COETZEE, CS

Here is the place which they then later built where the ministers and Basie Smit and them braaid, had their Chivas Regal whiskey, congratulated the guys where the ‘potjiekos’ was made, you can see big fireplaces. If you have all the liquor and the meat that was absorbed here you can open a ...

I do believe in myself. I want to get truth, what happened in those days and in future, our children must know what happened in those days when our parents were still alive. All I remember is that in the morning the neighbours, I think the neighbours next door to me, came to the house and look me ...

No plan, no envisaged plan, no joint venture of that nature was ever discussed with me at all. // I’m not aware of any case where the Defence Force and the police would have acted together internally and where people had been killed and had not been discussed with me. // I in my more than 35 ...

I did not give any policeman any illegal instruction, unlawful instruction. Kill a person, assault a person, or do anything of that nature.

What I think we find difficult to understand is how this could take place, how people could die, could be tortured, could be abducted, could be buried and many of them; and people like yourself and others just didn’t know, weren’t aware of that these people were acting unlawfully or illegally ...

They were trying to build up a case and just couldn’t get him in because he was sticking strictly according to the law and he was a thorn in the flesh and we have to get rid of him. That’s correct. // So they in fact told you that there was nothing against this man, he was acting according to ...

I was forced to kill my own people, the people that I devoted my life into liberating. // We believed in what we were doing as killers, we were seeing it as a war situation. // Our job was to hunt cadres, whether PAC or ANC, and we kill them. If we think they are useless, we kill them, but if we ...

The amnesty applications of Blessing Ninela’s killers will only be heard late this year. This week the killers of ANC lawyer Griffiths Mxenge were granted amnesty by the Truth Commission.

Vlakplaas and the askaris did become the main instrument in the killings in the 1980s and early 1990s, yes. The Mxenge killing, I mean I couldn’t walk as a white man into a black township and I would stand out like a sore finger. So you need black guys to cooperate and do the job for you and act ...

There Andy Taylor and Jerry Fourie interrogated him. They clouted him a few times. He kept on denying that he was still actively involved with the ANC in any way. They eventually decided then, Capt Andy Taylor, Jerry Fourie and the military intelligence, Major Callie Steyn to bring in an army ...

... banks of the Pongola river. The car was set alight. But the family and friends of Griffiths Mxenge never believed the cover up. They are opposing Coetzee’s amnesty application and he is being charged with ...

Politics has got something to do with it. That’s my feeling, my gut feeling. Because, you must also remember that my application for amnesty was submitted by hand to Dr Alex Boraine at quarter to three on the 5th of March this year in Cape Town, and I took Albert Nofemela’s application with, as ...

It was ANC cadres that infiltrated the country on operations that were caught by the police, by the security police. Then they had the difficult option of facing court cases and long interrogation, third degree methods used, electrical shocks, smothering with a wet bag over the head or decide to ...

Boipatong, Vlakplaas job. I can assure you that Brig van Heerden and Snor Vermeulen, two of the Vlakplaas guys involved, blackened with these things that they use in plays and balaclavas, orchestrated … Boipatong, Vlakplaas job.

Well, I don’t know whether it was his first killing, but he was in a way forced into it, yes. Because, I mean, once the blacks were involved in the planning of an assassination and they would refuse to participate. It means that it’s a negative element who might spill the beans later, and would ...

We were instructed to make it look like a robbery. // Who instructed you? // Brigadier van der Hofen. A hunting knife was brought down from Vlakplaas, I can’t recall whether we bought the other okapi knives in Durban or whether that also came from Vlakplaas. I got a report back from him that ...

The killing or murder of Sizwe Kondile was callous as all security police killings and one wishes that you had never taken part in it.

As we entered into Gaborone I left Paul van Dyk and David Tshikalanga with a bakkie about one and a half street blocks away under a tree from the target house whilst Koos Vermeulen and myself with Almond Nofemela and Joe Mamasela proceeded to the house on the corner, right next to the target house.

As we still discussing of how next do we break the door down now, two women entered the kitchen with a lit candle and opened the back door. Joe grabbed one of the women and closed her mouth and shot at her at point blank. I heard someone drop to the cement like a bag of bones and the other woman ...

Why did you kill Mxenge so brutally? // The intention was not to kill him brutally. It was to make the whole thing appear … it was to simulate robbery. But unfortunately in the scene of crime certain things develop that you don’t expect. Mxenge’s physical strength was undermined but when he ...