Minutes of a State Security Council meeting indicate that FW de Klerk knew more about apartheid-era assassinations than he has let on, writes Mungo Soggot
FW de Klerk was among a heavyweight contingent of National Party leaders and securocrats present at a State Security Council meeting where former minister of finance Barend du Plessis proposed the “removal” of Matthew Goniwe.
The top-secret minutes from the meeting, which started at 10am on March 19 1984, provide strong proof that the former president and other NP politicians masterminded the state-sponsored assassinations that have so far been blamed solely on their underlings in the security forces.
The minutes, leaked to the Mail & Guardian this week, quote Du Plessis, then minister of black education, saying: “In Cradock is daar twee oud-onderwysers wat as agitators optree. Dit sou goed wees as hulle verwyder kon word [In Cradock there are two ex- teachers who are acting as agitators. It would be good if they could be removed].”
The timing of Du Plessis’s suggestion fits with the chronology of the Goniwe assassination that emerged in evidence before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, providing an unprecedented snapshot of the control exercised by the security council over apartheid’s hit men.
According to evidence at one amnesty hearing, Craig Williamson, the NP’s top assassination boffin, dispatched one of his henchmen, Jaap van Jaarsveld, on March 21 1984, just two days after the meeting, to stake out the activist teachers in preparation for their assassination.
“Approximately during the middle of 1984 I received an order from Mr Craig Williamson to investigate whether it would be possible to take out Matthew Goniwe, that means kill,” Van Jaarsveld told the truth commission during his amnesty application in February 1998.
Van Jaarsveld said he reported back that it would be difficult to slay Goniwe in his house, recommending that he be ambushed on the road. He later pinpointed the date of his reconnaissance mission as having been March 21.
It was to take another 15 months before Goniwe and Fort Calata were stabbed, mutilated and then burnt to death near Cradock in the Eastern Cape. Two of their colleagues – Sparrow Mkonto and Sicelo Mhauli – were also killed during the hit, on June 27 1985.
None of the men present at the security council 1984 meeting – including its chair, former state president PW Botha, former minister of foreign affairs Pik Botha and Freedom Front leader General Constand Viljoen – have applied for amnesty, which means they could now all be exposed to prosecution for, at the very least, being party to a conspiracy to murder.
The revelations from the meeting come at a particularly embarrassing time for De Klerk, whose application to interdict the truth commission’s conclusions about his contribution to apartheid was postponed this week.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner has objected in particular to being called an “accessory to gross human rights violations”, having steadfastly denied that he presided over or ordered any of the abuses that took place while he was in government. The relevant sections of the truth commission’s final report were blacked out after De Klerk secured a temporary interdict. If he loses his application they will be reinstated.
Speaking from the London home of his new wife, Elita Georgiadis, De Klerk said this week he remembered the meeting clearly, but insisted that Du Plessis had proposed redeploying Goniwe. “I distinctly remember, was it Du Plessis was then minister of black education, that he said if he is appointed elsewhere, he should be re- rerouted … because Goniwe was a teacher if I remember correctly … and Du Plessis wanted to offer a solution that Goniwe should be taken away from the school in Cradock or wherever he was and taken to another … be displaced from Cradock and the area and given an appointment elsewhere. I remember that.”
According to the minutes, Du Plessis said Goniwe and Calata were ex-teachers, which means it would not have been in the legal power of the security council to do anything with them.
Asked why matters such as teacher re- deployment were discussed at security council gatherings, De Klerk retorted: “Many things which shouldn’t take place at the security council took place – read my book. I remember that I liked the solution. I thought it was good, and we should approach matters like this.”
De Klerk said he could not remember seeing the word “verwyder”, adding that the minutes would have been circulated about two weeks after the meeting. “Having heard what Du Plessis had said, having seen the word `verwyder’, logically I would immediately have related it to Du Plessis’s plan,” the former president said.
Asked why, if all that had been discussed was redeployment, Williamson started preparing the assassination just two days later, De Klerk said: “Please don’t cross-examine me. You ask me a question, and I give you my honest recollection. Those are the facts and I am sure if you phone Barend he will tell you the same.”
Approached for comment, Du Plessis said: “I have no recollection whatsoever. I don’t remember what I said 15 years ago. I cannot respond in any fashion. It’s totally unfair to ask me to respond. I sincerely cannot remember. If you want to talk about this, you’ll have to do it through my legal counsel.”
Du Plessis, who went on to become minister of finance in De Klerk’s government, is now a wealthy businessman. He sits on the board of printing giant Caxtons.
According to the minutes, under the heading “Item 5: Unrest in black schools”, Du Plessis said: “In Cradock is daar twee oud- onderwysers wat as agitators optree. Dit sou goed wees as hulle verwyder kon word.”
At De Klerk’s truth commission hearing, he insisted that the security council only discussed broad policy. “It was broad strategies, this is what we would do, policy decisions which cannot be interpreted in any way whatsoever as authorising these unlawful acts resulting in these atrocious violations of human rights.”
De Klerk was asked by the truth body to explain two sets of security council meetings in 1986, which referred to the need to “shorten the list of politically sensitive persons”. He was not asked about Goniwe, but instead raised it himself, offering a different version of events to that contained in the minutes, which were not in the possession of the truth commission at the time.
He said: “I remember one distinct issue, and this is with regard to Goniwe. The then minister of black education, and the deputy minister was also involved, was asked, and they came forth with a proposal that he could be placed again in a teaching post but in a different town than the town where he got into trouble and where the problems existed.”
He was not cross-examined further on the matter.
Cabinet ministers present at the meeting are likely to argue that the word “verwyder” does not mean “eliminate”. However, during judicial inquests into the Cradock murders, it emerged that General Joffel van der Westhuizen, the then commander of military forces in the Eastern Cape, who sought permission from the security council in May 1985 for the “permanent removal from society” of Goniwe and the other activists, also used the word “verwyder”. He labelled Goniwe as being “at the forefront of a revolutionary attack against the state”.
The interpretation of Van der Westhuizen’s request was debated at a 1989 inquest, where the presiding judge ruled that the words in Van der Westhuizen’s telegram to Pretoria constituted a death warrant. The telegram read: “Dit word voorgestel dat bg persone permanent uit die samelewing, as saak van dringendheid, verwyder word [It is suggested that the abovementioned persons be permanently removed from society, as a matter of urgency].”
The inquests nevertheless failed to pin responsibility for the execution orders on the security council, partly because the relevant communiqus between the council and its Eastern Cape arm, which were supposed to have been filed, disappeared.
The security policemen who applied for amnesty to the truth commission for the Goniwe killings said they did not know who exactly issued the orders. Their efforts to obfuscate the chain of command were aided by the death of Major Harold Snyman, one of the senior officers involved in the hit. Snyman, who also pulled off the murder of black consciousness leader Steve Biko, escaped the hearings because of poor health and subsequently died.
Goniwe’s family has opposed the amnesty application of the policemen responsible, arguing that, with the exception of Van Jaarsveld, they failed to disclose the full truth surrounding the assassinations. The family’s lawyers homed in particularly on the officers’ inconsistent testimonies about when the assassinations were actually planned.
All except Van Jaarsveld said the plot to kill the Cradock Four had been hatched just weeks before the ambush on June 27 1985, whereas Van Jaarsveld told the truth commission it had been planned more than a year before.
In heads of argument opposing amnesty, advocate George Bizos, SC, slated the policemen for fudging testimony about who gave them the orders.
“The applicants may be persisting in the security police tradition of admitting only as much as is already known and using the publicly known date of the 7th June 1985, when the signal which formed the subject matter of the second inquest was sent, in order either to obfuscate the truth or to protect their colleagues and superiors,” Bizos suggested.
“The evidence of Van Jaarsveld establishes that the plan originated as early as March 1984 at national level and that [Sakkie] van Zyl was aware of this and had failed to disclose it to the committee,” the heads of argument say.
It emerged in the amnesty applications that the security council’s action committee had recommended that Goniwe be reinstated as a teacher in June 1985, despite having received a message from Snyman that Goniwe should “never, ever again” be reinstated.
The Goniwe family say the amnesty applicants failed to broach these conflicting signals. Bizos suggests in the family’s papers that despite the council’s action committee recommendation to reinstate Goniwe, a top-level order was issued to “reassure them that their actions were endorsed at the highest level”.
It remains a mystery why the assassination was delayed so long after Williamson sent down his agent to the Eastern Cape.
PW Botha, who appears in the Cape High Court today for the latest round in his battle against the truth commission, declined to comment. Viljoen was unavailable, and Pik Botha’s housekeeper said he was at work but did not have his telephone number.
Others present at the meeting included former minister of justice Kobie Coetsee, former security police chief General Johan Coetzee, and former minister of defence Magnus Malan.
At the time of going to press, the Goniwe family’s lawyer could not be reached for comment.