Mail & Guardian reporter
Minister of Home Affairs Mangosuthu Buthelezi had an extremely close relationship with the notorious Bureau for State Security (BOSS) during a decades-long collaboration with apartheid-era security structures, according to explosive in-camera testimony presented to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
This testimony – leaked to the Mail & Guardian this week – was made by former Inkatha Freedom Party central committee member Walter Felgate before the TRC last year, shortly after he defected from the IFP to the African National Congress. He had been one of Buthelezi’s closest confidants for years.
Attempts to reach Buthelezi for comment this week were unsuccessful. IFP secretary general MZ Khumalo said he could not comment on behalf of Buthelezi.
Felgate also revealed that Buthelezi allegedly formulated a secret conspiracy with right-wing whites to prevent South Africa’s 1994 elections by triggering a civil war. The plans were disbanded just before the voting that elected an ANC government.
Felgate reportedly possesses substantial incriminating evidence about IFP activities.
He said that Buthelezi received monthly briefings from top intelligence agents of former prime minister BJ Vorster, former president PW Botha and apartheid generals for more than 20 years.
According to Felgate’s testimony, Buthelezi held meetings with BOSS operatives on a regular monthly basis before 1973.
Felgate told the truth commission behind closed doors that the contact person at this stage was a BOSS agent ostensibly working for Natal Tanning Extract, a front company with which Felgate was also associated.
In the commission transcript, Felgate identified the agent as a Captain Alkers. However, long-serving intelligence sources told the M&G that the agent in question was a man named Olckers, who later went on to serve in National Intelligence Services, the successor to BOSS.
It is unclear how long this Olckers served as the Buthelezi liaison person. But according to Felgate, Buthelezi was still receiving monthly briefings – which included the transfer of top- secret documentation, particularly around the deployment, mobilisation and strategies of the ANC – after the elections that brought the ANC to power in 1994.
Another key intelligence contact named by Felgate in the hearing was academic Kobus Bosman. Bosman was apparently named by former Inkatha institute chief Lawrence Schlemmer as his successor when he stood down from that position in the mid-1980s – though this appointment never materialised.
Felgate testified Bosman made it clear that ”he was on active call; although he wasn’t in the military on a full- time basis any more, he was on active call for special task force work”.
Eventually Bosman, who apparently had personal links with PW Botha and his defence minister, Magnus Malan, was appointed as an adviser with a special responsibility for liaison with the apartheid ”government and Afrikanerdom”.
In this capacity, according to Felgate, Bosman was instrumental in establishing Inkatha’s Caprivi paramilitary training programme under the auspices of the South African Defence Force (SADF) in the late 1980s. The Caprivi training of ”one hundred loyal Zulus” led to the creation of IFP hit-squads.
According to Felgate, Bosman was given a military promotion on Malan’s orders to give him the necessary authority to carry out the militarisation of Inkatha.
Felfate testified that, at the time the Caprivi trainees were mustered, Buthelezi was meeting with former military intelligence chief General Tienie Groenewald, apparently through the offices of Bosman.
Later, in the early 1990s, as the truth commission transcript shows, Groenewald reappears in the murky politics of KwaZulu-Natal, but now wearing a different hat – that of the right-wing Freedom Front.
He was in partnership with Riaan van Rensburg, then bodyguard and private secretary to FF leader Constand Viljoen. Special Forces’s Jan Breytenbach and right-wing militant Willem Ratte apparently were associated FF activities.
Van Rensburg, together with Groenewald and other members of the rightist Volksfront/FF group, had previously trained supporters of Oupa Gqozo’s regime as paramilitaries in the Ciskei during South Africa’s constitutional negotiations in the early 1990s.
As Viljoen has testified previously, training of Gqozo’s paramilitaries was part of a military strategy centred on the so-called Concerned South Africans Group – an alliance of homeland leaders and rightwingers who planned to prevent the 1994 democratic elections and take over the country by force.
The Felgate testimony also records that at this time the old SADF commando structures were already being mobilised in the event of civil war, and that Viljoen had made them available to assist in training IFP militants.
In Felgate’s version of the events, Van Rensburg proposed in 1993 a R3-million specialist training course for IFP loyalists labeled Proposed Training Programme and Deployment of Zulu Forces to Protect the Zulu Nation. The proposal was turned down by Buthelezi’s money man, Stan Armstrong.
However, Van Rensburg’s testimony to the truth commission records that he handed over the programme – with extensive input from Felgate – at a meeting with Buthelezi in November 1993 and also facilitated face-to-face meetings between Buthelezi and Breytenbach and Ratte.
They planned an ”offensive structure” to include training in sniping and counter-sniping, in specialised weapons, in carrying out raids and in demolition techniques.
According to Felgate, this plan was never adopted. However, shortly after, 64 IFP loyalists were given specialised training by Van Rensburg with the involvement of Buthelezi’s then private secretary MZ Khumalo on an unspecified farm in the mountains in Gauteng.
Khumalo said this week: ”If Felgate is talking about the group that I know, whatever I did I was instructed to by him.”
Later, Van Rensburg and Groenewald were paid at least R387 000 by the IFP. Felgate puts the figure at around R500 000. Other intelligence sources have said the final pay-out stood at around R800 000.
In Felgate’s version, the training project fizzled out and the trainees were dumped without any particular brief at Jozini in KwaZulu-Natal. Afterwards, Felgate testified he was asked by Khumalo to find money or employment for the trainees.
The trainees were eventually relocated to another secret training camp at Dinizulu in northern KwaZulu-Natal, where their instruction was supervised by Felgate.
He claims the training at Dinizulu was geared towards making elections impossible in rural areas, but did not include significant weapons training.
Intelligence sources have indicated that weapons were supplied to the special trainees through Vlakplaas operatives. The camp, monitored by national intelligence and the security police, was disbanded in April 1994, five months after training had begun.
The termination of the training followed the sudden decision of Buthelezi to take the IFP into the 1994 elections rather than engaging in civil disruption as had apparently earlier been planned.