Ann Eveleth
When former Military Intelligence Sergeant Andre Cloete shifted from his rigid attention- like stand in the witness box on Tuesday morning, lifting his right arm to his face, it seemed as if he might offer an apologetic salute to the generals in the dock.
The salute never materialised, but the impression of the obedient soldier intensified through the proceedings.
Testifying in the mass murder trial of former defence minister Magnus Malan and 19 others, which resumed on Monday in the Durban Supreme Court after a two-week recess, Cloete — the Caprivi instructor of 40 offensive unit members trained by Operation Marion — appeared uncomfortable with his own betrayal of the accused.
He looked less tense about his role in the death of 13 innocent women and children in the January 1987 KwaMakhutha massacre.
While he had thought “long and hard” about his decision to become the state’s second star witness in the case against his former superiors, Cloete had dutifully obeyed “orders” from his superior — state witness and former South African Defence Force Major “JP” Opperman — to “wipe out” United Democratic Front activist Victor Ntuli’s entire family, and had trained his men to kill “everybody in the house”.
The soldier whose standard nine education took him into “dangerous operations” in Angola, Zambia, former Rhodesia and Mozambique in defence of apartheid before his recruitment into Operation Marion became putty in the hands of the defence.
Testifying — mostly in the short answers expected of military juniors — under cross- examination by defence advocate Mike Maritz that he had been “pressured” by investigators to make his statement resemble Opperman’s, Cloete said he felt he would be arrested if he did not agree to testify.
Initially speaking as if the death of “everyone” at a target was a standard operating procedure which would be applied regardless of “whether his target was a hospital, an old-age home or a ‘terrorist’ cell”, Cloete later declared that the order to “wipe out” Ntuli’s family had been “the most outrageous” he had ever received.
Earlier Cloete testified that the only reason the KwaMakhutha operation was not a success was that “the target was not eliminated”. Unlike Opperman — who testified that the attack had gone “horribly wrong” when women and children were killed — Cloete exhibited no physical body language to indicate signs of a conscience in torment: he had only followed orders, he said.
Those orders, Cloete testified, had come from Opperman. Told by Maritz that Opperman had blamed him for what he called the “fiasco” the attack became, Cloete said: “That is not correct”.
If Cloete stopped himself from calling Opperman a liar on Tuesday, his inhibitions had vanished by Wednesday when he declared that his former superior was a “madman”.
Seizing on the apparent animosity between Cloete and Opperman — whose decision to turn state’s evidence had led the Investigation Task Unit to Cloete — Maritz wooed Cloete: “Being an experienced soldier like yourself, you would want to do a target evaluation to determine when to attack. You don’t just storm into a place. You’re highly trained?” he asked.
Cloete agreed, obviously proud of his military career which stretched over more than 14 years.
Probing Cloete on why he — a Special Forces “attack specialist” — had not then been in charge of planning the attack, instead of the relatively “inexperienced” Opperman, Maritz said: “So it seems Opperman was moving in your field of operation?”
“Yes … Yes, Opperman did have no experience and he was into an area he knew nothing about,” declared Cloete.
Both Opperman and Cloete were recruited by Colonel Hennie Blauw, but two men recruited by the same man for the same purpose could not be more different.
Opperman, cool and sophisticated despite having only one more year of education than Cloete, described his participation in Operation Marion and the KwaMakhutha massacre in colourful detail. Defence lawyers were reduced to intimidatory tactics over his decision to testify in English, and innuendos about his decision to seek witness protection.
Cloete, on the other hand, having rejected witness protection and clinging to his mother tongue — even complaining that his original statement had been translated into English because the investigators did not speak Afrikaans — answered only what he was asked. The image of the loyal soldier endures.
Nevertheless, Cloete’s testimony implicated 10 of the accused — including five Caprivi trainees as well Inkatha Freedom Party deputy secretary general “MZ” Khumalo, former Military Intelligence Major John More, Ferntree base commander Dan Griesel, former senior Natal Command intelligence officer Jacobus Victor, and former Camp Hippo Commander Gerhardus Jacobs.
The trial continues.