OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Tuesday
THE SA Defence Force had prepared a counter-attack force of 50 to 60 tanks, helicopters and jet fighters in case Botswana retaliated during a 1985 raid on African National Congress members in Gaborone, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has heard.
The TRC was hearing amnesty applications by the last of 12 former security branch policemen involved in the raid on ANC safe houses, which killed 14 people – among them women, children and foreigners.
Amnesty applicant Manuel Olifant said: ”Why we had so much military personnel was that should anything go wrong with Botswana forces, we’d have been able to stand and fight.”
Olifant told the amnesty committee that security branch Lieutenant Willem Coetzee paid him R1500 for his part in the killings.
Olifant, who is now a superintendent in the SA Police Service, said he and an informer identified safe houses used by Umkhonto weSizwe cadres in Gaborone from addresses given to them by Lt Coetzee.
Olifant told the TRC he only positively identified one of the ANC members he was supposed to have ”verified” lived in the houses. He was not asked to check if there were women or children also living in the houses.
On June 12 1985, the SADF attacked the houses in Gaborone, including four that Olifant pointed out to the military. Twelve people, including eight South Africans, were killed. A six-year-old boy from Lesotho was also killed in the raid. Two more South Africans were killed at an SADF roadblock outside the city during the same night.
Olifant admitted that he supplied the information on the safe houses without penetrating any African National Congress structures in Botswana, and ”the wrong people” were killed from information he passed on to the military.
The raid was delayed for a day until an SADF general, who Olifant said he did not know, arrived with information that Cabinet had approved the attack. Nationalist Cabinet members denied to the TRC that they had any knowledge of or sanctioned the attack.
Relatives of the victims and former exiles attending the Johannesburg hearing have accused Olifant of lying during his application.