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COETZEE, JHAge Description ... This week Joe Pillay was in Canada, but he sent the Truth Commission an affidavit detailing his treatment at the hands of the police. Dirk Coetzee made no attempt to refute it. // I mean he wasn’t given VIP treatment; that I can assure you and he would have been taunted. That’s the ... Grim and gory details of Vlakplaas murders, abductions and cross border operations emerged again this week. Dirk Coetzee, Almond Nofemela and David Tshikalanga who are applying for amnesty for a range of atrocities continue to spill the sordid tales of South Africa’s secret death farm. Alright, thank you, let’s go to the first question, Adri. // Adri Coetzee from Beeld. Mr. Ntsebeza, to follow up on that, are we ever going to know what happened in neighbouring states? Is that being investigated? // Yes it is being investigated. In fact, I have been in discussions with high ... To make the assassination look like a robbery Mxenge’s car was driven to the Swazi border and set alight along with his personal belongings. // I don’t expect the Mxenge family to forgive me because I don’t know how I ever in my life would be able to forgive a man like Dirk Coetzee. ... commander of the police anti-terrorist unit at Vlakplaas lifted the lid on police death squads. ‘I murdered Mxenge’, confessed Captain Dirk Coetzee. ... Former Vlakplaas commander Dirk Coetzee was supposed to testify this week, but he was prevented by legal technicalities. This is what he would have told the Commission. // Nick van Rensburg and his men poisoned him upon release, poisoned him and apparently he did not add enough poison according to ... giving their version of the events they do not see their way clear to do so before this Commission as constituted at present … // Thank you mister Coetzee // May I be excused? Thank you for the ... I don’t expect the Mxenge family to forgive me because I don’t know how I ever in my life would be able to forgive a man like Dirk Coetzee. They weren’t the best behaved guys we had. They all smoked and all drank heavily. And everyone that smoked also smoked dagga. // You were not smoking at that stage? // No, I was not smoking, but drinking a lot. // Pillay was delivered into the hands of Dirk Coetzee at Vlakplaas. 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 ... 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. There’s one thing that I will have to live with till the day I day, it’s the corpses that I will have to drag with me to my grave, of the people whom I’ve killed. Remorse, I can assure you a lot, a hell of a lot. Mxenge was observed by Almond Nofemela and Joe Mamasela. A few days before the murder they poisoned his dogs. // It was to leave the decision for the place of the actual murder in the hands of the operatives. You could either do it at work if the occasion was right, it was late enough, if it was ... A decision is taken so flippantly and a man’s life is put to an end. I am alarmed by that. // I can understand that Mr. Chairman, I think in those days a black man’s life meant absolutely nothing. 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 ... 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 ... 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 ... He was officially released at Bloemfontein where his car and belongings were handed to him and then a big scene in front of the uniform branch personal I suppose and when he then left on the road, he was abducted again by Nick van Rensburg and his men. 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 ... |
