Evidence of murders motivated by greed rather than revelations of political crimes dominated the first days of Eugene de Kock’s trial, writes Jan Taljaard
BOGGED down in intricate legal argument for the first two days of proceedings, the Eugene de Kock trial did not look to be the curtain raiser to the “truth hearings” or third force activities it had promised to be.
When the trial eventually came to life on the third day with the introduction of the first state witness, it was with the promise of tales of sheer criminal conduct rather than political atrocities.
Perhaps more than anything else it was the evidence led about an allegedly false statement made two years before, that best served to illustrate the cloak of mock heroics, greed, lies and deceit that had allegedly accompanied policemen who had become a law unto themselves.
The affidavit, sworn to in 1992 a few days after five alleged bank robbers were killed in a clash with police outside Nelspruit, contained all the sham phrases of a Boys’ Own adventure story: “I managed just in time to jump out of the way” (of the oncoming cars); and “I heard bullets whistling past my head”; also “If my life and those of my colleagues had not been in danger of death, I would not have fired.”
As in the case of the fictitious adventure, and according to the testimony of prosecution witness Captain Christiaan Willem Geldenhuys, the above phrases were indeed snatched from the realms of fiction.
Unlike an innocuous adventure story, Geldenhuys’ original affidavit has since 1992 allegedly served to cover up a true tale of greed, callous and premeditated murder and a travesty of justice that had reached up to the top hierarchy of the police.
On Wednesday Geldenhuys told the court of events in March 1992 when members of the C10 Vlakplaas unit and the Pretoria Murder and Robbery Unit under the command of Eugene De Kock and himself, planned to ambush and kill the occupants of a minibus outside Nelspruit.
Vlakplaas member Sergeant Douglas “Dougie” Holtzhausen had allegedly approached Geldenhuys, at that time acting commander of the Pretoria Murder and Robbery Unit, and told him that a bank robbery was being planned. According to what Geldenhuys told the court, they then together decided to kill the robbers before “a tragedy could take place”.
The alleged robbers, duped into using a minibus provided to them by a police informer, entered the death trap on the road outside Nelspruit and were gunned down without warning and without having fired at the policemen.
After the vehicle had stopped, one occupants still showed signs of life. Geldenhuys testified that Warrant Officer Kobus “Chappies” Kloppers shot at him from close range before AK47 rifles and handgrenades were planted inside the vehicle. The vehicle was then set alight to destroy possible forensic evidence.
During the ensuing investigation General Krappies Engelbrecht allegedly forbade those involved in the “operation” to make statements to local police in Nelspruit unless they had “consulted with him in Pretoria”.
The affidavit in which Geldenhuys alleged he had tried to flag down the oncoming cars, but was then fired on, was made a few days later under De Kock’s guidance. Engelbrecht saw to it that further alterations were made to statements before these were retyped, Geldenhuys testified.
Describing the events leading up to the ambush, Geldenhuys, testified that while they were “resting” in a nearby hotel the previous evening, De Kock and Kloppers turned up with “two typists from Vlakplaas”.
They would later leave “with the ladies” only to return three hours later without them and in time to start preparing for a killing.
Another aside that briefly tickled a public gallery sated with the complex legal argument that took up the first two days of the trial, was that Holtzhausen had allegedly told Geldenhuys that “Mrs Mandela” was behind the proposed robberies but that it had nothing to do with politics.
As in a large number of the 120 other counts that De Kock is facing, the prosecution will also set out to prove that greed, and not politics, was to a large extent the motivation behind the Nelspruit murders.
In the charge sheet it is alleged that a reward of R20 000 was paid out to a fictitious informant who is said to have provided police with the information that had led to the one-sided shootout.
Geldenhuys’ evidence, the first of the trial, seemed to underscore the opening statements of state advocate Anton Ackerman when he told the court that the proceedings should not be seen as a Nuremberg trial.
“This is not a political trial. It is about criminality. De Kock is being charged with a heap of crimes that are universal, as old as the ages: Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal. It is about murder and fraud.”
Setting the scene for his first witness and others still to come, Ackerman stated that the state will have to rely on witnesses who had moved in a closed circle, “former members of C10, confidants of De Kock. These people were not law abiding. It is not the state’s intention to paint them white. The court will hear of repulsive crimes, of travesties of justice. They are not going to make excuses for themselves or downplay their roles.”
With a possible 150 and more prosecution witnesses still to come, the stage is indeed set for the unravelling of a series of alleged crimes with parallel sub-plots not associated with Boys’ Own fanzines.
There will be the one of rogues turning on rogues. Of witness protection programmes formerly thought to be part of the domain of Hollywood movies, and, still waiting in the wings, one of political expediency by death.
Still to be dealt with are the death of lawyer Bheki Mlangeni, alleged to have been killed by a bomb intended for Dirk Coetzee and of askaris Goodwill Sikhakane and Brian Ngqulanga who were allegedly killed because the knew too much about political crimes.
As Ackerman indeed intimated in his opening statement: “We do not deny that political motives may surface…” — DigiNews