WEDNESDAY, 2.15PM:
APARTHEID’s chief assassin Eugene de Kock, known by his colleagues as “Prime Evil”, claimed on Wednesday that former president PW Botha ordered the 1987 bomb attack on Cosatu House, headquarters of the country’s largest trade union federation.
Testifying at Botha’s trial for ignoring a Truth and Reconciliation Commission subpoena, De Kock told the George Regional Court that the Cosatu House bombing was the first of its kind on South African soil an he had therefore demanded to know who ordered the attack.
De Kock then described a meeting he held with his commanding officer, Brigadier Willem Schoon, who told him the “higher-up” person who gave the order for the attack had complained that it was taking too long to carry out. De Kock said he responded by saying: “If PW Botha can do it better, he should go and do it himself.”
The 49-year-old assassin, who is serving multiple life terms for crimes committed in the course of duty, criticised the politicians who gave apartheid security forces their orders. “I do feel myself and others in the security forces … have been sold out by cowardly politicians, in the National Party especially. They want the lamb but they don’t want to see the blood, they are cowards,” said De Kock.
De Kock also told the court how he and others bombed SA Council of Churches HQ Khotso House in 1988, and the African National Congress’s London offices in 1982 — for which he said he was awarded the Star of Excellence, a medal normally awarded only to generals, and which required the authorisation of the state president, who at that time was Botha.
The trial continues.
WEDNESDAY, 8.15AM:
WHILE PW Botha continued to defy the Truth and Reconciliation Commission at his Eastern Cape trial on Tuesday, his former chief of police testified in Pretoria, naming the ex-president as the man who ordered the 1988 bombing of the SA Council of Churches (SACC) headquarters.
Former commissioner of police General Johann Van Der Merwe confessed that he had arranged for the bombing of Khotso House, headquarters of the SACC, by police agents from the Vlakplaas hit squad base. He had been instructed to do so by police minister Adriaan Vlok, who had in turn been instructed by Botha, he said.
The same theme surfaced at Botha’s trial in the George Regional Court, where he faces charges of defying a TRC subpoena. Prosecutor Bruce Morrison called the former security guard of Khotso House, Welcome Ntumba, who said three uniformed policeman had demanded entry to the building. He refused to allow them in, so they went into the basement garage. Minutes later, he heard a blast and the floor fell in, plunging him into the basement and injuring his back.
Botha has denied involvement in the Khotso House attack and argued that since no lives were lost, it did not constitute a gross violation of human rights.
Van der Merwe, who appeared unrepentant at his role — he justified it as necessary in the undeclared war against the ANC and Communist Party — also admitted to ordering the bombing of Cosatu House a year earlier, and to covering up the death in detention of activist Stanza Bopape, whose body was thrown into a crocodile-infested river.