Craig Williamson has revealed that South African security police carried out a London bombing raid. But he hasn’t told the whole story, say former colleagues. Stefaans Brummer reports
ONE-TIME spy Craig Williamson’s revelations about the March 1982 bombing of the ANC offices in London do not go farenough, former police Security Branch colleagues say. They charged this week that former Law and Order Minister Louis le Grange approved the plan after an approach by then security branch head General Johan Coetzee.
Two top-ranking former members of the Branch pointed out that Le Grange’s advance knowledge of the bombing raid, carried out by seven security policemen including Williamson, virtually assured that the State Security Council and other cabinet members would have known.
Their claims corroborated a statement made this week by outgoing police commissioner General Johan van der Merwe that the Security Branch would not have engaged in operations of the kind without the approval of the State Security Council, the cabinet committee that managed the apartheid state’s security interests.
Confessions about the London bomb, as well as two parcel bombs that killed Ruth First, Jeanette Schoon and Schoon’s young daughter, Katryn, in Angola and Mozambique, this week drew hefty denials from politicians, who said if the claims were true they had nothing to do with it.
But a former security police officer — he asked not to be named but was at the time part of the “Sanhedrin”, the executive management of the security branch — said he had seen a memo before the raid from General Coetzee (who later became commissioner of police, and is now head of the police academy at Graaff Reinet) to Le Grange, in which the plans for the London raid were discussed.
He said Le Grange rejected the first version of the plan on the grounds that it was “too risky”; it was likely to be traced back to South Africa. But Coetzee proposed new plans, which included each member of the raid party being issued with more than one false passport to facilitate escape, and gave Le Grange an assurance that the bomb would be detonated at a time when lives were not likely to be lost. Le Grange then approved the plan.
The former officer said the correspondence made it clear that diplomatic channels would be used to send the explosives to London, and that the South African embassy there would be used in the plan.
Williamson said in his “confession” to The Observer newspaper in London on Sunday that the parts for the bomb had been transported by diplomatic bag, and that it had been assembled at the South African embassy in London.
The Observer article quoted Williamson as saying the raid, as well as the parcel bombs that killed First and Schoon, had been ordered or commanded by Colonel Piet Goosen, who died some years ago. Williamson disputed assertions independently made to The Observer that Coetzee — who was his mentor and is still thought to be a good friend — had given the orders.
The former officer said the extra passports were issued by police Brigadier Andre Beukes, then a captain in the Security Branch, and that the explosives had been stashed in a cake tin in the diplomatic bag, and addressed to an employee of the London embassy who co-operated with the security branch.
He said it appeared then-ambassador Marais Steyn had not known about the assembly of the bomb under his nose, but that “it was the way it was” that Le Grange would have cleared the project with the State Security Council and cabinet colleagues.
Another former top Security Branch officer agreed, saying Goosen — who was group head of a number of Security Branch units that included the intelligence unit which Williamson commanded — could not have “started a war on his own”. For a project of that nature, a “commissioner- minister memo” was necessary.
He said the plan would probably have been thought up by the intelligence section and Williamson, but that it would have had to be approved, in sequence, by Goosen, by Coetzee as Security Branch chief, by the commissioner of police, and by the minister. He said the fact that all seven had been awarded medals for bravery by Le Grange in September that year corroborated other evidence that Le Grange had approved the project.
Both charged that Williamson, by naming Goosen as the most senior person involved, was “protecting” Coetzee. Neither Coetzee nor Williamson could be contacted for comment. Williamson was said to be in Mozambique, while Coetzee was on leave from the police academy this week.
Goosen, who died about two years ago, first gained notoriety as the man in charge of the interrogation in which black consciousness leader Steve Biko was beaten to death in 1977.
Others named by Williamson as having been involved in the London bombing, apart from himself, were Eugene de Kock, the former Vlakplaas unit commander who this week went on trial on 121 Third Force-related and other charges, then- Warrant-Officer Jerry Raven (who now runs a shop in Pretoria and was named by Williamson to have set the London bomb and fitted the parcel bombs), Jimmy Taylor, John Adam and Vic McPherson, a serving police colonel.
Williamson first made his “confession” to the ANC intelligence wing late last year, saying the new governing party had “a right to know”. This confession was leaked to The Observer correspondent Phillip van Niekerk, who confronted Williamson with it.
Williamson then agreed to talk, saying of the London bomb: “Jerry Raven and one of the others actually positioned the bomb.”
Williamson said there had been a special regional interception unit at Jan Smuts airport that sorted all the mail in Southern Africa, putting aside letters whose addresses included certain names, acronyms or organisations.”Everything went through Jan Smuts,” he said.
A parcel from a United Nations agency in Lesotho addressed to Slovo in Maputo was intercepted. It was taken to Wachthuis, the police headquarters in Pretoria, where a small explosive device was fitted. “Some weeks later, a device went off in Maputo and killed her (First). The logical conclusion was that it was that device.”
Williamson told The Observer that the killing of activist Schoon and her six-year-old daughter, blown up by a parcel bomb in the Angolan city of Lubango in June 1984, was, like the First killing, aimed at her husband.
He said a parcel from Gaborone to Angola, addressed to Marius Schoon, had been brought to his unit. “They said, right, here is this parcel from the ANC in Gaborone to Marius Schoon in Lubango. Doctor it. We doctored it and gave it back to them, and that was that.”
Williamson said the death of Schoon and her daughter disillusioned him with police work. “That was the end of my career.” He subsequently joined Military Intelligence, where he hoped to do “proper intelligence work”.
Williamson said that after the First killing a “stratcom” (a “strategic communication”, or propaganda project) to plant the story that Slovo had killed his wife was devised. It was claimed that First had been “causing all sorts of trouble in the Communist Party central committee”.
The story was published in the Johannesburg daily The Star in 1984. Later Slovo successfully sued the newspaper.
Former Sunday Times reporter Stephan Terblanche this week confirmed Williamson had told journalists after First’s death that Slovo had been responsible.
While not reported in the Observer article, Williamson has said that the First killing was not done by the police alone; a specialist unit of the Defence Force had helped transport the parcel to Mozambique.