TUESDAY, 4.30PM
RETIRED security police general Nic van Rensburg, in testimony before the truth commission’s amnesty committee, on Wednesday admitted lying in an application to the Cape High Court last year to temporarily gag the mother of slain student leader Siphiwo Mtimkulu from testifying.
Van Rensburg brought the court action to stop Joyce Mtimkulu from testifying at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s first human rights violations hearing in East London last April. In the application, Van Rensburg and Brigadier Jan du Preez said they wanted timeous notice of the TRC’s intention to hear evidence implicating them in Mtimkulu’s death.
The court upheld their application, forcing the TRC to forewarn all people who were to be incriminated in evidence to be presented before the commission.
Testifying before the TRC’s amnesty committee on Wednesday, Van Rensburg admitted he had lied in a sworn affidavit which formed part of the application. At that stage he had not yet applied for amnesty and said he wanted to protect his interests. Van Rensburg also admitted lying to the Harms commission of inquiry in 1990 when he denied any knowledge of Mtimkulu’s death.
He said he made the false statement to protect the security police and the National Party Government.
On Wednesday, Van Rensburg publicly admitted for the first time to murdering Mtimkulu after the latter’s abduction outside a Port Elizabeth hotel in April 1982. The general testified that Mtimkulu and fellow activist Topsy Madaka were taken to a disused police station near Cradock where they were interrogated and then given coffee spiked with sleeping tablets. When they fell asleep he and fellow amnesty applicant Colonel Gideon Nieuwoudt took them outside and executed them with shots to the head. He said he killed Mtimkulu with a single shot behind his ear. The bodies were then placed on a pile of firewood, doused with diesel and then burned for six hours. The remains were raked up by Nieuwoudt, who then dumped them in the Fish River.