By Norm Dixon
"I have no confidence there can be justice in South Africa", Mbusi Ntuli said bitterly following the October 11 acquittal of former apartheid regime defence minister Magnus Malan and other senior police and security force officers accused of responsibility for the 1987 KwaMakutha massacre.
In January 1987, the home of Mbusi's brother, anti-apartheid activist Victor Ntuli, was attacked by a South African Defence Force-armed and -trained Inkatha hit squad. Thirteen people, including Mbusi's father and three sisters, were massacred. Victor was shot dead at a rally two years later.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions said it was "extremely disappointed" at the decision by Justice Hugo who presided over the trial without a jury. In a statement issued on October 11, COSATU said "all our people, in particular KwaZulu-Natal, had hoped the perpetrators of violence ... were no longer going to kill and maim without being prosecuted. Today, millions will ask whether there will ever be a successful prosecution of the Third Force elements who operated during the apartheid regime ... Malan trial [outcome] will give confidence to those abusers of human rights that it is still possible to sidestep the arm of the law under democracy."
"Thirteen black lives were lost in horrendous circumstances and the fact that nobody was to blame cannot be justice", Azanian People's Organisation spokesperson David Lebethe said. The generals conceded they undertook subterfuge operations to defeat the liberation movement and this should be seen as "an orchestrated plan to plunge black residential areas into war zones ... More than once during the trial, mention was made of homeland political figures and high-ranking government officials colluding in the ultimate massacre of KwaMakutha residents", he said. "Black people will forever question the independence of the judiciary", Lebethe added.
Evidence presented to the trial showed that a subcommittee of the State Security Council, the shadowy body comprising apartheid's highest political and military officials, created hit squads for Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi's Inkatha-controlled KwaZulu bantustan. Malan and his co-accused served on that subcommittee. Others charged with murder included: former SADF chief General Jannie Geldenhuys, former army head General Kat Liebenberg, former navy head Admiral Dries Putter, former military intelligence director General Tienie Groenewald, and several middle-ranking military officers.
Other co-conspirators included Zakhele "M.Z." Khumalo, Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) deputy secretary general, and police colonel Louie Botha, who was the link between Buthelezi and the security police in the 1991 "Inkathagate" scandal when security police were found to be secretly funding Inkatha.
More than 200 Inkatha loyalists were trained and armed to confront the United Democratic Front and the ANC in KwaZulu/Natal and boost Inkatha politically and militarily during the 1980s. The group was trained by SADF special forces in the Caprivi Strip in Namibia in 1986. The operation was cynically code-named "Project Marion" (from the word "marionette"). Documents emphasised that links between the regime and Inkatha be kept secret so that Buthelezi could not be branded a "puppet" of apartheid or have his false image in the West as a "democrat" tarnished.
Minutes of a 1985 meeting between Buthelezi and Groenewald record Buthelezi requesting an "offensive" paramilitary force and an intelligence unit to counter advances by the UDF-ANC alliance. Khumalo was appointed liaison officer between the SADF and Inkatha.
The prosecution's key witness, former SADF soldier Johan Pieter Opperman, who was based at an SADF base in the Caprivi Strip, testified that Inkatha fighters were trained by the SADF to "fuck up the ANC". He detailed how Staff Sergeant Andre Cloete took hit squad members through "dry runs" of the KwaMakutha massacre.
Authorisation for the KwaMakutha attack was given by Military Intelligence Brigadier Cornelius van Niekerk, another of Malan's co-accused, Opperman testified.
After the deaths of people who were not the intended targets, van Niekerk ended further "offensive" actions. This was reversed after a "strongly-worded signal" from the Defence Ministry in August 1988 instructed Military Intelligence "to make sure Operation Marion [is] carried out the way it was supposed to be", Opperman told the court.
Defence lawyers argued that the word "offensive" in these documents did not mean the Inkatha squads were to attack ANC members. However, Brigadier Willem van Deventer, head of counter-intelligence for the military, told the court that the word "offensive" in South African military parlance did mean attack.
In the light of what seemed to be overwhelming evidence against Malan, the other officers, and their Inkatha co-conspirators, Hugo's judgement came as a great shock to most South Africans. While Hugo agreed there "can be little doubt that the deceased were gunned down by trainees of the Caprivi", and that these trainees were members of an Inkatha force armed and trained by the SADF, the attack "was not an officially planned or authorised military exercise". Malan and the other generals were unaware of the plans to murder anti-apartheid fighters, and training provided was not aimed at unlawful killing, he said.
Hugo chose to accept an interpretation of the words "offensive action" as not meaning military attack. He ruled that the documents revealed "no unlawful aim" and no "meeting of minds" among the accused which might be considered a conspiracy to murder.
Hugo dismissed the evidence of prosecution witnesses Opperman and Cloete as unreliable due to their role as accomplices in the murders. This bodes ill for future cases against former apartheid officials whose underlings decide to testify against their former masters.
Following the acquittals, apartheid defenders were cocky. Malan praised the justice system as "an example of how a democracy ought to function in a civilised country". IFP supporters celebrated the verdict outside the court. Former president FW de Klerk declared that justice had prevailed and urged provincial prosecutors to turn their attention to senior ANC leaders who ordered armed actions by liberation fighters during the struggle against apartheid. South Africa's far-right parties welcomed the acquittals.
In a statement the ANC said it "unequivocally accepts and respects the decision" of Justice Hugo. President Nelson Mandela said on October 11: "I have confidence in the judiciary. I am a politician and am guided by their decision. I will not interfere in the judicial process."
ANC Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi said investigations into hit squad activities in KwaZulu-Natal would continue despite the acquittals in the KwaMakutha massacre trial.