Michael Schmidt
28 July 2007
Two days ago, former president FW de Klerk tearfully told a media conference that he was owed a fair deal by South Africa for his role in ending apartheid.
His press conference was his first personal appearance since the National Prosecuting Authority's decision last week to charge Adriaan Vlok, De Klerk's minister of law and order, with attempted murder for his 1989 plot to kill the ANC's Reverend Frank Chikane.
Vlok, former police commissioner General Johann van der Merwe and three other senior apartheid police officers are in negotiations to strike a plea bargain with the NPA, sparking speculation that they might give information on other senior apartheid politicians and officers in the apartheid security forces.
This week, De Klerk adamantly denied he had condoned or supported human rights abuses during apartheid.
But, according to investigator Howard Varney, De Klerk sat on the secret State Security Council meeting in 1986 that considered the formation of an "offensive para-military" force for Inkatha, a secret force of 206 men who would gain notoriety as the "Caprivi Trainees".
The TRC later found the trainees responsible for gross violations of human rights, including killing and attempted killing between 1987 and 1994.
De Klerk has consistently argued that as the then minister of national education and chairman of the minister's council in parliament, he was not part of the inner circle of "securocrats" around former president PW Botha who would have taken security-related policy decisions.
Varney yesterday said he had reported on De Klerk's presence at the SSC meeting in a special report on political violence in KwaZulu-Natal for Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi in the late 1990s, which was later passed on to the TRC.
Details of the report have never been made public.
Botha chaired the SSC meeting at Tuynhuis on December 20, 1985 at which a request from Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi for a para-military force was debated.
Botha's defence minister, Magnus Malan, and 10 other cabinet ministers including De Klerk were present, as was Dave Steward, now De Klerk's spokesman, but then deputy director-general of the state's Bureau of Information.
The SSC established a "head committee" consisting of, among others Vlok, National Intelligence Service head Niel Barnard and Military Intelligence general Tienie Groenewald.
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