Civil Cooperation Bureau

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The Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB; afrikaans : Burgerlike Samewerkingsburo ; German for example: "Civil Cooperation Office") was a unit of the South African Defense Force (SADF), which was used with covert operations against opponents of the apartheid regime . The members committed numerous crimes, including assassinations. The CCB existed from 1986 to 1990.

history

Prehistory and foundation

In the 1970s, government spending on security services in South Africa skyrocketed. In the state budget, the share for all secret services grew from 1,842,500 rand in the period 1968/1969 to 5,320,500 rand in the budget of 1969/1970. The intelligence coordination tasks were increasingly concentrated with the Prime Minister and consisted of three sectors. These were a military secret service in the area of ​​the High Command of the Armed Forces, the Office for State Security ( South African Bureau of State Security , abbreviated as BOSS) and a security department in the South African Police under the responsibility of the police commander. The establishment of the State Security Council under Prime Minister Balthazar Johannes Vorster is seen as a sign of further progress in the militarization of South African domestic and foreign policy . With Pieter Willem Botha , the role of this government body changed from an advisory function to a decision-making body that always met before the cabinet meetings. In 1980 there were critical voices from the ranks of the parliamentary opposition about the influence of the military on the media, after which it was perceived as an exclusively positive and therefore one-sided representation.

The CCB was founded in 1986 on the initiative of then Defense Minister Magnus Malan . Before or at the same time there were similar institutions that also operated in secret, in addition to the BOSS already mentioned, the Seventh Medical Battalion under Wouter Basson and the Project Coast , which were responsible for the development of biological and chemical weapons , the Witdoeke unit , the Project Barnacle in South West Africa (now Namibia ) and the D40 unit, both of which are considered the forerunners of the CCB, and the Vlakplaas police unit , which carried out assassinations at times parallel to the CCB.

In addition, South Africa maintained Division V with a network of agents in African countries in order to prepare destabilizing actions in the gray area between diplomatic and military perspectives or to support cooperative forces in these countries. Structures from SADF and BOSS were available for this.

In addition to the CCB, the SADF also had the Directorate of Covert Collection (DCC, roughly: "Directory of the Covered Collection"). The National Strategic Intelligence Act ( Act No. 39/1994 ) defines covert collection as follows: "... means the acquisition of information which cannot be obtained by overt means and for which complete and continuous secrecy is a requirement." means the acquisition of information which cannot be obtained in an obvious manner and for which complete and continuous secrecy is a prerequisite.)

structure

The CCB was part of the Special Forces, but disguised itself as a private company. The existence of the CCB was only revealed in 1990 by the Afrikaans- language newspaper Vrye Weekblad . At the top was the chairman (roughly: "CEO"). This was Major-General Joep Joubert until early 1989 , then Major-General Eddie Webb. He was only subordinate to the Chief of the SADF. The Board of Management - formally the Executive Board  - consisted of Directors ("Directors"). The managing director was Joe Verster. The unit was divided into eight regions , each headed by a regional director , each of whom was subordinate to a co-ordinator .

  • Region 1: Botswana
  • Region 2: Mozambique , Swaziland
  • Region 3: Lesotho
  • Region 4: Angola , Zambia , Tanzania
  • Region 5: international, Europe
  • Region 6: South Africa
  • Region 7: Zimbabwe
  • Region 8: South West Africa
  • The department for logistics was designated as region 9 and the administrative department as region 10.

Each “Region” department consisted of around 6 to 26 members. The Region 6 was not established until the 1988th

The South African government was known as the Controlling Trust ("Supervisory Board"). There were also shareholders (“shareholders”) and clients (“customers”). The code name of the CCB was Triplane, the designation CCB was only used internally.

The members of the CCB had to do another job to camouflage themselves, for example as private investigators or in import / export. Any profits from these companies were retained by the members. This activity had to be submitted for approval with a blue plan . Actions within the framework of the CCB had to be applied for with a red plan (“red plan”). They were often criminals. If there was the possibility or intention of killing people during the actions, the approval of the Chief of the SADF or the Chief of Defense Force Staff had to be obtained.

Actions

The former CCB employee Hans Louw testified in 2003 that the CCB was involved in the downing of a passenger plane in the Lebombo Mountains in October 1986 , in which the then President of Mozambique , Samora Machel , was killed. The cause of the crash has not yet been clarified (see also: Crash of a Mozambican Tupolev Tu-134 1986 ). Most of the CCB's actions took place from 1988 to 1990. The crimes included assassination attempts, poisoning of drinking water and attempts at intimidation. The murder victims included the SWAPO politician Anton Lubowski and the scientist David Webster , whose murderer was Ferdinand Barnard. Unsuccessful assassinations have been carried out on Albie Sachs (he lost an arm in the process), Nelson Mandela's lawyer Abdullah Omar , the priest Michael Lapsley (he lost both hands) and the preacher Frank Chikane , among others . The attempt to poison the drinking water with cholera bacteria was made in a refugee camp in South West Africa. In the garden of Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Desmond Tutu in Cape Town , the fetus of a baboon was hung up to intimidate Tutu. The Finnish UN Under-Secretary-General Martti Ahtisaari narrowly escaped an attack in 1989 in which he was seriously injured. Assassinations were also planned on Winnie Mandela , Joe Slovo , Allan Boesak and Desmond Tutu, among others .

The work of the CCB was marked by numerous failures. The employee Edward Gordon, who was supposed to spy on Abdullah Omar and kill him by exchanging tablets, only faked his mission because he - according to his own statements - admired Omar. The plan to assassinate the End Conscription Campaign activist Gavin Evans also failed because of Gordon's refusal. Gordon was found dead on a freeway in 1991. Because of its isolated position, the CCB had no access to the data of the secret services and was therefore often poorly informed. The annual budget was 28 million Rand , was lost by the amount of money for failure. An agent in Swaziland gambled away R480,000 in a casino.

There was a fixed procedure for carrying out an attack.

  • Step 1: A person or group has been identified as an enemy target.
  • Step 2: A project was planned that had to be approved by the co-ordinator .
  • Step 3: The target person and possible attack locations were spied on.
  • Step 4: The developed plan was submitted to the managing director , who had to approve it. In this case, the necessary funds were provided, usually in cash.
  • Step 5: The co-ordinator provided weapons, ammunition and the necessary logistical support.
  • Step 6: the act has been carried out. Criminals were often recruited for this purpose, but they were left in the dark about the real motives for the crime and the existence of the CCB.

One of the employees of the CCB was Eeben Barlow , who at times led Region 5 and during this time founded Executive Outcomes , which acted as a covert arms buyer under embargo conditions. Former policeman Abram "Slang" van Zyl headed the South Africa region. The Seventh Medical Battalion supplied toxic substances .

Dissolution and aftermath

In 1990 the CCB was exposed as a sub-organization of the SADF through publications in the Vrye Weekblad and the Star . Numerous CCB employees were then interrogated by police officers.

In this context, a picture developed of the integration of the CCB in the chains of command of the armed forces, according to which numerous generals and Defense Minister Magnus Malan must have known of the existence of this unit and controlled it. At that time, Malan admitted that this unit had carried out tasks within the scope of intelligence services connected with the infiltration of other structures, without having received orders from him for murders. In August 1990, following the publications of the Harms Commission set up in February 1990, the CCB was dissolved. Many members went on to work in other security agencies or were retired. Few of the CCB employees were convicted for their actions.

The activities of the CCB were the subject of negotiations by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which met from 1996. Numerous crimes were proven to the CCB. Only a few former CCB employees gave essential details of the activity, such as Abraham van Zyl and Ferdinand Barnard. Barnard was sentenced to two life terms plus 63 years in prison in 1998 for multiple murders. In 2000 he testified before the TRC. In 2001, the TRC largely rejected all eight requests for amnesty submitted by leading CCB employees, as their statements were contradictory and unreliable. Amnesty was only granted for placing the baboon fetus in Tutu's garden.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b SAIRR : Race Relations Survey 1989/90 . Johannesburg 1990, p. 244
  2. ↑ a b c d Covert operations in South Africa at sahistory.org.za, accessed September 24, 2012.
  3. ↑ Albie Sachs , Hilda Bernstein: The laws of apartheid. (German translation, Ed .: Informationsstelle Südliches Afrika, International Defense and Aid Fund for Southern Africa ). Bonn 1976, p. 49.
  4. ↑ Christoph Sodemann: The laws of apartheid. Bonn 1986, ISBN 3-921614-15-5 , pp. 184-185.
  5. ^ Ronald Meinardus: The Africa policy of the Republic of South Africa. Bonn 1981, ISBN 3-921614-50-3 , p. 375.
  6. ↑ Basson trial to reveal dark CCB secrets at iol.co.za, accessed on September 29, 2012.
  7. ↑ Ronald Meinardus, 1981, pp. 419-420.
  8. ^ National Strategic Intelligence Act , section 1 Definitions. (PDF; 48 kB) on ssa.gov.za
  9. ^ Jacques Pauw: In the Heart of the Whore. The Story of Apartheid's Death Squads. Southern Book, Halfway House 1991, ISBN 1-86812-392-8 , p. 146.
  10. ^ Jacques Pauw: In the Heart of the Whore. The Story of Apartheid's Death Squads. Southern Book, Halfway House 1991, ISBN 1-86812-392-8 , p. 145.
  11. ^ Jacques Pauw: In the Heart of the Whore. The Story of Apartheid's Death Squads. Southern Book, Halfway House 1991, ISBN 1-86812-392-8 , p. 152.
  12. ↑ a b Decisions of the TRC on requests for amnesty by CCB members 2001 (English), accessed on September 28, 2012.
  13. ↑ How we assassinated a president at iol.co.za, accessed October 1, 2012.
  14. ^ Jacques Pauw: In the Heart of the Whore. The Story of Apartheid's Death Squads. Southern Book, Halfway House 1991, ISBN 1-86812-392-8 , p. 132.
  15. ↑ a b Bomb and Baboon Plots by Secret Army Unit Admitted by South Africa. In: Los Angeles Times , March 6, 1990 (English), accessed September 26, 2012.
  16. ^ Jacques Pauw: In the Heart of the Whore. The Story of Apartheid's Death Squads. Southern Book, Halfway House 1991, ISBN 1-86812-392-8 , p. 119.
  17. ↑ Chandre Gould, Peter I. Folb: Project Coast: Apartheid's Chemical and Biological Warfare Program. books.google.de, accessed on September 26, 2012.
  18. ↑ a b c TRC interrogation of Ferdinand Barnard on September 28, 2000 , accessed on September 27, 2012.
  19. ↑ Winnie Mandela portrait at allafrica.com (English), accessed on September 24, 2012.
  20. ^ A b Jacques Pauw: In the Heart of the Whore. The Story of Apartheid's Death Squads. Southern Book, Halfway House 1991, ISBN 1-86812-392-8 , p. 149.
  21. ^ Jacques Pauw: In the Heart of the Whore. The Story of Apartheid's Death Squads. Southern Book, Halfway House 1991, ISBN 1-86812-392-8 , p. 148.
  22. ^ Jacques Pauw: In the Heart of the Whore. The Story of Apartheid's Death Squads. Southern Book, Halfway House 1991, ISBN 1-86812-392-8 , p. 154.
  23. ^ Jacques Pauw: In the Heart of the Whore. The Story of Apartheid's Death Squads. Southern Book, Halfway House 1991, ISBN 1-86812-392-8 , p. 153.
  24. ↑ Abdel-Fatau Musah, Kayode Fayemi: Mercenaries: an African security dilemma . Pluto Press, London 2000, ISBN 0745314767 , p. 49
  25. ^ Jacques Pauw: In the Heart of the Whore. The Story of Apartheid's Death Squads. Southern Book, Halfway House 1991, ISBN 1-86812-392-8 , p. 147.
  26. ↑ David Webster at sahistory.org.za (English), accessed September 27, 2012.