More claims of hit squads have come from Albert Luthuli’s grandson, until recently a senior IFP military leader, write Enoch Mthembu and Eddie Koch
DALUXOLO LUTHULI, Inkatha’s top para-military commander, has entered a state witness protection programme and made shock allegations about IFP hit squads.
Luthuli, who described himself as chief-of-staff of the IFP’s “military council”, says he personally headed a 300-strong network of killers.
An Inkatha Freedom Party spokesman said yesterday that Luthuli was only a clerk, whose job it was to count the party’s membership.
Luthuli, the grandson of the late ANC president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert Luthuli, is a former Umkhonto weSizwe member who defected to Inkatha after being captured and serving 10 years on Robben Island. He is the most senior military leader to have defected from the movement and it is possible his information will link senior officials in the party to acts of violence and murder.
He was the commander of the Caprivi 200, a group of Inkatha members given secret paramilitary training by South African Military Intelligence in northern Namibia in 1986.
Luthuli last month handed himself over to the Investigative Task Unit set up by Minister of Safety and Security Sydney Mufamadi to look into evidence that both the ANC and the kwaZulu Police are running hit squads that have fomented political violence in the country’s most troubled region.
Howard Varney, of the civilian board that supervises the work of the task unit, this week confirmed that Luthuli was helping with the investigation. “Mr Luthuli is under witness protection and is co-operating with the inquiries of the Investigative Task Unit,” he said.
Luthuli told the Weekly Mail & Guardian — during an interview conducted in Ulundi shortly before he handed himself over to Mufamadi’s men — that he acted as chief of staff for Inkatha’s “military council” between 1987 and the early 1990s.
He said in the latter part of this period he was personally in charge of 300 hit squad operatives in kwaZulu/Natal. “They (the hit squads) were killing Inkatha opponents, that is ANC leaders, with instruction from IFP leaders. Sometimes they would kill ANC people at their own discretion and then report back to their seniors so that cover-ups could take place,” he said.
Inkatha spokesman Thami Duma denied the claim. He said he was not aware that Luthuli had joined Mufamadi’s task force. Regarding claims about hit squads, Duma said: “That is madness because all Luthuli did in Ulundi was act as a clerical worker mainly concerned with counting the membership of the IFP.”
Luthuli joined Umkhonto weSizwe in the 1960s and was trained in exile before returning to the country where he was arrested in 1969. After a 10-year spell on Robben Island, he turned his back on the ANC and joined Inkatha.
“They took me because of my experience in the (ANC’s) army. I was the youngest ever MK member at the age of 14 when I was in exile and fought with Chris Hani in those days. Inkatha then used me for training their people.”
In the mid-1980s, Luthuli led a group of 200 hand- picked Inkatha men to a secret training base in the Caprivi Strip of what was then South West Africa. They were trained by officers from the South African Defence Force’s Department of Military Intelligence and the Fifth Reconnaissance Commando in offensive warfare techniques.
The elite unit of Inkatha paramilitary fighters received intense instruction in the use of AK-47 rifles, RPG-7 rocket launchers, G3 submachine guns, Browning machine guns and anti-personnel mines.
The 200 fighters then returned to South Africa where they were used to train other paramilitary units for Inkatha. They also formed the hard core of the 300- strong “hit-squad network” whose activities Luthuli claims he personally supervised.
The Weekly Mail exposed the Caprivi training programme in a 1989 report. Both Inkatha and the SADF denied any knowledge of the operation at the time, but in August 1991 then-president FW de Klerk acknowledged it had been part of a series of clandestine and dirty tricks projects funded by his government during the apartheid era.
During his interview with the WM&G, Luthuli said that in the early 1990s he was placed in charge of training a new unit known as Inkatha’s “five rand brigade” — named after the R-5 rifles they used — and that this brigade later transformed itself into the movement’s self protection units.
The five rand brigade operated out of the Mlaba camp, a secret base located in a remote part of kwaZulu near the Umfolozi game reserve, which was raided in 1994 by police and officials acting on behalf of the Transional Executive Council (TEC) after receiving evidence that violence was being planned there.
“These people were trained to kill and then given to warlords and chiefs and to eradicate ANC supporters,” Luthuli said.
Early last year, a TEC report found there was evidence of hit-squad activity within the kwaZulu Police and that the Caprivi 200 were involved.
It appears Luthuli decided to quit Inkatha after relations soured between himself and other senior colleagues. He was known to be particularly incensed by Inkatha’s decision to use Phillip Powell, now an IFP senator, as a senior training officer in the self- protection units.
Luthuli said in the interview that his conscience had been troubling him and that he was considering exposing the hit squads as he was having sleepless nights over his violent past. “An alcoholic is a better person than me because all he thinks about is liquor. I have done bad things which are on my conscience,” he said.
At the time the interview was conducted, Luthuli expressed interest in appearing before the proposed truth commission.
He said at that stage that he was willing to reveal everything he knew about hit-squad activities.
“I will disclose all I was doing and I want politicians and hit squad members to testify so that they can remind each other … In this way the truth will come out and heal the country’s past wounds and hatred.”