Eddie Koch
KwaZulu-Natal Attorney General Tim McNally
will subpoena the Department of Military
Intelligence to supply a vital batch of
military documents which have gone missing
from the top-secret collection implicating
General Magnus Malan and other officers in a
conspiracy to murder African National Congress
supporters.
Last week the AG handed a set of documents to
the court which show Home Affairs Minister
Mangosuthu Buthelezi knew of the military’s
plan to set up a covert offensive unit for
Inkatha. One of these new court papers
explicitly refers to these units as a “hit
squad” and suggests Buthelezi was aware the
paramilitary unit was designed to play this
role.
In 1989 Buthelezi had a meeting with Brigadier
Cornelius van Niekerk, one of co-accused in
the Malan murder trial, to discuss operations
of Inkatha’s paramilitary unit, which had been
trained by the military’s special forces in
the Caprivi strip.
A summary of that meeting prepared by Van
Niekerk says: “The chief minister [Buthelezi]
… hinted that ‘offensive actions’ were still
a requirement, meaning the use of ‘hit
squads’.” But significant documents which
describe the paramilitary group’s operations
between October 1986 and February 1988 are
missing.
These is the period immediately before and
after the KwaMakutha massacre, for which Malan
and his co-suspects are being charged, and
investigators believe the documents may have
been removed or destroyed. They are eager to
lay hands on them because they believe they
will shed light on claims by the defence
lawyers that KwaMakutha was a renegade
operation not sanctioned by the military
hierarchy.
Buthelezi has responded to press reports about
the new documents by dismissing them as ANC
propaganda. “In their panic over the certainty
of losing the elections in May, they [the ANC]
have dressed up a pile of old stale stories as
new news … They want journalists to do their
dirty work for them,” said the Home Affairs
Minister.
He did not, however, explain why a top-secret
document written by a senior military officer
had indicated he had advocated the continued
use of hit squads in KwaZulu-Natal.
The collection of military papers was found in
Van Niekerk’s home in a wooden box fitted into
the wall and made to look like an electrical
circuit box.
Investigators were led to files by Van Niekerk
after Defence Minister Joe Modise insisted
that military intelligence collaborate with
the Investigative Task Unit. They have not
explained why Van Niekerk hid the papers or
why he later handed them over.
The core of the state’s case against Malan and
the 19 other officers accused of conspiring to
carry out the KwaMakutha massacre relies on
the collection of documents. Yet none of the
papers refer directly to the KwaMakutha
killings, and investigators believe the
missing documents will contain information
that fills this vital gap.
l One of the secret reports in the file handed
to court contains intriguing details about how
military intelligence responded to The Weekly
Mail’s original expose of Inkatha’s hit squad
training at the hands of the military’s
special forces.
The report, drafted by Van Niekerk, says:
“Chief Minister Buthelezi’s image will be
negatively affected if these reports gain more
prominence” and goes on to suggest a programme
of damage control.
It goes on to say that the possibilities for
damage control were limited because the first
reaction of Buthelezi’s officials and the
public relations division of the military was
to deny the validity of The Weekly Mail’s
report.
The report says Malan, then defence minister,
was likely to face difficult questions in
Parliament about the newspaper’s expose and,
if this happened, it would not be wise to deny
the military’s involvement in training
Inkatha.
“Training of Inkatha must be placed in the
right perspective … it was designed to
protect the chief minister and was not
guerrilla training.” Other documents in the
collection appear to contradict this and show
the Inkatha squads underwent a large amount of
training in counter-insurgency and offensive
guerrilla warfare.