TRC Final Report

Volume 2

Chapter 2

Subsection 24

Assassinations and attempted assassinations

1960–1973

211 The Commission has no corroborated evidence of any external assassinations during the 1960 to 1973 period for which South African security operatives can be said to have been responsible.

1974–1979

212 The first known cross-border assassinations in the 1974–79 period occurred in February 1974, when, within two weeks of each other, MK founder member John Dube (aka ‘Boy’ Mvemve) and former SASO founder member Abraham Onkgopotse Tiro were killed by letter bombs in Zambia and Botswana respectively.

213 The Commission received no amnesty applications for these two killings. Former BOSS agent, Mr Gordon Winter, alleges¹⁶ that the killings were the work of BOSS’s recently formed covert unit, the Z-squad. At a Commission briefing, a former BOSS and later senior NIS and NIA member confirmed the existence of the Z-squad and named amongst its small band of original members Mr Phil Freeman, an explosives expert, and Mr Dries Verwey.

214 Another former BOSS agent, Mr Martin Dolinchek, also confirmed Z’s existence. In an interview published in the New Nation (9 August 1991), he named Kuhn and Verwey as “among those responsible for his [Tiro’s] death”. In an interview with the Commission, Dolinchek stated that Tiro was killed by the insertion of an explosive device into a package addressed to him from the Geneva-based International University Exchange Fund (IUEF). At that time, all mail destined for Southern Africa (including the BLS states, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique and the Seychelles) passed through the airmail sorting office in Germiston near the then Jan Smuts airport. The actual running of that office was contracted out by the Post Office and, according to Dolinchek, South African Airways (then a state corporation) deliberately bid low to gain the contract so that the security police could have easy access to the millions of pieces of mail, including diplomatic traffic, that flowed through it annually.

215 According to Dolinchek, in the 1970s and 1980s some 400 police, mostly retired officers, worked in the facility, amongst them Security Branch officers. Dolinchek claims that Tiro’s package from the IUEF was “doctored” at this facility. That particular item of mail would have been a strategic choice as the IUEF, an international anti-apartheid non-governmental organisation (NGO), worked closely with SASO and was channelling funds to the organisation. Tiro was in regular contact with the IUEF and a package would not have aroused suspicion.

216 In the case of the Mvemve letter bomb, it seems the postal service was not used as, according to Winter, the parcel bomb was posted in Lusaka. It must then have been prepared in South Africa and carried to Lusaka. This is similar to the method used in the letter/parcel bomb killings of Ms Ruth First and Ms Jeanette and Katryn Schoon (see below).

WHILE THE COMMISSION IS UNABLE TO MAKE A CONCLUSIVE FINDING IN RESPECT OF THE MURDERS OF MR ONKGOPOTSE TIRO AND MR JOHN DUBE, THE PROBABILITY BASED ON THE EVIDENCE AVAILABLE TO IT IS THAT THEY WERE THE WORK OF BOSS’S Z-SQUAD.

217 According to information contained in Captain Dirk Coetzee’s 1989 confession on hit squad activities and in his amnesty application [AM0063/96], in January 1977, an attempt was made to kill the ANC’s chief representative in Swaziland, Mr Bafana Duma. The method involved attaching an explosive device to the inside of the post office box of Duma’s employer in Manzini. As a messenger, Duma’s tasks including collecting the post. Duma lost an arm but survived.

218 According to Coetzee, this operation was undertaken by the Ermelo security police with the aid of the security police’s technical division, where the device was prepared by then Lieutenant (later Lieutenant Colonel) WAL du Toit. Major Nic van Rensburg was in charge of the operation, assisted by Colonel Christo Deetlefs and Sergeant Chris Rorich.

THE COMMISSION FINDS THAT THE ATTEMPT TO KILL MR BAFANA DUMA WAS AUTHORISED BY MAJOR NIC VAN RENSBURG OF THE ERMELO SECURITY POLICE AND UNDERTAKEN BY THOSE OF ITS MEMBERS NAMED ABOVE, WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF LIEUTENANT WAL DU TOIT OF THE TECHNICAL DIVISION OF THE SECURITY POLICE.

219 On 28 February 1978, MK member Kehla Nkutha was abducted from Swaziland. He died soon after his forcible return to South Africa.

220 Undercover intelligence operatives from the Pietermaritzburg division of the Security Branch had identified Nkutha as a regular traveller between Maputo and Mbabane for the purposes of transporting MK members.

221 Late in 1977, members of the Pietermaritzburg and Eastern Transvaal divisions of the security police mounted a joint operation to ambush the vehicle in which Nkutha was travelling and to abduct him. A first attempt failed when the vehicle did a U-turn and avoided the ambush. A second attempt some weeks later succeeded. There was a shoot-out, and the elderly passenger, Mr John Majola, and two of the operatives, Eugene ‘Jerry’ Fourie and Sergeant André ‘Basie’ Erwee, were seriously wounded. They survived, and Majola managed to escape from his attackers. Nkutha was also wounded, captured and taken across the border, where he died or was killed. The circumstances of his death are not clear.

222 On both occasions, the ambush group used the facilities of a farm just inside the Swazi border owned by a South African named by Dirk Coetzee as an agent. The farm also had a helicopter pad for use by South African security forces.

223 The operation was jointly commanded by Colonel (later Brigadier) Hans Dreyer and Colonel Johannes van der Hoven of the Pietermaritzburg and Eastern Transvaal security police divisions respectively. Other participants included Security Branch operatives from the Eastern Transvaal and Pietermaritzburg, such as Major Nic van Rensburg and Sakkie van Zyl. The Commission received an amnesty application from a Pietermaritzburg security policeman, Warrant Officer Don Gold [AM3683/96], for his participation in the first ambush. He did not participate in the second operation.

224 This raid occurred two years before the SSC adopted regulations authorising cross-border incursions and it is not known what authorisation procedures were followed in this case.

THE COMMISSION FINDS THAT MR KEHLA NKUTHA WAS ABDUCTED FROM SWAZILAND IN AN OPERATION CONDUCTED BY MEMBERS OF THE PIETERMARITZBURG AND EASTERN TRANSVAAL DIVISIONS OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN SECURITY BRANCH. HE DIED THEREAFTER IN SOUTH AFRICA.