Ann Eveleth
ANC MP Billy Nair is the next witness to take the stand in the trial of General Magnus Malan and his 19 co-accused which gets going again in the Durban Supreme Court on Monday.
Nair — an ANC and South African Communist Party stalwart — was one of four targets allegedly chosen by the accused.
A previous witness, soldier and self-confessed hit-squad trainer JP Opperman, testified before the court recess that Nair’s dossier was one of two satisfactorily completed by a group of pro-Inkatha men trained in the Caprivi Strip as a defensive unit.
The members of this unit were assigned to select a target “whose death would have a positive impact on the Inkatha Freedom Party”. Opperman said the final target, UDF activist Victor Ntuli, was chosen over Nair who “appeared to be aware he was under surveillance”.
Nair — who worked in the ANC’s undergound movement in KwaZulu-Natal at the time of the attack — is believed to have known the young Ntuli, whose work in the UDF-aligned KwaMakhutha Youth League put him in the frontline of the struggle.
While Nair’s testimony is expected to broaden the political backdrop against which the KwaMakhutha attack was launched, sheafs of new documentation are due to be tabled in court next week by chief prosecutor KwaZulu-Natal Attorney General Tim McNally.
The seven defence teams are likely to be snowed under when stacks of further documents seized last year from Military Intelligence (MI) headquarters by the Investigation Task Unit are added to the court papers.
The documents will provide further evidence for the state’s allegation that the most senior accused — including Malan, former Military Inteligence head Tienie Groenewald, former army chief Kat Liebenberg and former South African Defence Force chief Jannie Geldenhuys, who have not been named in witness testimony (so far), “appreciated at all material times that [Operation Marion’s] offensive actions included actions amounting to murder”.
Operation Marion was the code name allegedly given to a state-funded project to secretly train Inkatha-aligned youths to undermine organisations loyal to the ANC.
In order to prove the authenticity of the documents, McNally is then likely to call witnesses from the elite police squad in KwaZulu-Natal, the Investigative Task Unit and from MI to testify to the origin of the documents.
The state’s second star witness —Caprivi Staff Sergeant Andre Cloete — is expected to take the stand in the next two weeks.
He is described as one of the instructors of the offensive group who were trained in the Caprivi Strip by the SADF in 1986. Cloete resigned from the SADF and now operates a seed business in the Eastern Cape where he lives with his family.
Cloete is believed to have refused witness protection until recently, and it is unclear whether he is still using that protection.