involved in reinforcing the KwaZulu people and Chief Buthelezi [then chief minister of the KwaZulu bantustan] in order to defend themselves against the onslaught of the United Democratic Front and the ANC revolutionary war." Many of the Caprivi 200 are still employed in old KwaZulu police structures which have now been absorbed into the South African Police Service.