WEDNESDAY, 5.30PM
FORMER National Party cabinet ministers approved a strategy in 1986 to provide support for Witdoek vigilantes in the Western Cape as a counter-revolutionary measure, the Truth and Reconcillation Commission heard on Wednesday.
Former regional development board member and town clerk of Crossroads, Ricky Schelhase, said the aim of the strategy was to reward those who collaborated with the state and embraced non-violence. Such communities were given preferential treatment for housing and schools.
Schelhase said he became involved in implementing the strategy through his position on the development board, which was responsible for administering black areas, and also as chairman of a local joint management committee (JMC) sub-committee.
He said the strategy was approved by former defence minister Magnus Malan, then State Security Council secretary Roelf Meyer and law and order minister Adriaan Vlok at a briefing in 1986. The briefing was also attended by defence force generals Constand Viljoen and Kat Liebenberg.
Testifying on the third and last day of the TRC’s hearing into violence that wracked Cape Peninsula shantytowns in May and June 1986, Schelhase was questioned by a TRC panel on a meeting of the Western Province JMC at Cape Town castle in January 1986. The minutes of the meeting, stamped “geheim” (secret), were sent to the SSC secretariat in February of that year. According to the document, army Brigadier AK de Jager of Western Province Command recommended support for the Witdoeke against African National Congress-aligned “comrades”. De Jager said this support could be given clandestinely.
“Mr de Jongh [secretary to the regional director of constitutional development] undertook to mention the issue to the development board to get them to investigate the possibility of suppport to the [Witdoeke],” the minutes said.
Schelhase confirmed the May and June 1986 Witdoek attacks that destroyed the satellite shantytowns around Crossroads, leaving 60 000 homeless and 60 dead, were of benefit to the development board. Constitutional development minister Gerrit Viljoen, under whose control the development boards fell, had already announced plans to upgrade Crossroads, but only at the expense of people living on land surrounding the area.