Adrienne Carlisle More evidence is emerging from apartheid- era documents that the State Security Council (SSC), staffed by top apartheid politicians and securocrats, including former presidents PW Botha and FW de Klerk, may have discussed and, at least in principle, approved the assassinations of activists.
The Mail & Guardian has obtained copies of top-secret minutes of three SSC meetings held in 1985 and 1986 where the SSC discussed the “removal”, “elimination” or “neutralisation” of United Democratic Front (UDF) activists. Then president Botha, and former Cabinet ministers De Klerk, Kobie Coetsee, Barend du Plessis and Pik Botha, were just some of the prominent members of Botha’s Cabinet recorded as being present at SSC meetings where these matters were discussed. At a meeting on March 13 1985, the SSC discussed a report compiled by Brigadier MS Verster at the request of the SSC. The report was on the “revolutionary climate” in South Africa and proposed actions to address it. Paragraph 24 C of the report initially merely reflected that “agitator leaders” be removed from the community in a “selective way” and be “prosecuted as soon as possible”. However it was amended to reflect the decisions reached at the meeting. The amendment ominously broadened the action which could be taken against leaders.
The amended paragraph read: “Agitator leaders must be selectively skimmed off and removed from the community. It is preferable to act against identified individuals (from all race groups) than against organisations. “Where it is possible and in the interests of security, they must be prosecuted at a time and on charges which would best serve State security. The negative publicity which flowed … from mass arrests must be weighed up against any advantages accruing thereto.” The word “removed” had been used in a similar context at an SSC meeting exactly a year before in March 1984. Then minister of black education Du Plessis, referring to Cradock UDF activists Matthew Goniwe and Fort Calata, was recorded as saying; “In Cradock there are two ex-teachers who are acting as agitators. It would be good if they could be removed.” It emerged in Truth and Reconciliation Committee amnesty hearings that, within days of this meeting, apartheid spy and hitman Craig Williamson dispatched his henchman Jaap van Jaarsveld, to stake out the two teachers with a view to finding out where a possible assassination could be carried out. Van Jaarsveld’s evidence made it clear that although Goniwe, Calata and two UDF colleagues, Sicelo Mhlauli and Sparrow Mkonto, were only assassinated a year later, the intention had been formed in 1984.
And evidence is mounting that the SSC had subsequent knowledge of these assassinations. On April 29 1985, a month after the SSC had approved the recommendation that agitator leaders be “selectively skimmed-off and removed from the community”, the SSC met again at Tuynhuys in Cape Town. The meeting “took note” of a report compiled by SSC secretary Colonel TI Erasmus dealing with the “total strategy against the UDF” which was tabled at the meeting. Erasmus attributed the incitement and continuation of the unrest in the Eastern Cape to UDF affiliates including the Cradock Residents’ Association (Cradora), the Congress of South African Students and youth movements. The report summarised action taken against the UDF: eight members were on trial for treason, 29 had been charged with breaching the ban on meetings, 11 leaders were detained in terms of security legislation and a black mayor had organised his followers to such a degree that the UDF complained to the police that they could not do their work. Erasmus’s report imparts the chilling information that “certain covert actions had been initiated at Joint Management Committee [JMC] level to identify and neutralise upcoming UDF leaders at the earliest opportunity”.
After taking note of this report the minutes record that Botha asked all members to return the copies of the report “due to its sensitivity”. He indicated all copies would be destroyed. The secretary was also requested in future not to send such reports to members of the SSC but to convey them orally. “Neutralise” was the same word head of the Port Elizabeth security branch Colonel Harold Snyman used in his amnesty bid. He said he gave permission for the Cradock Four to “be urgently neutralised in order to rob Cradora of its leadership and to frighten off any other remaining leaders from becoming involved politically to such an extent”. It was exactly one month later, on June 27 1985, that Goniwe, Calata, Mhlauli and Mkonto were brutally assassinated and their bodies mutilated and burnt by members of Port Elizabeth’s security branch. One year later, in March 1986, the SSC again called for the JMC to prepare plans to counter the prevailing security situation. The JMCs were set up by the security forces to infiltrate communities. The secretariat analysed and reworked the plans and divided them into six groups – the first being the restoration of law and order. Annexure A to the report suggests they “neutralise/eliminate enemy leaders and break the influence which they exercised”.
On April 14 1986 Botha and his 14 most senior ministers, deputy ministers and the security chiefs gathered in Tuynhuys and approved the report. De Klerk could not be reached for comment, but the politicians have been at some pains to deny that they or the SSC were ever involved in any crimes. In May 1992 when De Klerk ordered the reopening of the inquest into the deaths of the Cradock Four he said the government had “no knowledge whatsoever of the alleged actions and at no stage was this case or similar cases discussed or considered by the Cabinet or the State Security Council. “Any insinuation that the Cabinet or the State Security Council planned or approved murder or any other crime at any stage is devoid of all truth,” he said. Pik Botha, a member of the SSC at the time, also rejected the implication that the council “was aware of, or gave orders for, murder”.