Defence authorities have denied allegations that Western Cape-based personnel incinerated, without authorisation, classified documents said to contain information on apartheid spies.
”It was all waste paper,” said Western Cape South Afri-can National Defence Force (SANDF) spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Piet Paxton.
”No official documents, no classified documents, no documents required to be kept on file were destroyed. It was only old training manuals and redundant instructions.”
The allegation emerged following a clean-up campaign at the offices of Group 1 at Cape Town’s Youngsfield military base. The clean-up was ordered by the commander after July 1, when the unit relinquished operational functions, remaining in charge only of training.
Minutes of a September 12 management meeting — on file at Group 1 — show a postponement of the ”target date” for the agreed upon destruction of redundant docu- ments and camouflage uniforms. The Mail & Guardian was shown the minutes and documentation management system.
This week the SANDF confirmed that the first lot of documents was incinerated at Pollsmoor prison on September 29. Last Thursday the uniforms and the remaining documents were burnt at Corobrik incinerators in Durbanville, northern Cape Town, free of charge. This was independently verified.
Paxton said all pre-1994 intelligence documents were relocated to Pretoria defence head office in a two-year process from 1995. All current intelligence documents are only kept at the Western Cape SANDF head office.
In 1999 the Ministry of Defence imposed a moratorium on the destruction of classified documents.
National defence ministry spokesperson Sam Mkhwanazi was unable to respond to requests for comment before the M&G went to print on Thursday.