Hendrik van den Bergh

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Hendrik Johan van den Bergh , nickname Lang Hendrik also Long Hendrik (born November 27, 1914 in Vredefort , † August 16, 1997 in Bronkhorstspruit ) was a South African police officer and head of the South African Bureau for State Security .

Youth and education

Hendrik van den Bergh grew up in a Boer farming family. He remained connected to the views widespread there throughout his life and represented extremely conservative positions of Boer nationalism with his actions .

Van den Bergh went to high school in Vredefort and acquired his Matric here in 1933 . He then entered the service of the South African police force, where he began his police career in 1934 as a constable .

Political development and professional life

During the Second World War he came into contact with Balthazar Johannes Vorster and other nationalists in the pro-fascist organization Ossewabrandwag . Both were interned in South Africa under the martial law provisions of the time, as they had taken an extreme contraposition to the war allies. Van den Bergh and Prime Minister Vorster shared a close friendship and shared political views, for example on the role of the police in society and that liberalism in South Africa was a forerunner of communism .

Forerunner structures within the police force (SAP) for the purpose of intelligence tasks began to emerge from around 1947 when a group of South African police officers were sent to London to study in order to receive training in the special branch of the British police. At that time, a semi-autonomous security branch was established within the South African police structure. No sooner had Vorster become Minister of Justice in 1961 than he arranged for Van den Bergh to be transferred from the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) to the Security Branch , which dealt with political crimes.

Together they were the leading actors in the targeted establishment of the Security Police, a department in the South African police force . In January 1963 Van den Bergh was proposed by then Minister of Justice Vorster to head the Security Branch (German: Sicherheitsabteilung). He took over the office on January 14, 1963. Between 1960 and 1966 the number of employees here increased sixfold.

In the early 1960s, Van den Bergh led the investigation into the suspects in the Rivonia trial . To make Van den Bergh's work easier, Vorster introduced the so-called Ninety-days Act (German: 90-Tage-Gesetz) in 1963 , which received a majority in parliament. The law came into force on May 1st. Now it was possible for higher police ranks in the security branch to detain people for up to 90 days for crimes of a political nature without a judicial decision or investigation, only on suspicion or for interrogation purposes. Repeated application of this measure to the same person was permitted. The law was in force until January 11, 1965 and was a. replaced by the more stringent Criminal Procedure Amendment Act 1965 .

When Vorster, after Verwoerd's death, became head of the National Party's parliamentary faction in 1966 and thus automatically took over the role of Prime Minister, he initiated a cabinet reshuffle and secured himself the chairmanship of the Cabinet Portfolio of Police , which was also newly formed also dealt with the proposal to set up a new security service that would collect information for the police and the military in the future . As a result of this concentration of power in terms of security policy, the decision was made to set up a central security service authority. Hendrik van den Bergh should now be appointed Commissioner of Police . In the course of this structural change, however, he was commissioned to set up this new secret service, which was directly subordinate to the Prime Minister. This marked the beginning of the preparations for what would later become the South African Bureau for State Security (BOSS).

In April 1968 Van den Bergh stayed in London with Brigadier PJ Tiny Venter to gather information about the activities of anti-apartheid organizations that were concentrated there.

In the first quarter of 1969 it came to the establishment of the South African Bureau of State Security (BOSS). It was initially kept secret that Lieutenant General Van den Bergh became the head of this new security agency. Van den Bergh was now at the height of his police force. The budget for secret tasks in the direct area of ​​responsibility of the prime minister rose, at the same time the budgeted expenditure for the military secret service fell drastically, which led to an upset in the armed forces. This shift in competency marked the new center of the South African intelligence service architecture. A security section also remained in the police structure, headed by General JP Gous. In May 1969, BOSS was removed from the public service commission's control responsibilities. The section 10 of the General Law Amendment Act ( Act No. 101/1969 ) defined "security matters" ( security matters ) indiscriminately as any situation in connection with the security of the country. This regulation meant that no information about BOSS and Van den Bergh could be disseminated to the public. In this way Van den Bergh became more and more an "unknown" leader of the security apparatus.

Under Van den Bergh, the work of the BOSS was strongly execution-oriented and ideologically influenced by daily politics. The BOSS course, largely shaped by Van den Bergh, also created tensions within the South African security authorities. One consequence of this was the resignation of General Venter as head of the SAP security department at the end of April 1974. The reasons given were resentment between him and Van den Bergh because BOSS had poached employees from the security police.

The end of Hendrik van den Bergh's career came in 1979 and was connected with the information scandal ( Muldergate affair ). Vorster had already resigned as Prime Minister on September 29, 1978. More things came public and Vorster resigned from the office of president in June 1979. As a result of these events, Van den Bergh lost the management of BOSS as, according to the Erasmus Commission, he was deeply involved in the affair. The report by a special auditor on BOSS 'involvement in the information scandal initially did not reveal any financial irregularities in 1978. However, the Erasmus Commission proved that this report contained false information and came about under pressure from Van den Bergh.

The security service was dissolved on the initiative of Pieter Willem Botha and some of its tasks were transferred to the National Intelligence Service (NIS) by means of the transition structure of the Department of National Security (DONS) .

As an indirect successor in office to Van den Bergh, Niel Barnard had to deal with the processing of the Muldergate affair. In order to restore the meanwhile tarnished reputation of the South African state apparatus and to bundle the increasingly diverging interests of the country's secret services, he initiated a comprehensive reform of the intelligence service sector.

Positions

The criticism of liberal and left opponents of the apartheid regime was seen by Boer nationalists as a "black and red danger" to be fought. With his authoritarian views, Van den Bergh branded such protests as “moral and spiritual sabotage” of government policy.

Opinions about Hendrik van den Bergh

Allister Sparks describes in his book Tomorrow is Another Land Van den Bergh as a police chief who implemented the draconian laws introduced by Vorster into parliament with "ruthless efficiency". He was the man "for the rough". Apartheid opponents were able to disappear without a trace under his leadership, were interned in solitary cells, interrogated and tortured. Nobody than Van den Bergh is said to have played a greater role in crushing resistance against the South African regime in the 1960s and 1970s.

Hendrik van den Bergh received training in interrogation and, presumably, torture techniques in France during the first half of the 1960s . This finding can be found in the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission .

Helen Suzman referred to Van den Bergh as "South Africa's own Heinrich Himmler " (German: "South Africa's own Heinrich Himmler"), because he ruthlessly stopped all threats to the government and the security apparatus under his control brought on a concise note by consulting well-trained specialists Bestowed perfection.

Publications about Hendrik van den Bergh

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Mary Braid: Obituary: Hendrik van den Bergh . Article in the Independent of August 20, 1997 at www.independent.co.uk (English)
  2. ↑ Albie Sachs , Hilda Bernstein : The laws of apartheid . Informationsstelle Südliches Afrika , International Defense and Aid Fund for Southern Africa , Bonn 1976, p. 49
  3. ^ World Biographical Encyclopedia: Hendrik Johan van den Bergh . on www.prabook.com (English)
  4. ^ Sachs, Bernstein: Laws of Apartheid . 1976, p. 47
  5. ↑ a b Christoph Sodemann: The laws of apartheid . Southern Africa Information Center , Bonn 1986, p. 137
  6. ↑ Stephen Ellis : External Mission: The ANC in Exile 1960-1990 . Johannesburg, Cape Town, 2012, p. 59 ISBN 978-1-86842-530-3
  7. ^ A b South African History Online: Balthazar Johannes Vorster . on www.sahistory.org.za (English)
  8. ↑ Christoph Sodemann: The laws of apartheid . Southern Africa Information Center , Bonn 1986, p. 148
  9. ↑ Niel Barnard : Secret Revolution. Memoirs of a Spy Boss . Table Mountain, Cape Town 2015, ISBN 9780624074571 , p. 36
  10. ^ Sachs, Bernstein: Laws of Apartheid . 1976, p. 45
  11. ^ South African History Online: General South African History Timeline: 1960s: 1966 September 13 . on www.sahistory.org.za (English)
  12. ^ Sachs, Bernstein: Laws of Apartheid . 1976, p. 56
  13. ^ Truth and Reconciliation Commission : TRC Final Report. South African Police (SAP) . at www.sabctrc.saha.org.za (English)
  14. ^ Sachs, Bernstein: Laws of Apartheid . 1976, pp. 49-50
  15. ^ Sachs, Bernstein: Laws of Apartheid . 1976, p. 52
  16. ^ SAIRR : A Survey of Race Relations in South Africa 1969 . Johannesburg 1970, pp. 34-35
  17. ↑ Maritz Spaarwater: A Spook's Progress. From Making War to Making Peace . Zebra Press (Random House Struik), Cape Town 2012, p. 115 ISBN 978-1-77022-437-7
  18. ^ Sachs, Bernstein: Laws of Apartheid . 1976, p. 53
  19. ^ A b Niel Barnard: Secret Revolution . 2015, pp. 30–31
  20. ^ SAIRR: Survey of Race Relations 1980 . Johannesburg 1981, p. 14
  21. ^ SAIRR: Survey of Race Relations 1978 . Johannesburg 1979, pp. 4-5
  22. ↑ Lukas Daniel Barnard: Geskiedkundige oorsig van die rasionalisering en koördinering van die Intelligensiegemeenskap gedurende die tydperk 1980 dead 1982 . In: Intellegere 5 (1988), Pretoria ( NIS in-house magazine)
  23. ^ Keith Gottschalk: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid's Death Squads, 1969-93 . In: Bruce B. Campbell, Arthur D. Brenner (both eds.): Death Squads in Global Perspective: Murder with Deniability . St. Martin's Press, New York 2003, p. 235 ISBN 1403960941 (online at: Google books .)
  24. ↑ Allister Sparks : Tomorrow is another land. South Africa's secret revolution . Berlin Verlag 1995, pp. 165–166 ISBN 3-8270-0151-X
  25. ^ Truth and Reconciliation Commission: The State inside South Africa between 1960 and 1990, section 122 . Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report, Vol. 2, p. 195, online at www.sahistory.org.za (PDF document p. 198, English)
  26. ↑ Kenneth S. Broun: Saving Nelson Mandela: The Rivonia Trial and the Fate of South Africa . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2012, p. 6, ISBN 978-0-19-974022-2 ( on Google books )
personal data
SURNAME Bergh, Hendrik van den
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bergh, Hendrik Johan van den (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African policeman
DATE OF BIRTH November 27, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Vredefort
DATE OF DEATH August 16, 1997
Place of death Bronkhorstspruit