A report detailing white South Africa’s deadly military involvement during apartheid’s dying days has been made public for the first time, the Sunday Independent reported.
The Steyn report, compiled by a top apartheid general for South Africa’s last white president, FW de Klerk, details how the army helped destabilise the country during the turbulent early 1990s.
”The report contains a list of military and other suspects, which, now that it is in the public arena, puts pressure on the authorities to bring the perpetrators to book,” the Johannesburg-based paper said.
It lends credence to allegations during the time linking the apartheid army and police to various parastatal structures, commonly referred to as the ”Third Force”, which were orchestrating violence against liberation movements and ordinary black civilians.
Thousands of mainly black South Africans died in the run-up to the country’s first democratic elections in 1994 during attacks orchestrated from men’s hostels east of Johannesburg and on trains around the country.
The Steyn report, among other allegations, also states that:
- the apartheid army cached illegal weapons in Portugal for use in internal uprisings;
- the military maintained secret caches in South Africa and neighbouring states;
- orders were given for the murder of two detained Portuguese operatives;
- military training was provided to resistance movements in neighbouring states;
- apartheid army officers gave orders to left-wing Pan Africanist Congress operatives to murder [now ruling] African National Congress members; and
- senior apartheid army officers were involved in framing contingency plans for a right-wing coup.
Following General Pierre Steyn’s report to De Klerk in 1992, many top brass in the military and other security organs were fired or retired, the Sunday Independent said.
”Subsequently, however, relatively little of the report’s contents came to light — at least until now,” the paper said.
Critics from the old military establishment reacted to the report, saying it was fuelled by resentment from the then-intelligence community and the allegations were never proved. — Sapa-AFP