JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Eugene de Kock, one of the apartheid era's most notorious assassins, accused former President Frederik de Klerk yesterday of deliberately lying when he denied even knowing about government death squads operating in the run-up to the 1994 democratic elections.
De Kock told a Pretoria court that his secret police hit squad carried out a pre-dawn raid on a house allegedly used to store arms in the former Transkei homeland in October 1993. Five youths were killed as they slept.
De Klerk, then president, confirmed at the time that he had authorized the attack but indicated it was a purely military operation. He denied as recently as last month that he ever approved the use of a death squad or was even aware of such groups.
"Surely he knew there were covert units with this ability," countered de Kock. "Who did he think was going to launch the attack?"
The Pan Africanist Congress, a black militant group targeted in the attack, insisted the five victims were all schoolchildren. De Klerk's government, then in the twilight of the apartheid era, said they were terrorists.
De Klerk last month told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which is investigating the political crimes of the apartheid era, that he never authorized "assassination, murder, torture, rape, assault or the like" during his years in government. He told a subsequent news conference that he was "at no stage aware of any unit carrying out assassinations." He added, "I was never part of any decision to assassinate or murder anyone.
De Klerk insisted that he closed illegal government operations as soon as he learned of them. De Kock's covert Vlakplaas unit, named for its base outside Pretoria, was publicly exposed in newspapers and court proceedings starting in 1989. But it was not formally disbanded until 1993.
In a statement yesterday, de Klerk said he had approved the 1993 raid because intelligence reports indicated a "substantial hidden cache of arms" was present and it thus appeared a "legitimate military target." He said his authorization specifically excluded attacks on civilians.
De Klerk, who heads the opposition National Party, holds an odd public position here. Overseas, he is hailed as a bold politician who released Nelson Mandela from 27 years in prison in 1990, legalized anti-apartheid groups and helped negotiate the fragile transition from apartheid to democracy.
At home, he is far less popular. Mandela, who succeeded him as president and shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with him bitterly accused him of doing nothing to stop massacres of blacks during the pre-election period.
And de Kock, who testified for the third day at a presentencing hearing for six murders and 83 other charges, undoubtedly spoke for many right-wing whites - once the core of de Klerk's support - when he denounced the former president for supposedly surrendering without a fight.
"I regard him as one of the greatest cowards the country has ever produced," de Kock said. "Not because he wanted peace - that is a noble cause. But because, like a small puppy, he turned on his back and wet himself."
Over the last three days, de Kock - the most senior official convicted of apartheid-era crimes - has confessed to a grisly series of bombings, executions, torture and other abuses during his decade at Vlakplaas.
Hoping for a lenient sentence, he has implicated more than 20 former police commanders and politicians who he said had approved his illegal actions. He said former President P.W. Botha, de Klerk's predecessor, ordered the 1987 bombing of a black trade union headquarters in Johannesburg and approved cross-border raids to kill anti-apartheid activists.
De Kock also admitted that he provided trucks full of land mines, assault rifles, hand grenades and other weapons, as well as training, to militants in the Zulu nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party to help them wage war against Mandela's African National Congress before the 1994 vote.