Special Report Transcript Episode 1, Section 6, Time 27:28

The name Vlakplaas came up again on Wednesday. Sizwe Kondile was a young ANC activist who was arrested in June 1981. // Former Vlakplaas commander Dirk Coetzee said in 1989 that Kondile tried to escape and injured his head when he jumped through a window. // General Nick van Rensburg who obtained a court interdict against another Truth Commission witness this week ordered that Kondile be killed because the police could not afford another Steve Biko scandal. Kondile was taken to Komatipoort and burnt to death. // Dirk Coetzee testifies that they took him to this doctor, who said what I’ve already said about the Steve Biko case, that they took him to Komatipoort where they gave him poison drops, but he didn’t die immediately from this poison drops. So, somebody had to shoot him and then he died. Dirk Coetzee further goes on to say that when he died they put his body on a pile of wood with a tyre, near the Komatipoort river, its night, where it took them 9 hours to burn his body. And Dirk Coetzee further says, whilst they were burning his body the flesh was smelling good and they were having beers at that time. So it was like a braai to them, according to Dirk Coetzee. And as the mother I feel that, no matter whether it was politics, fighting for the land, no matter what or who, I don’t think he deserved all that treatment. I feel it was grossly inhuman. I feel if they could have killed him and gave us the body or left it in the veld there. I feel that this was tantamount to cannibalism or even Satanism. // For 9 years the ANC maintained that Sizwe Kondile was a spy.

Notes: Vlakplaas; Photo: Dirk Coetzee; The Argus front page: ‘Evidence on generals halted’; TRC testimony: Charity Kondile; East London City Hall