Reply #16: Police necklaced activist, truth body told

[struggle4progress]

CAPE TOWN March 11 1997 — Sapa

A security police hitsquad "necklaced" a Mamelodi, Pretoria activist after first strangling him to death, a former security policeman told the Truth Commission's amnesty committee on Tuesday.

W/O Paul van Vuuren's evidence to the committee followed last week's announcement by the African National Congress that it would submit new evidence to the commission proving that the police were involved in "necklace" murders, in which victims were burnt using petrol-doused car tyres placed around their necks.

The ANC said its submission would also show how the police "manipulated propaganda" in an attempt to discredit the ANC and implicate it in necklace murders ... http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/media/1997/9703/s970311e.htm


Further Submissions and Responses by the ANC to Questions raised by the Commission for Truth and Reconciliation
12 MAY 1997

... The extent to which the NP has consistently tried to use the phenomenon of "necklacing" to damage the ANC and divert attention from their own atrocities has always raised the suspicion that they were involved in some of these incidents. It was certainly their agent, Joe Mamasela, who was centrally involved in creating the conditions under which the first recorded "necklacing" took place, which was conveniently filmed in horrific detail, immediately sent out world-wide, and portrayed as "evidence" of the savagery of the ANC. A number of covertly-funded fronts were prominent in propaganda campaigns focused on "necklacing." ...

In October 1987, the Botha regime refused to grant The Sunday Tribune permission to quote OR Tambo after he had made a speech in which he stated that the ANC was strongly opposed to the practice of "necklacing." Helen Suzman commented that this was a "shameless use of selective prohibition. (...) A statement where "necklacing", one of the most outrageous acts attributed to the ANC, is strongly discouraged, yet the government does not allow this to be published."

In yet another example of dishonest attempts to exploit the issue of "necklacing", untrue statements by bank robber Lucky Malaza, who somehow was "mistakenly" released by the De Klerk administration as a political prisoner after falsely claiming to have been involved in a necklace murder, have been quoted at some length in the NP's latest submission to the TRC ...

http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/misc/trc2.html