Eddie Koch
EVIDENCE in Colonel Eugene de Kock’s mitigation hearing suggests clandestine support from the police for Inkatha paramilitary units to attack ANC supporters in the early 1990s — long after the movement was unbanned — was not a maverick operation by members of the Vlakplaas unit for personal gain.
De Kock told the court that he was tasked to supply a batch of 100 home-made shotguns by at least four police generals — including Krappies Engelbrecht, Nick van Rensburg, Basie Smit and a General Steyn who headed up the security police in Durban.
The colonel said Smit personally approved the budget for the manufacture of the weapons and General Steyn — with assistance from Colonel Louis Botha, one of the accused in the Magnus Malan murder trial — had helped to distribute the weapons.
After first supplying the home-made shotguns, demands from KwaZulu-Natal for more sophisticated weapons including AK-47 rifles, limpet mines and RPG-7s increased. De Kock says he then personally supplied truckloads of hand grenades, light machine guns, mines, ammunition and AK-47s to senior Inkatha officials including Senator Phillip Powell and former minister CJ Mtetwa.
De Kock suggested Powell was a key liaison officer in the conspiracy by military intelligence and covert police units to arm Inkatha paramilitaries. He said the senator had first worked for covert Stratcom units of the security police and became an agent for a military intelligence front company called Longreach before moving over to work closely with Inkatha.
The colonel said he received no payment for supplying the weapons or for training members of Inkatha’s self- protection units at a secret camp in KwaZulu-Natal.
In later testimony, De Kock alleged that General Steyn’s office once asked for the whole of the Vlakplaas unit to travel down to Durban so that it could take part in a joint attack with Inkatha members on an ANC “facility” in Chesterville.
On another occasion General Nick van Rensburg, said De Kock, asked the Vlakplaas commander to fill in a false claim form for R20 000 so that the funds could be used to “manufacture assegais for the Zulus”.
Craig Williamson, who set up military intelligence’s Longreach operation, saidit was probable Senator Powell did work as an MI agent and possible that he had been seconded to Inkatha as part of the wider strategy to convert the Zulu movement into a paramilitary bulwark against the ANC. He added that security force support for Inkatha had begun with top- level and ongoing contact between General Johan Coetzee, former head of security police and SAP commissioner in the 1980s, and Inkatha leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi. The support referred to by De Kock was simply the later stages of a wide-ranging strategy that had been set in place in the early 1980s.