In the midst of allegations of security police assassination squads, Brigadier Willem Schoon, the officer alleged to have headed the secret hit squads has suddenly retired from the police force. Notices for Schoon’s retirement party were being posted at police headquarters on the same day that former security policeman Butana Almond Nofomela alleged in an affidavit taken on death row that he had been a member of a security police death squad responsible for at least nine murders on ANC-linked individuals.
The previous day, Lawyers for Human Rights had informed Schoon of the intention to take the affidavit. The retirement became effective at the end of October. This week South African Police Public relations sources confirmed that the 58-year-old brigadier had indeed retired ”as he had reached the age of retirement. ”He could in fact have retired a number of years ago but chose to stay on in the SA Police,” the communique continued. According to police sources, when Schoon first announced his intention to retire about two years ago, he was urged at cabinet level to remain in the force. Questions remain regarding the suddenness of last month’s retirement in the wake of Nofomela’s allegations.
Meanwhile, Schoon was this week linked to the current inquest into the killing of four youths and the wounding of two others in Chesterville, near Durban. An authorisation document signed by Schoon, as head of ”C Section” at Pretoria security headquarters, permits a special police unit ”Section Cl” to take an AK47 with them to Durban. The document was handed to the inquest by Guido Penzhom, counsel for the families of the four dead youths. It noted the weapon would be used o establish the credibility of the unit involved in infiltrating ”a group of African National Congress terrorists” in the Port Natal area.
Schoon authorised the use of the weapon for this purpose on June 3 1986. About a fortnight later seven members of the unit killed the four youths and wounded the two others in Chesterville using a variety of weapons including the AK47 authorised by Schoon. Yesterday Penzhorn put it to Andries Seleka, one of the members of ”Section Cl” who was involved in the killings, that their orders had not been to infiltrate and arrest, but to kill. He said this would make sense of many puzzling elements in the incident. Seleka denied they intended to kill the youths. He said they were ordered to arrest them but the plan went wrong when they were allegedly fired on. Thinking they were under attack, they returned the fire.
Two other officers named by Nofomela as part of the alleged hit squad have also emerged during the Chesterville inquest: Major Eugene Alexander de Kock, in Pretoria at the time of the incident, was in charge of the unit that went to Chesterville, while Lieutenant Paul van Dyk, also from Pretoria, headed the under-cover unit ‘ during their stay in Durban. In Nofomela’s first description of operations in the alleged assassination squad he said he and his three col¬ leagues each received R1000 after murdering Durban civil rights lawyer Griffiths Mxenge. They were told the money was from Schoon in payment for ”successfully eliminating Mxenge”.
Nofomela claims he was appointed a member of this assassination squad in 1981 and that Schoon was his commander. He also claimed that after Mxenge’s murder, his car was driven to the bor¬der where it was stripped before be¬ing set alight. He said Mxenge’s radio/tape was installed into Schoon’s service vehicle. According to Nofomela he was visited on death row by several officers who told him Schoon wanted Nofomela ”not to reveal anything about’ (his) activities as a member of the assassination squad” and promised to help him (get out of death row).
As his execution date drew near, however, Nofomela claims he was visited by a security police colleague, a Captain Khosa, bearing a message from De Kock to the effect that the branch would not assist him and that he should ”take the pain”. This was only hours after Lawyers for Human Rights contacted Schoon asking him to intervene in Nofomela’s impending execution.
*Captain Johannes Dirk Coetzee, named as Nofomela’ s field commander in the Mxenge killing, left the police force in 1986, reportedly suffering from diabetes.
*Though it has been widely reported that Lawyers for Human Rights are in possession of information vital to their investigations, the investigative team appointed by Justice Minister Kobie Coetsee had not contacted the organisation by Wednesday afternoon.
*A senior police source who wished to remain anonymous said that only one of the three photographs published in last week’s Weekly Mail was not of an assassination target, but of an alleged ANC operative who blew himself up in an abortive limpet mine attack on Kine Centre last year. This is the only identification the Weekly Mail has been able to make to date. – Ivor Powell and Carmel Rickard
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
