Labuschagne
Wally Mbhele
A senior policeman who once targeted the present-day chief of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), General Siphiwe Nyanda, for assassination, and abducted and tortured Nyanda’s wife, was this week bluntly denied amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
Amid strong opposition to his application from victims’ families, Senior Superintendent Frans “Lappies” Labuschagne – at a hearing that lasted less than five minutes – was not pardoned, on the grounds that he applied after the cut-off date for amnesty applications.
Once an apartheid hit-squad heavyweight, Labuschagne currently commands the police intelligence unit as well as internal security and serious crimes in Mpumalanga.
Labuschagne’s list of victims includes former high-ranking African National Congress national executive committee member Cassius Maake, Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) commander Paul Dikeledi, and an MK special operations chief, Theophilus “Viva” Dlodlo.
Dlodlo’s murder was supposed to top the list of the amnesty hearing. It was Dlodlo’s former wife, Felicia Mathe, who spearheaded opposition to Labuschagne’s amnesty bid.
As he clung to his cellphone yesterday after hearing the bad news, Labuschagne began to face a difficult future, with possible prosecution and civil action by families of his victims.
The role of a police informer – a woman who allegedly received approximately R8 500 for information that led to most of Labuschagne’s murders – was threatening to make the hearing explosive.
The woman informant is known to the victims, is believed to be working for a parastatal, and is “very close to senior people in the government”. They have known each other since the 1980s when the ANC – which once detained her – was still a ban- ned organisation.
Labuschagne is also known for being removed from police investigations into the arrest of foreign affairs official Robert McBride in Mozambique, on charges of gun-smuggling.
He was removed after the Mail & Guardian reported about his apartheid assassinations as well as victims’ plans to sue him.
He missed a golden opportunity for amnesty when TRC investigators initially approached Labuschagne, towards the end of 1996, for questioning about the murder of a former United Democratic Front activist, Stanza Bopape.
Bopape was murdered by the security police in 1986 before his body was disposed of in a crocodile-infested river in Middelburg, where Labuschagne is based as a policeman.
He told TRC investigators that there was nothing in his police career that could make him apply for amnesty.
That was before another hit-squad master, Eugene de Kock, implicated him in the Swaziland murders of ANC activists.
In July 1998, Labuschagne hurriedly applied for amnesty after hearing of De Kock’s confessions. The TRC’s cut-off date for amnesty applications was May 1997.
This is what formed the basis for victims’ families opposing his amnesty bid.