The Hefer commission confirmed on Tuesday that it had been in contact with a former Eastern Cape human rights lawyer who confessed to being apartheid government agent RS452. Commission secretary John Bacon said Vanessa Brereton, who now lives in London, contacted the commission last Sunday through a go-between.
She agreed to prepare an affidavit to be submitted to the commission, Bacon said.
He ”left it wide open for her to decide what information is relevant”.
Bacon said he did not know whether Brereton had any relevant information regarding National Director of Public Prosecutions, Bulelani Ngcuka.
The Hefer commission was established to investigate allegations that Ngcuka acted as a spy for the apartheid government. Ngcuka has been linked to codename RS542.
Bacon said on Tuesday that Brereton’s revelation had helped the commission tremendously, but it did not conclude its work. It still had to determine whether Ngcuka was an agent under any other codename.
Ngcuka’s accusors, former transport minister Mac Maharaj and defence department advisor Mo Shaik confirmed, at the time that the allegations against Ngcuka became public in September this year, that Ngcuka had been suspected of spying against his anti-apartheid activist colleagues.
In the interview with Independent Newspapers Brereton admits to being the spy.
”I was RS452 and I have had enough of the lies and deceit,” she is reported to have said.
She casts no light on whether Ngcuka was a spy for the apartheid government.
According to the article commission secretary John Bacon has confirmed that he has asked Brereton for an affidavit, and that the commission might want to hear her testimony. She is reported to be reluctant to travel to South Africa, and there appears to be a possibility that the commission will travel to London.
Brereton said in the interview that she was recruited by security police operative Karl ”Zac” Edwards, who was a Bureau for State Security agent too. He recruited Brereton as a fellow anti-communist and was her handler throughout her six-year involvement in spying on ”leftists” such as Molly Blackburn.
In the interview Brereton says she began to doubt her involvement with the apartheid state’s security forces some time before her misgivings reached a climax in 1989 with the killing of three black security policemen and an askari — the name given to an African National Congress operative who turned to work for the apartheid state.
Brereton gives no reasons for her work as a spy. She says she has come forward now to set the record straight about Ngcuka and to expose the secret past. – Sapa