GENERAL Jac Buchner, former police commissioner in the old KwaZulu homeland, has been implicated in running large supplies of war matriel to Inkatha paramilitaries in the early 1990s by former members of the police special forces unit that operated out of the Vlakplaas base near Pretoria.
The evidence has been presented by former Vlakplaas agents to the truth commission. It indicates that Buchner was involved in supplying truckloads of weapons – assault rifles, rocket launchers, landmines, rockets and ammunition – to members of the Inkatha Freedom Party when he was the commissioner of police for the KwaZulu homeland.
The information is also in the possession of the Transvaal attorney general and is being investigated by his officials. This is the first time Buchner has been linked to the gun-running operation and it is likely he will feature, either as an accused or as a witness, in a huge trial that is expected to come before the courts early this year.
Former Vlakplaas commander Eugene de Kock first exposed the clandestine gun-running operation during his murder trial when he named IFP senator Philip Powell, former homeland minister CJ Mtetwa and Transvaal Inkatha leaders Themba Koza and Humphrey Ndlovu as key middlemen in the weapons programme.
De Kock also claimed at least four other police generals at the time – including Basie Smit, Krappies Engelbrecht, Nick van Rensburg and a General Steyn – were aware of the fact that Vlakplaas was ordered to supply a batch of home-made shotguns to Inkatha’s paramilitary units.
But the Vlakplaas commander never mentioned the name of the former KwaZulu police commissioner in his court testimony, probably because De Kock is known to have been fiercely loyal to Buchner since he fought with him during the Rhodesian bush war in the 1960s. De Kock was introduced to his wife in Rhodesia at the time by Buchner, and the two men have remained loyal friends.
It is also known that Buchner was a member of the Badger Unit, an association of police and military covert operatives set up by De Kock and his colleagues in the early 1990s. The Badger Unit has been implicated in various gun-running operations, including the project to supply Inkatha militias with weaponry.
Now other Vlakplaas officers – including De Kock’s one-time confidant, Chappie Kloppers – have not only confirmed their commander’s account of how Vlakplaas ferried weapons to Inkatha, but have also added the former homeland police commissioner’s name to the list.
Buchner was highly decorated during the Rhodesian bush war when he fought with South African police forces there. He then acquired a reputation in the security police during the 1970s – when he was in charge of “debriefing” captured guerillas – for his uncanny ability to use a combination of torture and psychological pressure to turn captured African National Congress cadres into police agents, or askaris. He was the mastermind of the police’s askari units that worked with Vlakplaas to infiltrate and assassinate ANC-aligned activists in the 1980s.
It was suspected Buchner used his office after he became police commissioner for KwaZulu to provide clandestine state support for the Zulu nationalist movement, but this is the first time strong evidence has emerged to show this.
Efforts to contact Buchner for comment were not successful at the time of going to press.
ENDS