MONDAY, 5.30PM:
THE Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Monday granted amnesty to former Vlakplaas police hit squad commander Dirk Coetzee and two accomplices for the November 1990 murder of Durban human rights lawyer Griffiths Mxenge.
Coetzee and two former Vlakplaas operatives, David Tshikilange and Almond Nofomela, were convicted of Mxenge’s murder in the Durban High Court on May 15. They were due to have been sentenced on Friday.
Giving details of its ruling, the TRC’s amnesty committee said there was no doubt Coetzee had acted on the “advice, command or order of one or more senior members of the security branch of the former SA Police”.
“On the evidence before us we are satisfied that none of the applicants knew the deceased, Mxenge, or had any reason to wish to bring about his death before they were ordered to do so,” the committee said. “We are satisifed that they did what they did because they regarded it as their duty as policemen who were engaged in the struggle against the ANC and other liberation movements.”
The committee, chaired by Judge Hassen Mall, said Coetzee, Tshikilange and Nofomela had applied for amnesty for numerous other offences, but the amnesty granted was only for Mxenge’s murder.
Mxenge’s family, meanwhile on Monday said they will ask the High Court to overturn the amnesty. Dr Fumbatha Mxenge, a Port Elizabeth dentist and brother of Griffiths, said the family was disappointed by the TRC’s decision, but not surprised. “We will challenge this decision. We are going to take it on review. You have not heard the last of this,” Mxenge said.