Documents found in the wrecked car of Internal Security head Leonard Radu led to the identification of two KwaZulu-Natal warlords as alleged agents, reports Ann Eveleth
THE spy scandal which erupted this week also implicates Inkatha Freedom Party warlord David Ntombela. The Mail & Guardian has established that the evidence which led the African National Congress to expel warlord and MPP Sifiso Nkabinde for being an alleged spy also identifies Ntombela, his IFP counterpart, as an alleged security police agent who reported to the same police “handlers” in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands.
Ntombela on Thursday denied the allegations, saying he had “never worked for any police unit” and that he was being implicated because the ANC feared him as much as it feared Nkabinde.
Nkabinde has already denied the ANC’s allegations.
But the M&G has been told that Ntombela and Nkabinde were linked to the security police – and its successor, the Crime Intelligence Service (CIS) – in documents recovered from the wreckage of the fatal car crash in which Internal Security head Leonard Radu died last month. Radu was to fly to Durban to discuss the matter with colleagues when his car left the road.
The allegations against Ntombela come from three separate and reliable organisations, although none were prepared to comment publicly.
However, violence monitors in the province said there was evidence that Ntombela enjoyed close links with the police. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has already heard testimony from two police constables about Ntombela’s links with the Pietermaritzburg riot unit. Ntombela this week denied such links.
The allegations raise fresh questions about the role the “third force” played in fomenting political violence in the area. The two warlords also ingratiated themselves with the province’s peace drive.
A University of Natal violence monitor, Mary de Haas, said there were allegations that Nkabinde and Ntombela had colluded to extend their control over the region while boosting their credibility among supporters. “Now they have both become big peacelords but are continuing to consolidate their territory,” she said.
In announcing Nkabinde’s expulsion, the ANC named seven security policemen alleged to have been his handlers, including the head of the Pietermaritzburg CIS, Superintendent Chris Moolman.
Moolman declined to identify his informers, but confirmed that all but one of the men named as handlers by the ANC had worked for him. Two of them – Sergeant Shane Morris and Captain Jerry Brooks – are still with the unit.
Brooks applied to the truth commission last December for amnesty in connection with the abduction of a person from Swaziland who was to become an askari. The man he abducted was ANC activist Dion Cele whose remains, along with those of two other activists, were dug up last month by truth commission investigators on a farm near Ntombela’s Elandskop stronghold.
The allegations also revive questions about the unsolved October 1992 murder of a Midlands ANC leader, Reggie Hadebe. He was the “right-hand man” of the late ANC stalwart Harry Gwala. Hadebe’s death opened that position to Nkabinde in 1993.
The ANC report on Nkabinde’s alleged spying says: “A new era dawned of prolific reports from [Nkabinde], with 1993 recording a regular flow of information [to police].” Nkabinde had apparently joined the United Democratic Front just four years earlier.
Initial spying allegations against Nkabinde emerged after the 1994 death of an ANC Richmond youth leader, Mzwandile Mbongwa. Two of Nkabinde’s self-defence unit members were convicted of the murder.
Monitors say the allegations against the two warlords have been strengthened by the police’s apparent failure to pursue them for crimes they are alleged to have committed.
A University of Natal academic and former monitor, John Aitchison, said police appeared to have “allowed certain things to happen” in Richmond – the core of Nkabinde’s support base – in order to boost his credibility.
These included a 1991 ambush of IFP attackers by ANC youths, who had apparently been tipped-off and were able to arm themselves after they stumbled on an Umkhonto weSizwe arms cache. The ambush led to the death of 23 IFP supporters, “yet there was silence from the police and the IFP”, Aitchison said. “The incident didn’t even appear in the police unrest report.”
More recently, police are believed to have tipped off Nkabinde about two raids on his Dambuza stronghold, which is apparently flooded with illegal arms. Only six weapons were found in the raids.
Nkabinde has faced growing allegations about his involvement in violence, and a recent report by the South African National Defence Force linked him and Ntombela and several others to paramilitary activity.
The recent furore about alleged informers in the ANC’s ranks is understood to have presented the party with the opportunity it has long been seeking to cut Nkabinde loose. Nkabinde will address a rally in Pietermaritzburg on Saturday.