Ex-Leaders Tied to Attacks on Activists

Retired Police Commissioner Gen. Johan van der Merwe testified that officials at the highest levels of the apartheid government planned and sanctioned attacks on its opponents. It was the first testimony before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in which top police officials from the former white government confessed to crimes against anti-apartheid groups without first being tried and convicted in court. Van der Merwe implicated former Police Minister Louis Le Grange and former Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok in bombings against government foes during the 1980s, and said that Vlok told him orders for such actions “had come from President P. W. Botha personally.” The revelations came at an amnesty hearing for five former police officials who have confessed to a total of 40 murders.