THURSDAY, 5.30PM
FORMER apartheid police minister Adriaan Vlok said on Thursday that he will testify at the special truth commission hearing on the State Security Council next week.
Vlok said he is prepared to assist the commission “as far as possible” in its inquiry into SSC activities between 1985 and 1987. He added that he had received no information about the nature of the hearing or the questions to be put to him, “but I am willing to co-operate fully with them,” he said.
Former defence minister Magnus Malan said on Thursday that he is aware of the hearing, but refused to comment “through the media” on whether he is prepared to testify.
The SSC was a powerful cabinet committee chaired by then state president PW Botha. Although it had no statutory powers, it was responsible for advising the National Party government on national security policy. In its submission to the truth commission, the African National Congress described the SSC as a “super-cabinet” which effectively ruled South Africa at the height of the apartheid conflict.
THURSDAY, 8.30AM
THE Truth Commission has warned 70 prominent people — including Inkatha leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi, former defence minister Magnus Malan, former SADF chief Kat Liebenberg and former police general Jannie Geldenhuys — that they are to be named in evidence next week which implicates them in hit-squad killings in KwaZulu-Natal.
The TRC is obliged to pre-warn people whose names will appear in evidence, so that they can hire lawyers to cross-examine witnesses on their behalf. The evidence next week relates to the military training of more than 200 Inkatha members at a secret camp in the Caprivi Strip, and their deployment as paramilitary units in townships during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The existence of the Caprivi trainees was first exposed in the Weekly Mail, now the Mail&Guardian, in a series of articles seven years ago. Those called to give evidence next week inlcude the leader of the group, Daluxolo Luthuli, and former kwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Roy During.