Steeped in Blood

by David Klatzow

  The newspaper arranged for Coetzee to fly to Mauritius, where he unfolded the whole tale of murder, torture, political assassinations and lies to Jacques Pauw. After the story broke, Coetzee eventually found asylum in the Netherlands, and on 17 November 1989, the story about Vlakplaas broke on the front page of Vrye Weekblad. The local mainstream media in South Africa preferred, by and large, to ignore the story or to deny its truthfulness, but it received widespread coverage outside South Africa’s borders.

  The floodgates were open. Dirk Coetzee’s revelations prompted other policemen and government officials to start talking. As an upshot of all of these revelations, Colonel Eugene de Kock, who headed up Vlakplaas at the time, was given two life sentences and an additional 212 years in prison, on charges ranging from murder to kidnapping to assault and corruption. Like most South Africans, I watched this horrific story unfold, but so much of what was revealed made sense to me from the political cases in which I had been and would be involved.

  Coetzee found himself moving around a lot, as there were regular attempts on his life. In 1990, he was in a safe house in Lusaka when a parcel was delivered to the local post office addressed to him. He took one look and suspected that it was a bomb sent by the security police, so he returned it to the apparent sender, who happened to be Bheki Mlangeni, a young attorney working for Cheadle Thompson & Haysom. Innocently, Mlangeni opened the box when he received it. It contained a cheap Walkman with a tape labelled ‘Evidence – Hit Squads’. He put the headphones on, plugged them in and pushed the start button. This detonated a massive explosion, which blew his head off.

  Mlangeni’s family approached the legal firm of Cheadle Thompson & Haysom, and I was called in to investigate the case. The more I looked at it, the more certain I was that this was a police hit. The parcel had been sent to Coetzee by someone who knew where he was. The explosives were suspicious. Bomb builders were usually explosives experts from the mines who used gelignite that they smuggled off their work premises. The explosive material used in this case was PETN – pentaerythritol trinitrate – a substance not readily available outside military circles. It was also not a standard South African detonator, and appeared to be of Eastern Bloc or Russian origin. The Eastern Bloc had no interest in killing Dirk Coetzee. Quite the opposite, in fact.

  However, the police had access to all kinds of weaponry seized from Eastern Bloc operatives. The prime suspect at the time was Waal du Toit, who headed up the bomb unit of the SAP. He ran a specialist bomb laboratory and was a guru in his field. I had a heavy suspicion that General Lothar Neethling – South Africa’s own ‘Dr Mengele’ – had a finger in the pie too.

  The police could not investigate the matter, as they were the prime suspects in the case. I was asked to oversee the investigation, and worked closely with the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) on the matter. One of the first things I did was voice my dissatisfaction with the involvement of Klippies Kritzinger, a policeman. I asked who he was answering to, and established that, of course, it was General Neethling – a prime suspect. Kritzinger took a back seat because of my objection, and this made me no friends during the investigation. He also denied the existence of key elements in the investigation, such as the bomb laboratory of Waal du Toit, which I asked about.

  The evidence included a handwriting sample and a fingerprint. I obtained a court order so that we could acquire handwriting samples and fingerprints from the men of Vlakplaas. Court order in hand, I arrived at Wagthuis, the police headquarters in Pretoria, and was met by Krappies Engelbrecht. One of the darker forces of apartheid, Engelbrecht headed up the Brixton Murder and Robbery Unit, and was a murky character. People around him were responsible for murders and torturing, yet he always managed to evade prosecution. The mere mention of his name to Judge Richard Goldstone, who headed up the important commission investigating political violence in South Africa in the early 1990s, used to send Goldstone into apoplexy!

  Engelbrecht greeted me with his standard ‘Hello, Duif.’ He always called me ‘Duif’ for some unknown reason. I wanted to see the Vlakplaas men three at a time – I didn’t want all the papers handed out simultaneously, as it could result in switching and confusion of the process. But the men were all seated at one long table, and Engelbrecht told me that this was the way in which it would be done. I said no, and we argued bitterly. I left Wagthuis saying that I would see them all again in two weeks’ time.

  I obtained yet another court order, and this time managed to get all the fingerprints and handwriting samples on my terms. This was a clear message to the men of Vlakplaas and the South African Police that the tide was turning, and that we would start investigating them. No one was above the law any more.

  There was no particular finding at the trial, and the feeling of the courts at that time was echoed well in the title of a book that George Bizos wrote subsequently, No One to Blame: In Pursuit of Justice in South Africa. The courts were extremely reluctant to reach decisions that were anti the police or authorities. Anybody can manipulate a crime scene if they hold all the evidence, and there were many devious examples of this happening during the 1980s. Evidence was also often damaged or destroyed or lost, severely hampering any meaningful investigation. The Gugulethu Seven case illustrated this perfectly. The environment was truly toxic in those days.

  Vrye Weekblad went on to reveal the secrets of the Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB) in May 1990, and described how CCB commander Pieter Botes had tried to kill anti-apartheid activist Albie Sachs in Maputo in 1988, as well as destabilise the run-up to the Namibian elections in November 1989. In 1991, a bomb destroyed the Vrye Weekblad offices. A CCB operative by the name of Leonard Veenendal later confessed to having planted the deadly explosive.

  The demise of the newspaper came that same year, when it was sued by Lothar Neethling in a defamation case linked to an investigation in which two activists had gone missing on the banks of the Komati River. Neethling was linked to this incident, and the court case took place over a protracted period of time. The police had not wanted another Steve Biko on their hands, and Neethling’s ‘silent, undetectable potion’ had been their answer.*

  What is sad about this is that Neethling was a well-qualified man who put forensic science on the map in South Africa. In normal criminal cases, he was excellent. Unfortunately, when politics entered the fray and state interests were on the line, he showed a different side of his character.

  Vrye Weekblad published allegations that Neethling had synthesised poison in his laboratory, ‘remedies’ that were referred to as ‘Lothar se doepa’ – Lothar’s potions. These were formulated in order to kill African National Congress (ANC) activists without a trace. He showed himself to be a dishonest man who had little regard for science and the truth. I even question his application to the TRC for amnesty.

  In this case, Neethling’s concoction should have resulted in the two activists dying from heart attacks. The only problem was that the potion did not seem to work: after numerous doses the men were drowsy, but not dead. So they were shot, their bodies burnt and thrown into the river.

  I visited the alleged murder scene as well. It was remarkable how accurate Coetzee’s memory was regarding this event. He described every minute detail, such as a fork in the road and the topography, and when I investigated it, I was able to find the exact spot where the murders had taken place. I photographed the area from the air (see photo), and what Coetzee had described was virtually 100 per cent accurate. We never found any remains in the area.

  After a long trial, Judge Johann Kriegler ruled in favour of Vrye Weekblad. The appeals court overturned Kriegler’s decision on a legal technicality, and ordered the paper to pay R90 000 plus costs. The ensuing battle cost both sides two million rand over five years, and forced the paper to close. Neethling was free. I have never understood why Michael Corbett C.J. reversed the court’s initial findings.

  Judges were bending over backwards to fulfil the needs of the government. Because of my involvement in a
number of political cases, on request, I became known as an ‘ANC man’. However, I never took sides and was not a member of any political party. I simply conducted my investigations to the best of my ability. In some cases, the police were right: if the evidence stood up to scrutiny, I would not waste time and money refuting it.

  I would never manipulate evidence or create a defence for a person, though. In recent years, I was approached by a man accused of the illegal manufacturing of drugs. He showed me all of his equipment and chemicals, and I asked him how he had obtained them and what he used them for. In response, he asked me, ‘What could I have been doing with these chemicals and equipment?’ He was looking for a defence – a valid excuse as to why he had all the chemicals and equipment in his possession. I would not sit and dream up something in order to invent a defence for him. I told him that it didn’t work that way – he should tell me what he was using it for, and I would let him know if his explanation was feasible or not. In the end, the man was found guilty and his house was one of the first to be seized by the asset forfeiture unit.

  The various murders, torture and disappearance of individuals in the 1980s took place behind the cover of massive government propaganda. Most South Africans were blissfully unaware of the truth that lay behind these horrors. This blindness was truly reprehensible in those groups who should, by virtue of their training and position, have known better. The state forensic practitioners saw evidence of the atrocities arriving in their mortuaries every day. The evidence of torture and assault was there to see, yet they chose not to see it.

  As a newcomer to the forensic scene in the eighties, I could recognise the gaps in the story; I could see that the police versions could never explain the forensic evidence. The state forensic experts were in a better position than I was, but they never raised the alarm. They failed in their duty as professionals and as human beings. They allowed gross abuses of human rights to continue and, as a result, in my view, they join those in the trash can of history, people like Joseph Mengele and the other Nazi doctors and professionals who chose evil over good.

  There was one notable exception to all this. Wendy Orr was a young district surgeon in the Eastern Cape who had found herself in the position of having to pay back student loans. The Department of Health had seconded her to the area where Doctors Tucker and Lang were working. They had been involved in the Steve Biko inquest, and admitted later to having behaved in a manner that was contrary to their Hippocratic Oath – they had protected the security police and, by their actions, had allowed abuses of prisoners to take place.

  Not so Wendy Orr. She lodged complaint after complaint against the rampant security police abuses, which she saw on a regular basis as part of her duties. The existing forensic infrastructure should have sprung to her assistance. They did nothing of the sort – there was not a single word of support for her courageous actions. Not even Tucker and Lang, who should have learnt from their past mistakes, gave her a single iota of backing. That was unfortunately the state of the official circles at the time.

  Other examples of state abuse covered up by the authorities included the mysterious disappearance and death of Siphiwo Mtimkulu, who had been poisoned with thallium while in prison in 1981 by the security forces. Frances Ames, who was a neurologist in Cape Town, became involved in the matter. She was outspoken and made public her findings. Of course, nothing was done. Ames, together with Trevor Jenkins, Philip Tobias and three other doctors, later raised the matter of Tucker and Lang’s involvement in the Biko inquest and forced the Medical and Dental Council, the statutory registration body that had exonerated the doctors, to take some belated action against the pair.

  These were not isolated actions: the unholy alliance between the state pathologists and the police was played out, yet again, in the killing of Ashley Kriel.

  ___________

  * Despite the excellent cross-examinations of the security police and the doctors who were involved in the 1977 death of Steve Biko, which revealed that Biko had been in custody when he died, that he had been chained naked in a puddle of his own excrement and driven in this form to Pretoria, and that he had suffered a severe head injury brought on by vicious assaults by the police, the magistrate found himself unable to lay the blame for Biko’s death at anybody’s doorstep.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE MURDER OF ASHLEY KRIEL

  ‘Science is the organized, systematic enterprise that gathers knowledge about the world and condenses the knowledge into testable laws and principles.’

  – EDWARD O. WILSON,

  American biologist, researcher and theorist,

  Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

  On 15 July 1987, Ashley Kriel, a curly haired, intense and funloving youth, had his life cut short, just a few months before his twenty-first birthday. His death shocked his own community as well as the broader public, and he is recognised today as one of the tragic victims of the struggle against apartheid.

  While growing up in Bonteheuwel on the Cape Flats, Kriel was painfully aware of the impact of gangsterism in the community. Together with two friends – Gavin Adams and Paul Jansen – he set up an alternative to gangs for the youth, a movement called the GAP brotherhood. The acronym derived from the initials of their first names, but the aim of the group was to provide a ‘gap’ for youngsters through which they could escape gangsterism. Interestingly, Kriel was taught by Cheryl Carolus, who rose to prominence and high government office after 1994.

  Being an active community member, the implementation of the tricameral system of government in 1984, which excluded the vast majority of South Africans, led to Ashley Kriel establishing a network of revolutionary militants who debated and explored alternatives to what the apartheid government was proposing. He became one of the leaders of the anti-apartheid United Democratic Movement (UDF), and left South Africa in 1985 to join the ANC and its military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK).

  Kriel was seen by the community as an agent of change, but the authorities viewed him as a serious threat to the stability of the country: a powerful orator, he was able to stir up crowds and cause significant unrest. Something had to be done about him.

  The ‘problem’ of Ashley Kriel was permanently solved by a particular Western Cape policeman, Warrant Officer Jeffrey Benzien. Acting on a tip-off, Benzien went to the house in Athlone where Kriel was staying. According to the police report of the incident, Kriel produced a firearm and, in the ensuing struggle, Kriel was shot in the back.

  The official story, which was reiterated in Benzien’s submission for amnesty in 1995, at the TRC hearings, goes as follows:

  On [15] July 1987, Benzien and Sergeant Ables went to 8 Albermarie Road, Hazendale, Athlone. They had been instructed to do surveillance of the house and its immediate vicinity as the police had received information that Ashley Kriel, a trained ANC terrorist, might be hiding out there. He and Ables went to the house disguised as municipal employees pretending to check the sewerage … Sergeant Ables knocked at the [back] door. Moments later a man opened the door. Benzien immediately recognised him as Ashley Kriel. Kriel held a jersey and towel in front of his trousers in his right hand and his left hand was pressed against the covered right hand. Benzien told him that they had come to inspect the drainage on the property. Kriel said nothing and tried to get back into the house. Benzien suspected that Kriel might be armed with a pistol or hand grenade, so he moved quickly, put his arms around Kriel’s arms and chest trying to pin his arms to his body. Benzien identified himself as a policeman and told Kriel that he was arresting him. In the process the towel and jersey fell off revealing an automatic pistol in Kriel’s hand. Benzien disarmed Kriel and struck him a heavy blow on his forehead causing him to fall to the floor. Sergeant Ables then tried to handcuff Kriel, but Kriel sat up and grabbed Benzien’s right hand in an attempt to retrieve his pistol. While Ables was trying to handcuff him, Kriel suddenly stood up, but Benzien held him from behind with the pistol still in his hand.

  Then a shot went o
ff and Kriel fell to the ground. He had been wounded and blood came out of his mouth and nose. Ables handcuffed Kriel while Benzien went to his vehicle and radioed for help. When Benzien returned, he found that Kriel was dead.

  – Truth and Reconciliation Commission Final Report, AC/99/0027

  According to Benzien, he and Ables then searched the house for weapons, only to find a hand grenade under the pillow on Kriel’s bed. Benzien insisted that it had not been their intention to kill Kriel, but merely to arrest him, and that the shooting had been accidental.

  Kriel’s family was not happy with the official explanation, and I was requested by them to investigate the matter. I flew to Cape Town and started my work.

  The wound on Ashley Kriel’s back was clearly a contact wound. It would have to be in order to support the police version. Because the pistol had been in contact with the skin on firing, it had left black burn marks on the skin in an elliptical shape.

  There was only one difficulty: Kriel had been wearing a tracksuit top at the time he was shot. I called for it, and discovered that a neat calibre-sized hole was located in roughly the right position. Kriel had been shot with a .22-calibre automatic pistol. I managed to secure the pistol from the police and took it back to Johannesburg with me, where I researched the types of ammunition available and then started my experiments.

  Using the same ammunition and the same type of clothing involved in the Kriel killing, I again enrolled the help of a pig because of its skin’s similarity to human skin. Covering the pigskin with identical clothing to Kriel’s, I fired a contact shot.

  The results were spectacular. Any shot fired with the muzzle of the weapon either in contact with or at very close range to the skin, with the clothing interspersed, produced a whopping great hole in the material. The reason for this was quite simple – the clothing was made from cotton polyester, through which a huge hole burnt as the heat spread from the muzzle of the weapon. Yet, when I inspected Ashley Kriel’s clothing, the hole was not more than half a centimetre across – the size of the bullet. I repeated the experiment a number of times, but could not get a calibre-sized hole in the garment when I fired at close range. It was impossible to recreate the alleged contact shot that had killed Kriel without simultaneously blowing a great big hole in the tracksuit top.