BLOEMFONTEIN Sept 5 - SAPA

TRC TRIES TO UNRAVEL APARTHEID SECURITY BRANCH STRUCTURES

Finding the truth about a former policeman's allegations of involvement in human rights abuses is proving difficult for an amnety commitee trying to unravel the complex security structures that existed in the final years of apartheid.

The Truth and Reconciliation's amnesty committee hearing in Bloemfontein has been extended for another week as more witnesses are being called to explain the operations of the security forces involved in keeping the lid on rising political activity in the Pretoria area during the late 1980s.

The committee is hearing an application by former policeman Nelson Mphithizeli Ngo, 32, who claims to have committed numerous acts of violence including a murder for which he is now serving a 25-year sentence, under orders from the security police.

Ngo, convicted in 1990 of robbing and murdering Pieter Venter in Bloemfontein, told the committee he took part in security force operations including petrol-bombing houses in the township of Mamelodi near Pretoria with Colonel Phillipus Loots and Captain Hendrik Bokaba.

Loots and Bokaba testified this week that they never worked with Ngo. Loots told the committee he met Ngo for about half an hour in 1986, when Ngo applied for a transfer from the Riot Squad to the security police. Loots said nothing came of the request for a transfer and Ngo had not spent "even one second" in the employ of the Pretoria Security Branch.

Loots admitted commanding "Unit 19", a squad of policemen that took part in acts of violence in Mamelodi and Atteridgeville, but was adamant that Ngo had never been part of the unit.

Loots explained in detail how the various police departments and the SA Defence Force deployed in the area co-ordinated their operations through the Joint Operations Centre.

Asked whether Ngo could have participated as a Riot Squad member in certain Security Branch operations, Loots said he could not say, but was certain that Ngo had never been in the Northern Transvaal Security Branch.

Loots added that apart from his duties as commander of Unit 19 he also had many administrative duties, including the implenting of State of Emergency regulations in force at the time.

He said this had placed great emotional and physical strain on him, which made a little vague about the details of some events of the time.

Loots has applied for amnesty for the petrol-bombing of a church in Mamelodi and for planning attacks on former PAC official Dikgang Moseneke and a cleric, Father Smangaliso Makatshwa. He said that if he had taken part in the acts described by Ngo there was no reason why he would not have applied for amnesty for them.

"The reason I have not applied for amnesty is that I was definitely not involved in them," he said.

Loots's representative, Roelof du Plessis, objected to his client being questioned about the contents of his amnesty application, saying he had difficulty with the committee dealing with it in Ngo's amnesty hearing.

Committee chairman Judge Andrew Wilson replied that getting to the truth about the incident was the real difficulty. He called for the officers that were directly involved in Unit 19's operations to be called so they could clarify whether Ngo had ever been present.

The policemen are are expected to appear at the hearing in Bloemfontein next week.


© South African Press Association, 1996
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