A grim, remorseless confession

• Published date: 08 May 2021

That lead had come from their own, and it was part of a bizarre operation. Before the Kombi had left Port Elizabeth, to attend a congress in Harare, Zimbabwe, police security branch members had poured marijuana through air vents into the engine compartment. They had orders that the vehicle was not to make it to Harare. The plan was to phone ahead to a local police station, get the vehicle pulled over and get the occupants arrested for transporting a hallucinogenic. It didn’t work out like that.

The local police in Cradock failed to notice the strong smell of marijuana percolating from the engine compartment. In a panic, a call was placed to the commander of the C1 counter intelligence unit, Captain Dirk Coetzee. The world would later know C1 as Vlakplaas, and over the past couple of months he and his team had been responsible for a spate of killings across South Africa and neighbouring countries. But there was to be no killing on this mission, rather the unit would be using its other honed skill – car theft.

They learnt that the union members would be overnighting at the Johannesburger Hotel, and planned to head out at 3am the next day.

That night the Kombi was located in the hotel car park and warrant officer Koos Vermeulen opened the unlocked door to find the keys in the ignition. They had been left there so that the car park attendants could move the Kombi to make space for other vehicles. Vermeulen paid the parking fee at the boom and so scuppered the delegation’s trip to Harare.

This unusual Vlakplaas operation had a brief mention in an amnesty statement during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), but it appears in greater detail in Coetzee’s unpublished memoir, Testimony of a South African Security Policeman: The Full Story. The book is just 120 pages and reads like a cop’s affidavit. Coetzee never found a publisher and for the past 30 years the electronic version has bounced around, appearing in the odd inbox. It was an exhibit at the TRC.

But what this book does provide is rare insight into the South African Police’s security branch, relevant now with the spotlight again on this brutal, covert arm of the apartheid regime.

A procession of stooped and greying former security branch officers have taken the stand in the Neil Aggett inquest. They have hid behind fading memories or have claimed not to have noticed the beatings and torture that was happening, sometimes on the same floor as they had their offices.

“There were just a few people...