Ann Eveleth
Three former KwaZulu-Natal security policemen have applied to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) for amnesty, the commission’s chief investigator said this week.
TRC investigator Satchie Govender confirmed reports that former Durban security policemen Colonel Andy Taylor and Captain Tjaart Fourie ‘ now with the TRC’s Witness Protection Unit ‘ and Pietermaritzburg policeman Captain Jerry Brooks, have applied for amnesty. Govender would not comment on the content of the applications.
Taylor’s application is believed to be the first by a senior police officer from the province and follows his court appearance earlier this year on charges related to the 1981 assassination of Durban human rights lawyer Griffiths Mxenge. Taylor was also subpoenaed to appear before the TRC following human rights hearings surrounding the 1978 assassination of University of Natal academic Rick Turner.
Taylor’s attorney Christo Nel said Taylor’s application did not relate to either of these incidents. ‘He denied involvement in either of them and did not even know Turner,’ said Nel.
He said Taylor’s application covered involvement in ‘six or seven’ other incidents including the death of askari [an insurgent-turned-collaborator] Neville ‘Goodwill’ Sikakhane and the ‘assault during interrogation’ of other people including African National Congress MP and senior South African Communist Party member Raymond Suttner.
Nel said Taylor had applied for amnesty in respect of ‘a couple of incidents on which the TRC supplied information that he didn’t even remember as they date back to 1974’.
One incident included in his application involved the ‘recruitment, or what you might call abduction, of a person from Swaziland who was to become an askari,’ said Nel.
Former Pietermaritzburg security policeman Brooks ‘ now a member of the South African Police Service Crime Intelligence Service (CIS) ‘ had also applied for amnesty in connection with this incident, said Nel who is also representing him.
Govender confirmed that TRC Witness Protection Unit member Captain Tjaart Fourie had applied for amnesty. The unit’s KwaZulu-Natal head Chris McAddam, however, denied that Fourie had resigned from the unit to make his application in the wake of Taylor’s application.
McAddam said he could not comment on whether Fourie had applied for amnesty, but said: ‘He is still a member of the unit.’