Apartheid secrets die with Coetzee

The death of Dirk Coetzee, commander of the apartheid-era covert police unit at Vlakplaas in Pretoria, has been met with venom and condolences - and the loss of hope of South Africa finding out all that he knew.

The man who admitted to the murder of liberation fighters died on Wednesday night of kidney failure.

The National Prosecuting Authority's missing persons task team had hoped to take Coetzee in just a few months' time to identify yet another site in Komatipoort in Mpumalanga where the body of Sizwe Kondile was burnt in 1981.

Head of the unit Madeleine Fullard said that, when Coetzee was first approached in 2009, he "was not that keen to help".

Eventually he gave in.

"We took him out to the Komatipoort area on two or three occasions. He eventually identified a site that we subsequently excavated. But we realised it was the incorrect site," she said.

"We were in the process of identifying another possible site where we hoped to take Coetzee in a couple of months."

Kondile was an Eastern Cape activist and confidant of former Umkhonto we Sizwe leader Chris Hani. He was captured, drugged and shot dead.

At the Truth and Reconciliation Commission many years later, Coetzee told how he and his team set Kondile's body alight as they drank and had a braai nearby.

Coetzee was granted amnesty for the murders of Kondile and activist attorney Mlungisi Griffiths Mxenge.

Advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza, a former TRC commissioner, described Coetzee as the "scum of the earth" who could have done more to help find the bodies of anti-apartheid activists who had been murdered.

"My sense was that he was a person who was heartless . to him, killing was just a job," said Ntsebeza.

In the late 1980s, Coetzee joined the very organisation that the men he had murdered belonged to, the ANC.

According to Kebby Maphatsoe, chairman of the Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans' Association, Coetzee was a brave "comrade".

"When he came to join the ANC he confessed he was an enemy agent . working for the apartheid regime. We accepted him within our ranks because he confessed, but he has also confessed to the TRC," said Maphatsoe.

He lauded Coetzee's "contribution to the liberation struggle", noting that Coetzee had shared crucial information about the "enemy".