OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Wednesday
A FORMER security policeman has told the Wouter Basson trial in the Pretoria High Court how he was informed in 1989 of a plan to poison the clothes of SA Council of Churches stalwart Rev Frank Chikane, and had helped to pick the lock of Chikane’s suitcase.
Bomb disposal expert Charles Zeelie – one of several former security policemen who has applied for amnesty for a range of apartheid crimes, including the Khotso House and Alexandra Theatre bombings – said the police had in the 1980’s planned numerous operations designed to put the African National Congress and Pan Africanist Congress in a bad light.
In 1989, Zeelie received instructions from his head office to meet two security police officers, known as Manie and Gert, at the Jan Smuts Airport in Johannesburg.
The two men told him that poison had to be put on Chikane’s clothes as part of a strategic operation. One night, shortly before Chikane left on a trip to America, one Boela Burger handed a suitcase to Zeelie in an office at the airport.
Zeelie picked the lock of the suitcase, which he knew belonged to Chikane, and later handed it back to Burger. He did not put anything on the clothes himself.
Abraham Beyers, a former colleague of Zeelie, said he had been part of the security police desks investigating so-called “white staff” (white left wingers) and church organisations, including the South African Council of Churches and Chikane.
He had “sources” inside the SACC who provided him with information, and also tapped phones and intercepted mail and faxes. Chikane’s travel arrangements were regularly reported to security police headquarters.
The luggage of suspects was regularly searched at airports and Beyers was involved in picking the locks of suitcases on numerous occasions, using a special room in the basement of Johannesburg International Airport.
A former colleague of Basson, veterinary toxicologist Dr Andre Immelman, earlier testified that he had on numerous occasions supplied Basson and four collaborators – known only as Chris, Manie, Gert and Koos – with substances ranging from bottled cholera-causing bacteria to deadly insecticide, heart medication, cyanide and lethal quantities of the aphrodisiac Spanish Fly.
Basson – who pleaded not guilty to 61 charges of murder, attempted murder, fraud and drug dealing – has denied ever using substances to kill anyone or providing substances for misuse by others.