TRC Final Report

Volume 2

Chapter 1

Subsection 11

124 In 1979, the Vlakplaas unit was established under section C of the Security Branch. It was originally a rehabilitation farm where former ANC and PAC activists were ‘turned’ into police informers, known as askaris. Other branches of the security police could call on the askaris to infiltrate ANC activists and glean information. In August 1981, several white policemen were transferred to the unit and the askaris were divided into four groups, each headed by a white policeman. By the end of 1982, Vlakplaas operatives were increasingly becoming the ‘special forces’ of the Security Branch. Vlakplaas, and more broadly the C Section, also worked closely with the SADF – indeed, for significant periods, an SADF liaison officer was assigned to work full-time with Vlakplaas. To a large extent, Vlakplaas owed its existence to the SAP’s experience first with the Selous Scouts in Rhodesia and then with setting up Koevoet in South West Africa.

125 In 1978, MK began attacks in the PWV (Pretoria, Witwatersrand and Vereeniging region) and western Transvaal. The Special Operations Unit engaged in some successful acts of economic sabotage (such as Sasol II) in the early 1980s. These had the additional strategic aim of raising the profile of MK among the general public. It was largely in anticipation of the growth of such campaigns from outside the country that the state began planning pre-emptive action in the form of what became generally known as destabilisation.

126 In February 1979 the SSC adopted the SSC Guidelines for a Long-term National Strategy in regard to Self-defence Actions. The preamble to the document noted that, while international law made provision for a state to undertake self-defence actions in order to protect its territorial integrity, not all the actions proposed in this document could readily be brought under the juridical concept of ‘self-defence actions’ and that some of the operations proposed would necessarily be clandestine.

127 The five types of operations proposed and adopted were:

a Planned operations: actions against bases on foreign territory undertaken on the basis of long-term planning.

b Hot pursuit operations: actions permissible if

• the state whose territory was to be entered was either unwilling or unable to act against those being pursued;
• the goal of the operation was the capture and arraignment of the person or persons being pursued before the courts of the state executing the action;
• violence or force was to be used only where those pursued resisted arrest and only directed against those being pursued.

The Commission received considerable evidence of abductions from foreign territories of real or perceived opponents of the South African government. None of these, however, conform fully, or even nearly, to the prescribed requisites of the ‘hakkejag’ variety. They were rather carefully planned, clandestine kidnapping raids either by the security police or their Vlakplaas unit, and the fate of those abducted was more often to be killed or forced into becoming an askari than to appear in court. The one exception was Mr Ismail Ebrahim who, after his kidnapping from Swaziland in 1986, was eventually tried and convicted of treason.

c Reconnaissance operations: top-secret operations undertaken in order to acquire intelligence on planned enemy actions.

d Clandestine operations: similarly top-secret operations which were unrestricted.

e Arresting actions: involving police crossing a border for distances of up to approximately one kilometre for the purpose of arresting the criminal elements whom they were following.

128 By 1979, the SSC was clearly geared up to take the fight to the ‘enemy’ and to confront it in its regional strongholds rather than wait for it to penetrate the South African interior. The priorities at this point were the outer-periphery states of Angola, Rhodesia and the eastern front of Mozambique and Swaziland which, in the words of an SADF general, was “leaking like a sieve”.

129 The late 1970s saw the internal emergence of both black trade unions and a range of student and community based structures. Within these structures, some owed allegiance to black consciousness, while an increasing number of activists within such structures began to move towards support for the ANC or ‘Congress tradition’. While the development of internal structures was broadly in line with ANC policy as expressed in the Green Book, and key activists strengthened links with the banned movement, such structures seem to have developed rather from an increasingly politicised climate and around specific local demands. Indeed, the banning of Black Consciousness organisations in 1977 had further restricted free political space, and activists responded to this by organising in communities around local ‘bread and butter’ issues. During the late 1970s, the divide between the Black Consciousness and Congress movements was neither wide nor rigid and was straddled by many individuals and organisations. Only in the early 1980s would conflicts around principles and strategies cement and harden.

130 During 1982–83 the government introduced new constitutional proposals which sought to incorporate Indian and coloured people as junior partners in political decision-making. In addition, two bills were introduced which proposed new measures to regulate the presence of Africans in cities. The Black Local Authorities Act of 1982 gave a range of new powers and responsibilities to the highly unpopular and frequently corrupt township governments. In order to protest and frustrate these new state initiatives, and also as an indicator of the schism within antiapartheid politics, anti-apartheid organisations launched two separate national formations in 1983. One was the United Democratic Front (UDF) – comprising over 500 decentralised, local and regional civic, youth, women’s, political and religious anti-apartheid organisations, together with national student organisations and trade unions. The other was the smaller National Forum, a loose association of some 200 Black Consciousness-oriented organisations and small left-wing groups.

131 Although the UDF had co-ordinating structures at national and regional levels, affiliate organisations retained their autonomy in terms of policies and programmes of action. Office-bearers were required to be accountable to the membership of their affiliate organisation. In its submission to the Commission, the former UDF leadership conceded that, by the mid-1980s, the UDF was consulting with the ANC in exile.

132 From its establishment, the UDF vehemently challenged the government and its apartheid policies. As a driving force behind resistance politics in the 1980s, the UDF spearheaded a number of campaigns aimed at mobilising the broader population. While the UDF itself never adopted a strategy involving the use of violence, in the context of heightened mass resistance following 1984, such campaigns were increasingly associated with violence at a local level. Targets of such violence included community councillors, black policemen, those who broke boycotts and groups such as Inkatha.

133 There were a few ANC acts of sabotage in this period that resulted in civilian casualties, such as the Goch Street shooting in 1977. For the most part, however, MK operations in this period did not lead to civilian casualties.

134 While such armed attacks continued to raise the profile of the ANC, individual members of ANC underground political units played a crucial role in the formation of mass organisations such as COSAS, civic structures and militant trade unions that were to unite under the banner of the UDF and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). Such mass organisations formed one of the ‘four pillars’ of struggle, which together constituted the ANC’s strategy for the liberation of South Africa. These four pillars were: the armed operations of MK, the building of mass organisations, the building of an underground movement inside South Africa to provide the link between the two, and the campaign for the international isolation of the South African government.

135 During its life-span, the UDF went through states of emergency, mass detentions of its members and leadership, and victimisation of its leaders, mainly by state surrogate forces. The state tightened its laws, and banned the UDF and many of its affiliates in 1988. During that process, UDF supporters clashed with several other oppositional groupings and vigilante forces, some of which were state sponsored. In the late 1980s, together with COSATU and other sympathetic non-aligned organisations, they formed a loose coalition termed the Mass Democratic Movement (popularly known as the MDM). The UDF organisations worked with the ANC after the unbanning of the latter in 1990. The UDF was formally disbanded on its eighth anniversary in August 1991.

136 In May 1983, MK exploded a car bomb in Pretoria's Church Street. Nineteen people were killed and 217 injured. The incident is identified by many security force members as the moment at which they realised the significance of the threat facing them and began to see the ANC as a ‘terrorist organisation’. In addition to such armed actions, the first of a number of planned assassinations of individuals labelled as ‘enemy agents’ or ‘collaborators’ took place in this period.

137 Two months after the Church Street bomb, the SSC held a three-day meeting in the operational area of South West Africa where it reviewed the security situation in the region. In an intelligence briefing at the start of the meeting, SSC secretary Major General Groenewald noted that, with the help of the SADF, UNITA’s troop strength had reached 36 000 and was growing by 2 400 per year. However, in regard to Mozambique, he noted that if FRELIMO succeeded in overcoming RENAMO, the Soviet Union’s hold on the African east coast would be strengthened and the spread of its influence to the landlocked states of Southern Africa facilitated; so too would the establishment of ANC bases in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Lesotho.

138 To counter the threat, the SSC agreed that ‘terrorism’ had to be fought beyond South Africa’s borders; that, with or without the co-operation of neighbouring governments, proactive and defensive operations against South Africa’s enemies, their supporters and their hosts must be undertaken; and that South Africa had to develop the capacity to destroy/neutralise ‘terrorist concentrations’ and their headquarters, as well as foreign troop concentrations such as the Cuban presence in Angola. The proposed options included the encouragement of internal conflict in other countries to the extent of active support for a change of government in a country like Lesotho, as well as continuing to promote instability in Zimbabwe – ‘dat die pot van interne konflik in Zimbabwe subtiel aan die kook gehou word’ ([so] that the pot of internal conflict in Zimbabwe is subtly kept on the boil).

139 The kinds of operations undertaken by the security forces in the light of the 1979 guidelines and the 1983 priorities, and gross human rights violations which resulted from such operations are examined in this volume.