A startling claim before the truth commission details plans by the security forces to bomb the ANC’s NEC. Chris Opperman reports
A PLAN by the former government to blow up the leadership of the African National Congress in the 1980s was aborted amid fears that spies in the liberation movement would be killed in the attack.
This startling claim is contained in the amnesty application to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission by Senior Superintendent Vic McPherson, who is still a serving member in the police service.
McPherson’s application also names several former cabinet ministers – including Pik Botha, Magnus Malan and Louis le Grange – who approved cross-border attacks on the ANC.
The plan to bomb an ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) meeting in Tanzania was scrapped the day before the operation was due to go ahead. McPherson says former National Intelligence Service head Niel Barnard feared the explosion would kill some of his agents.
The truth commission last week called on Barnard, now director general of the Western Cape administration, for the names of his apartheid-era informers. He has so far refused, saying only that many of them now enjoy prominent positions.
McPherson, a former member of the secret Broederbond and an expert in the notorious strategic communications (Stratcom) operations, worked closely during the years of the apartheid struggle with “superspy” Craig Williamson and former police commissioner Johan Coetzee.
The plan to wipe out the ANC leadership was a joint operation by the police and the defence force. Members of the special forces planned to bomb the stage of the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College at Morogoro in Tanzania. Two officers from military intelligence – one a colonel, the other a female lieutenant – were part of the operation.
McPherson says he did not know who approved the operation. His role was to assist the team logistically from Malawi.
An air force commander was placed in Malawi with a private plane. Two cars were bought in South Africa and exported to Malawi. Accommodation was arranged in a safe house on Lake Malawi.
The explosives would have been delivered to the Tanzanian border in the cars and taken across the river in a rubber boat.
Two members of the special forces were to be flown into Tanzania at night by the air force commander and would parachute to the ground. Their orders were to infiltrate Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College, place the bomb under the stage and then go to a game reserve with a landing strip, where they would be collected by the air force commander the next day.
“The plan was aborted the day before the operation after consultations between Magnus Malan, Pik Botha and Niel Barnard,” McPherson says.
The decision to attack the ANC’s London offices was taken at Cabinet level in the Nationalist government as a “punitive measure” after several policemen had been killed by Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) cadres.
Police minister Le Grange instructed Coetzee to attack a symbolic target. The late Colonel Piet “Biko” Goosen was given the assignment and was personally briefed by Le Grange.
McPherson says he was approached by Williamson to be part of a group of policemen to bomb the London offices of the ANC and South African Communist Party (SACP). “My task was to do surveillance and to drive the getaway car.”
He was shown a metal container in which 11kg of plastic explosives was sent in a diplomatic bag to the South African embassy in London. Jerry Raven, a team member and explosives expert, helped the police technical section to build the bomb.
The team members were: Goosen, Williamson, McPherson, Raven, Eugene de Kock, Jimmy Taylor and John Adam. General Lothar Neethling made small canisters with nerve gas for them to carry for protection.
The team left South Africa at the end of February 1982 on different flights. For security reasons they did not know where the others were staying in London. McPherson rented a Mercedes Benz as the getaway car, but it gave so much trouble he changed it for a Ford Granada.
On the evening of March 12, the team had dinner at McPherson’s flat and Goosen decided to go ahead with the attack on the ANC offices the next day. The SACP plans were abandoned because an elderly couple lived in the building and a paint shop at street level made it too dangerous to bomb the offices without injuring innocent people, he claims.
The bomb was primed for Sunday at 9am. On their return journey, at Frankfurt airport, they heard over the public intercom an urgent message for “Herr Joseph Slovo” and knew the bomb attack had succeeded.
In September 1982 the team received the Police Star for Excellent Service from Le Grange in the Civitas building in Pretoria. Coetzee attended the secret ceremony.
McPherson’s application also describes his surveillance of houses used by MK cadres in Gaborone, which led to the defence force’s bloody invasion of Botswana in 1985 when 13 ANC members were killed and ANC strongholds and safe houses were destroyed.
McPherson also provides details of a botched attempt to kill Joe Slovo at the ANC offices in Lusaka in June 1985.
He and Captain Kobus Pretorius told Coetzee they had an Indian source, Ali, who had direct access to the offices in Cha Cha Cha Road in the Zambian capital. Ali was prepared to carry a bomb into the building and leave it there.
McPherson and Pretorius were granted permission for the operation and took Ali’s briefcase to a technical expert at the South African Defence Force’s special forces, who built a bomb in the case with sheet explosives.
Ali was promised R20 000 if the mission succeeded. According to McPherson, Ali said he would make sure Slovo was at least injured in the explosion.
The weekend after the bomb, McPherson and Pretorius met Ali in Swaziland. He lied to them and said Slovo had died in the explosion.
“We, however, knew that he placed the bomb just outside the gates of the building, causing minimal damage to the gates and some windows. General Coetzee told us to pay him only R15 000,” McPherson says.