Eugene de Kock, the former Vlakplaas commander, told the Khampepe Commission on Monday that no prosecutor ever asked him to identify the officers and politicians who gave the orders he carried out, despite his two life sentences and years in prison.
"They simply never approached me," De Kock said, according to published coverage of his testimony. He said he could have named who gave instructions and who carried them out. These are his claims. They have not been independently verified, and the commission has made no findings on them.
What De Kock told the inquiry
De Kock, led by advocate Geoff Budlender, submitted an 18-page affidavit and testified a week after former president Thabo Mbeki gave evidence to the same commission. He said he was the only person involved in apartheid-era state violence to serve time in a South African prison: "none served a day in a South African prison – except me."
He said he testified for the prosecution in the Motherwell bombing trial, which led to the conviction of three Security Branch officers. He also said the trial judge in his own case noted there was enough evidence to charge a senior general who was never held to account. He said he can provide information on more police members involved in death-squad activities.
Who he says should have asked
De Kock said Anton Ackermann, who headed the Priority Crimes Litigation Unit from 2003, and Attorney-General Jan d'Oliveira made little effort to interview him. He claimed Ackermann vowed after his sentencing to use him to move up the chain of command, but that this never happened. Neither man's response was in the coverage we reviewed.
De Kock also named senior security-branch officers and two former law-and-order ministers as figures in the chain of command. We are not repeating those names, because they are unverified allegations, we have seen no response from those named, and the commission has made no findings. He argued that political decisions shielded those at the top, and made further claims about covert money laundering and payments for arrests. These too are his claims alone.
Background to the inquiry
The Khampepe Commission is examining alleged political interference and delays in prosecutions of apartheid-era crimes after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). It is scheduled to finish on 18 December 2026. As we reported last week, Mbeki denied secret amnesty talks with apartheid-era generals.
De Kock, 77, commanded Vlakplaas, the security police base. In 1996 he was sentenced to two life terms plus 212 years for six murders. The TRC granted him amnesty for some offences but rejected most of his applications, and he was paroled in 2015 after 19 years.
