TUESDAY, 2.30PM:
The phrase “make a plan” took on a new, sinister meaning in the mid-1980s, according to evidence at a truth commission amnesty committee hearing on Tuesday.
Retired Port Elizabeth security policeman Colonel Herman du Plessis said he had been told by his former chief, Colonel Harold Snyman, that when Snyman had complained normal policing methods were failing to dampen unrest, then-Law and Order Minister Louis Le Grange instructed him to “make a plan”. Du Plessis said he interpreted this to mean killing agitators at the centre of the unrest.
The committee is dealing with amnesty applications from six former security policemen including Snyman and two askaris who have confessed to the May 1985 abduction and murder of the Pebco Three. Sipho Hashe, Qawaquli Godolozi and Champion Galela were leaders of the Port Elizabeth Black Civic Organisation (Pebco) which, he said, had taken effective control of Port Elizabeth. Through street and area committees, it had set up alternative local government structures; and the detention of activists was met with consumer and school boycotts. “If there was a war going on then,” Du Plessis told the hearing, “they won it.”
Du Plessis said Snyman did not give him a direct instruction to kill the Pebco Three “but he did say he realised there were no other options and I had to proceed and do the best I could in the interests of the country. I interpreted this as an instruction to go head and eliminate them.”