Peta Thornycroft
Johan “Sakkie” van Zyl, a manager working for a subsidiary of the arms parastatal, Denel, has been named as the leader of the unit that killed Eastern Cape activist Matthew Goniwe.
In his amnesty submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, former hit-squad leader and convicted murderer Eugene de Kock, says Van Zyl discussed his role in Goniwe’s assassination shortly after the activist was stabbed to death in 1985.
Van Zyl, who has applied for amnesty and is on the truth commission’s witness-protection programme, is due to go to Bosnia soon to lead a project to lift landmines. He is employed by Denel’s Mechem subsidiary.
Before he joined Mechem, he was a member of the secret South African Defence Force’s Civilian Co-operation Bureau operating out of Lesotho, a security policeman in South Africa, and a member of Koevoet in Namibia.
But it was while Van Zyl was a member of the security police in Port Elizabeth that Goniwe, a United Democratic Front activist, and three friends from Cradock in the Eastern Cape were murdered by members of the security forces.
Van Zyl applied for amnesty last December for an undisclosed number of human rights violations. This week he denied the thrust of De Kock’s claims: “It’s wrong, I deny it,” he said. “Why can’t you wait until September, for the hearing?”
Goniwe, Fort Calata and Sicelo Mhlauli were stabbed to death and burnt. A fourth man, Sparrow Mkhonto, was shot and then set alight; his body was found some distance from the other three.
De Kock said Van Zyl had contacted him at the Vlakplaas unit near Pretoria after the assassinations. He said he was looking for someone to change “the ballistic features” of a weapon used in the operation. “Van Zyl then informed me personally that he was in charge of the operation when Goniwe and others were hijacked,” De Kock said in his submission.
“He informed me that he was personally involved in the operation with his people … they ambushed Goniwe and then took him away.
“Van Zyl informed me that he took Goniwe personally and put him in the vehicle. Apparently the vehicle belonged to the security police … He also told me about how surprised he was that Goniwe fought back and resisted their attempts. In the ensuing scuffle Goniwe nearly succeeded in taking Van Zyl’s gun. In the scuffle a shot went off and went through the roof of the yellow police vehicle …
“A day or two after the incident Van Zyl went to the Mayotte Islands in the Comores to go diving.” De Kock said he had advised Van Zyl to throw the weapon into the sea, “to which van Zyl replied that there were only about 120 of these weapons in the country, and that it belonged to a good friend of his”.
Van Zyl’s name was first connected to the assassinations earlier this year when details of amnesty applications by two other former security policeman, Gerhard Lotz and Eric Taylor, were leaked to the media. Colonel Harold Snyman is another former Eastern Cape policeman allegedly involved in the murders.
Van Zyl’s appearance as a key employee at Mechem is in line with the company’s chequered past: it was a vital part of the former government’s armoury of dirty tricks. Mechem was an innovative armaments engineer and developer which, ironically, also designed landmines.
After hit squads were exposed in the South African police at the counter-insurgency unit at Vlakplaas, De Kock disposed of a huge cache of weapons he had been storing there by sending them to Mechem.
During his trial last year De Kock said he later “tricked” Mechem staff into believing that he was still in the police when he signed out the weapons and passed them on to Inkatha warlord Phillip Powell. De Kock told the court that Mechem had also been involved in making guns, ammunition, missiles, mortars and landmines for Inkatha.
Mechem had also developed sophisticated de-mining technolgy. The company’s machines, men and technology have been deployed in both Mozambique and Angola to clear minefields on behalf of the United Nations and several non-governmental organisations. Mechem’s managing director, Dr Vernon Joynt, said this week that the company is a sub-contractor in a mine-lifting operation in Bosnia. Van Zyl has volunteered to manage it from Sarajevo.
Denel declined to comment.