Wally Mbhele
Former minister of law and order Adriaan Vlok will be called to testify before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s amnesty hearing of 10 security policemen who claim they are responsible for the chilling murder of prominent anti-apartheid activist Stanza Bopape.
TRC sources this week could not confirm if Judge Louis Harms – who concurred with police explanations that Bopape had allegedly escaped from police custody – would also be called to testify.
The hearings, which begin on Monday at Bopape’s home town of Mamelodi in Pretoria, will for the first time hear of the security police’s role in the murder of the former Mamelodi Civic Association general secretary.
Bopape vanished after being detained by the police during the night of June 9 1988. For nine years the policemen have remained mum about Bopape’s fate, until some of them were subpoenaed by commission investigators last year after his family testified.
On July 13 1988 one of the amnesty applicants, former police commissioner Johan van der Merwe, then commanding officer of the security branch, informed Bopape’s attorneys he had “wilfully escaped from police custody” the previous night and had been “exempted from the provisions of Section 29 of the Internal Security Act”.
Van der Merwe, a close confidant of Vlok, said Bopape had escaped while being escorted to Vereeniging by police. The police vehicle stopped when it had a puncture, and Bopape fled.
In a press statement on April 26 1989, Vlok announced that Bopape had been spotted after his escape in an area where “an act of terror in which people were killed took place”. Vlok failed to identify the source of this allegation.
Vlok’s representative, Leon Mellet, claimed on June 15 1989 that Bopape was seen “in the company of a man and a woman by his former colleague who had served with him on a youth council”. The youth’s name was, however, withheld “in the interest of the youth’s safety”.
Bopape’s father Junius had several fruitless meetings with police. They sent him to look for his son in African National Congress camps in Lusaka after Vlok claimed he had fled the country.
More bizarre was the fact that at the time of his disappearance it took the police more than three weeks to announce that Bopape had “escaped” from detention. The police said an early announcement would have prejudiced their investigations into ANC activities in the Vaal Triangle.
In an extraordinary answer in Parliament on June 19 1990, Vlok responded to a series of questions put to him by former MP Jan van Eck about Bopape’s “disappearance”.
He promised he would be willing to provide names of three policemen to the Harms commission of inquiry – which was investigating state-sponsored hit squads at the time – should such a request be received.
In its report, the Harms commission said it was of the view that there were no sufficient grounds for it to hold a hearing on the matter. Harms seemed to echo Vlok’s suggestion that Bopape had been “positively identified” by a witness as having been at the scene of a bomb blast at Ellis Park on July 2 1988.
One question that still baffles truth commission investigators and the Bopape family is that Vlok’s name is not mentioned in the 10 security policemen’s submission for amnesty.
This is one of the reasons the Bopape family cites for opposing their amnesty bid. They are convinced they are not making a full disclosure.
The family believes the policemen are trying to minimise their role and the extent of the torture inflicted on Bopape before he died. Bopape’s son Amandla was born just before he died. He never met his father.
Among the 10 amnesty applicants, five confess that Bopape died during electric shock torture at the security police offices at John Vorster Square.