A brutal case shows the truth commission has the ability to turn murderous men into decent human beings, reports Eddie Koch
THE question of whether Captain Wouter Mentz should be given amnesty for the murders he committed as a policeman could well be recorded in the history of the truth commission as the “case of the missing tongue”.
Mentz is a burly man with a macho moustache and a swagger typical of the men who worked in the police death squad at Vlakplaas in the 1980s and early 1990s. So it was an unexpectedly poignant moment in the truth commission’s amnesty committee hearing this week when – during an account of how he and three other security branch men had abducted and battered Brian Ngqulunga, and pumped a magazine full of AK-47 bullets into his body – the captain faltered, sobbed softly and asked for a glass of water before he could continue.
Mentz was speaking in support of his application for amnesty for a range of murders, including the gruesome killing of Ngqulunga.
He told the committee hearing in Pretoria that he and three other Vlakplaas operatives were given an instruction from their commanders in July 1990 to eliminate “Brian”, a member of the Vlakplaas unit, because he was providing the African National Congress with secrets.
He believed the order to assassinate their colleague, in a way that made it look as if he had been killed by members of the ANC, had come from a general at security branch headquarters in Pretoria, probably Nic van Rensburg.
They hired a minibus, covered their faces in balaclavas and lured their victim to a rendezvous, where they dragged him from a car, tied him up, taped his mouth and severely assaulted him before dumping him into their minibus.
The hit squad took Ngqulunga to a deserted road near Brits, where Captain Rian Bellingham fired a magazine from an AK-47 into the body. Another member of the team, Captain Piet Botha, emptied his service pistol into the dead man.
Mission accomplished, the assassins drove to a plot in Pretoria North where they hosed down the inside of the minibus, “because Ngqulunga had urinated [during his assault] and so forth”. They then joined their commander, Colonel Eugene de Kock, at the Holiday Inn in Pretoria for “drankies [drinks]” and a meal.
After the regular branch of the police discovered Ngqulunga’s body and informed Vlakplaas that one of their men had been killed, the commander arranged for him to be given a proper police burial at a remote site on the farm where the death squad had its headquarters.
It was at a point in his testimony when Mentz was describing the macabre funeral – apparently an effort to reinforce the notion that Ngqulunga had been gunned down by ANC guerrillas – that the brawny policeman came close to weeping.
“I refused to attend and remained in the canteen at Vlakplaas [while the funeral was in progress]. Later De Kock came to me and asked why I was not there, and I replied that it was not acceptable [to kill a man and then attend his funeral as a mourner],” said the captain.
“At the time I believed what I did was right. I do not believe so now.”
The question for the amnesty committee is whether Mentz’s confession was an act of genuine contrition, or a staged act of remorse designed to strengthen his case for amnesty.
There are a number of factors that support the police captain’s request for forgiveness. Former Vlakplaas member Willie Nortje has confirmed Mentz did not fire any of the shots that killed Ngqulunga, and that Mentz vomited after seeing the body being ripped by the AK-47 volley.
Other colleagues say Mentz is the most “sensitive” of the five security policemen before the amnesty committee this week. They say he is clearly disturbed, drinks a lot and has undergone a series of treatments for post-traumatic stress. All this suggests it is possible he justified his role in the killing of Ngqulunga because he believed he was about to “sell out” to the ANC.
Later he realised that, in fact, the generals wanted Ngqulunga dead because the Vlakplaas operative had threatened to tell investigators from an official inquiry set up by the National Party government – not the ANC – about covert police operations. The realisation that he had been hoodwinked into carrying out the murder probably shattered the policeman’s rationale for the atrocity.
But then there is the sheer brutality of the attack, along with the fact that the post-mortem report shows Ngqulunga’s tongue was missing when his body was found. Mentz insists none of his henchmen cut it out. Pictures of the body after it was found show part of Ngqulunga’s face was blown away by bullets, and this may have severed his tongue.
Truth commission legislation states that amnesty can only be granted if applicants pass two vital tests: they have to make full disclosures about the acts they confess to, and the violence they committed has to be in proportion to the political ideals that motivated them.
If it turns out Ngqulunga’s tongue was cut out in an act of gratuitous violence, it will blow Mentz’s chances for amnesty on both counts. Which would be a pity, because his moment of penance in Pretoria this week suggested the truth commission does have the ability to turn murderous men into decent human beings.