Birth of a S. African Death Squad Is Described

The key prosecution witness in the murder trial of former Defense Minister Magnus Malan and 19 others provided a chilling inside look Wednesday at the deadly web of covert operations used by the former apartheid regime to kill black dissidents.

In riveting testimony, Johan Pieter Opperman, a former South African intelligence officer, described how he used code names and cover stories, secret bank accounts and other cloak-and-dagger techniques as commander of a Zulu death-squad created by the military.

Opperman, a wiry, bearded man of 38, said he and other ranking operatives were even issued what he called special “James Bond cards,” which, like those of the fictional British secret agent, let them operate outside the law.

Opperman, now in a witness-protection program, identified 10 of the 20 men on trial in Durban Supreme Court as being directly involved in the planning and execution of a grisly hit-squad attack that left 13 people dead, mostly women and children, in a home in KwaMakutha township on Jan. 21, 1987.

He said intelligence had indicated that the house would be used that night for an illegal meeting of antiapartheid activists. Instead, members of the 12 Apostles of Christ Church and their families were asleep after choir practice.

Opperman did not directly implicate Malan, who was defense chief from 1980 to 1991, or other top military leaders of the apartheid era also on trial, in the atrocity.

But prosecutors said documents would be used later in the trial to prove that the generals had authorized training, arming and deploying 206 militant Zulus to support Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party in its bitter and bloody rivalry with the African National Congress.

The covert project was code-named Operation Marion, apparently from “marionette.”

“The military was pulling the strings. Inkatha was the puppet,” said a court official familiar with the evidence.

Buthelezi, who is repeatedly cited in the indictment but was not charged, acknowledged to reporters Monday that Inkatha had chosen the men for military training. But he angrily dismissed allegations of involvement in hit-squad activity as “utter poppycock.”

Opperman said the Zulu recruits were given special training--including “house-breaking, kidnapping, sniping and urban warfare”--in late 1986 at Camp Hippo, a secret military base in what is now Namibia.

He said that the recruits were “told they were in Israel” and that he and other instructors used false names and pretended they worked for a civilian company.

Other South African camps were used for covert training of rebel forces fighting black-led governments in Angola, Mozambique and Lesotho, he said.

After graduating, Opperman said, the Zulus were flown back to Durban and given ID cards from Omega Security Services, a fictitious firm.

But he said the trainees soon demanded action, and Buthelezi’s chief aide, M.Z. Khumalo, complained that he had “206 hungry lions on his hands.”

Opperman said four potential victims were chosen after security police and military intelligence had confirmed that they were not informants.

He said Victor Ntuli, a KwaMakutha resident, was picked as the first target because he was “paymaster” for guerrilla operations against Inkatha.

Bulletproof vests and other gear were purchased from a German arms dealer in Johannesburg, and the military provided AK-47 assault rifles and a Toyota minivan.

The gunmen told him that the attack “was successful and there were no problems.”

He said he discovered in newspapers the day after the attack that they had killed a priest, five women and seven children. Ntuli was not even present.

“I was horrified,” he said.

Opperman, who has been promised immunity for his testimony, said he stayed in military intelligence until mid-1994.