OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Tuesday 9.30pm.
FORMER apartheid security policemen planned to shackle South African Communist Party leader Joe Slovo to a steel ring in a basement on a farm outside Pretoria, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission amnesty committe heard on Tuesday.
Craig Willaimson, a former apartheid spy who has applied for amnesty for his part in murdering Slovo’s wife, Ruth First, in a letter bomb attack in Mozambique in 1982, admitted under cross-examination by George Bizos SC, who is appearing for the Slovo family, that he and other policemen had referred to the basement at Daisy Farm as “Slovo’s suite”.
Williamson has admitted that Daisy Farm was bought with money he received from the International University Exchange Fund under false pretences while he was a spy who had infiltrated the organisation. Williamson told the IUEF the farm was to be used for youth development but instead it was used to train security policemen.
Bizos accused Williamson of being a “callous killer” who acted out of hatred towards the people on whom he had spied at university while working as an undercover policemen. Williamson rejected the assertion.
Williamson has also applied for amnesty for the murder of Jeanette Schoon and her six-year-old daughter Katryn in Angola in 1984, as well as his part in the bombing of the ANC offices in London in 1982.
Former foreign minister Pik Botha has been attending the hearings as an implicated person. He has denied any knowledge of the London bomb. The hearing continues on Wednesday.