The truth commission exhumes bodies from security police death farms, one in an IFP- held area, reports Ann Eveleth
ONE of the death farms uncovered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission last week sits in the heart of an Inkatha Freedom Party stronghold in the volatile KwaZulu-Natal Midlands.
Truth commission investigators last week exhumed the remains of three African National Congress activists murdered and buried by security policemen in the late 1980s on the grounds of the Elandskop farm. The farm is located close to the home of IFP MP and warlord David Ntombela. Ntombela last year refused to testify during public hearings on the 1990 “Seven-Day War” allegedly launched from his Elandskop stronghold.
The Mail & Guardian has established that the farm where the bodies of activists Phila Ndwandwe, “MK” Tekere Mkhwanazi and Dion Cele were found were on provincial trust lands which the Pietermaritzburg security police were permitted to use in the late 1980s.
It was unclear this week whether the land was owned by the national government and used for dumping black families kicked off surrounding white farmland, or was tribal land administered by the KwaZulu homeland government and its chiefs.
The farm was one of five pointed out by six former Durban and Pietermaritzburg security policemen, who are applying for amnesty for the murders of 12 ANC activists.
The applicants have been identified as General Johannes Steyn, Lieutenant-Colonel Hendrick Botha, a Colonel Vorster, Sam du Preez, Laurie Wasserman and Cassie Van Westhuizen.
The M&G has established that former Durban security branch colonel Andy Taylor, who applied for amnesty last December, did not assist the commission with the recent discoveries. Taylor’s attorney, Christo Nel, said this week Taylor had admitted to having commanded “a farm near Camperdown”, but said Taylor had not applied for amnesty in terms of any related murders. “He was running the farm as a commander, but he was not one of the low-level operational guys,” he said.
Nel said Taylor had not applied for amnesty for any actions committed under the name Andy Sullivan. A policeman using this name rented three other farms from the Anglo American-owned group Tongaat-Hulett. Truth commission investigators last week unearthed the remains of KwaZulu-Natal ANC activist Phumezo Mgxiweni on a Tongaat- owned farm named Waterloo, in the Verulam sugar plantation area north of Durban.
Tongaat executive director Johannes Magwaza said this week that the company had leased the farms to a man calling himself Sullivan, but denied Tongaat knew he was a security policeman. “Prior to these discoveries, we were unaware any of our properties had been leased for security police operations,” he said.
But Magwaza said Sullivan had leased three separate farms in the same area in quick succession, between the first lease in 1988 and late 1995 when the last property was vacated. Sources close to the truth commission said amnesty applicant Wasserman – currently a suspended Durban policeman – occupied the last Tongaat-owned farm until late 1995.
Magwaza said Tongaat had suspected nothing unusual when Sullivan approached the company to lease a farmhouse in 1988, nor when he paid cash for his R450 monthly rent. “He said he worked for a security company and presented himself as an upfront guy,” said Magwaza.
Magwaza said Tongaat would also not pay reparations to the family of the deceased found on its property. “We are not admitting any guilt so we don’t feel the need to pay anyone any money,” he said.
ANC MP Blade Nzimande said he found it “difficult” to believe Tongaat “had no idea what was happening on its property, especially when it was leased under such unusual circumstances”. He called on the commission to investigate the company.
“Big business has still to come forward and testify to the commission about its complicity and its benefit from the apartheid system as a whole,” Nzimande said.
Speaking as the ANC’s former KwaZulu-Natal Midlands information and publicity chairman, Nzimande said the security police death farm operations “could not have taken place outside of the context of the wider political conflict in this province.
“There have always been questions about the connection between certain farms and political violence. These farms may also have served to fan the flames of violence in this province,” he said.
Nzimande said the discovery of Mgxiweni’s body suggested the farms were used “to dispose of people that even apartheid’s biased courts had acquitted”.
Mgxiweni stood trial in Pietermaritzburg on terrorism charges together with several other Midlands activists in 1986, but was acquitted due to lack of evidence.
“People thought he went into exile,” Nzimande said. “It now looks like he tried to leave the country and these guys zapped him because they couldn’t convict him.”