Vlakplaas (Diary of a Death Factory) | South Africa
It was a warm spring day in September 1983 when 23-year-old Nokuthula Simelane arrived near the Carlton Centre in Johannesburg. A university graduate and courier for Umkhonto we Sizwe, she had been summoned to a meeting. Witnesses later reported seeing her surrounded by members of the South African Police Security Branch. She never came home.
What followed was one of the most harrowing cases to emerge from the dark chapter of Vlakplaas. Simelane was abducted, tortured, and believed to have been murdered by operatives including Joe Mamasela. Her body has never been recovered.
Today's episode traces the diabolical operations of Vlakplaas. We’ll explore how it came to be, who operated it, and what happened to the men who killed in its name. There are no mysteries here—only brutal facts, and the voices of those left behind.
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Trigger warning: This episode contains accounts of torture, murder, and racially motivated, state-sponsored violence.
By the late 1970s, the Apartheid government was facing mounting pressure from all sides. The 1976 Soweto Uprising had shocked the world: images of children gunned down in the streets sparked international outrage and led to widespread economic sanctions. The African National Congress (or ANC), though officially banned, was regrouping in exile and building support networks at home. Trade unions and civic organizations were mobilizing across the country's townships.
The National Party government's response was to dramatically expand its security operations. They created a three-pronged approach: the Bureau for State Security (BOSS) handled intelligence gathering, the South African Defence Force managed external operations, and the South African Police Security Branch took charge of domestic counterinsurgency. Their mission was simple—eliminate any threat to white minority rule.
And so… Vlakplaas was created in 1979 as part of this broader network. It was a nondescript property, about 15 kilometres from the capital, Pretoria. Initially, the base was just a farm, with a few outbuildings, sheds, and dormitory-style housing. But what happened behind its gates would go on to define one of the darkest chapters in the country's history.
The first commander of Vlakplaas was Colonel Dirk Coetzee, a seasoned Security Branch officer who had served in various parts of the country. Coetzee was sharp, manipulative, and entirely committed to preserving the Apartheid state. Under his leadership, the concept of the ‘askari unit’ was formalised.
An askari was typically a former liberation fighter—most often from Umkhonto we Sizwe—who had been captured by the regime. Instead of imprisoning or executing them, the police would try to "turn" them. Some askaris were tortured into compliance. Others, disillusioned or afraid, switched sides in exchange for their lives.
At Vlakplaas, askaris were trained, armed, and deployed in covert operations. Their job was to infiltrate anti-Apartheid networks, gather intelligence, and assist in the capture or elimination of their former comrades. They were paid a salary. Some were rewarded with homes, cars, and bonuses.
On paper, Vlakplaas was just another police base. In reality, it operated with complete impunity. If a suspect was taken to Vlakplaas, they rarely came back. Later reports described an atmosphere of casual depravity. Vlakplaas men were often drunk—braaing lamb chops, laughing, and drinking beer while the smoldering remains of the murdered burned to cinders nearby.
In the early 1980s, the unit expanded its tactics. False flag operations became a hallmark. Bombings were staged and blamed on the ANC. Safehouses were raided without warrants. Victims were tortured for information, then summarily executed. Their bodies were dumped in remote areas, blown up with explosives, or burned with petrol.
The term "elimination" became common in internal police memos. Deaths were referred to euphemistically as "permanent removals." One of the earliest known victims was Durban-based human rights lawyer, Griffiths Mxenge. In November 1981, he was ambushed by Vlakplaas operatives and stabbed more than 40 times. The killers tried to make it look like a robbery, but the level of violence told the tale of a different motive. Years later, the operatives involved admitted that they were acting on orders from the Security Branch.
By 1983, Coetzee had become increasingly erratic. He clashed with his superiors and began to question some of the operations. He was eventually removed from his post and reassigned.
His replacement was Eugene de Kock. De Kock had served in Rhodesia as part of the elite police counterinsurgency unit known as Koevoet. He was disciplined, efficient, and ruthless. Where Coetzee had ruled with instinct, De Kock brought order. Under his command, Vlakplaas became more structured. It functioned almost like a corporate entity.
De Kock kept meticulous records. Each operation was logged. Names, dates, outcomes—filed away in folders. He demanded loyalty from his men and ensured their silence through money, fear, and shared culpability.
The askari program expanded under de Kock's leadership. New recruits were cycled through Vlakplaas for training before being deployed across the country. Operations stretched from Cape Town to the Transvaal, and even into neighboring countries like Botswana, Lesotho, and Mozambique.
One particularly horrifying case involved four schoolboys from the Congress of South African Students—known as the Cosas Four. In February 1982, they were lured to a safehouse under the pretense of receiving military training. When they arrived, they were ambushed. Three were killed in an explosion. The fourth, Zandisile Musi, survived but sustained life-changing injuries.
Years later, during Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, the details of that ambush emerged in full. The boys were unarmed. They had been deceived. Their deaths served no tactical purpose—it was psychological warfare, designed to instill fear in young activists.
De Kock's operations continued virtually unchecked for years. Senior government officials provided protection from above, while a wall of silence kept the unit's activities hidden from the public. Most South Africans had never even heard the name "Vlakplaas."
But the regime's grip was slipping. In 1989, Dirk Coetzee, now in exile in Europe, broke his silence. He contacted British journalists and exposed the existence of Vlakplaas. He named names. He described operations.
The government denied everything. But Coetzee's claims began to gain traction. He provided details that no outsider could know.
Then came the disappearance of Nokuthula Simelane in 1983. She was abducted by Security Branch officers, including Vlakplaas operative Joe Mamasela. Over several days, she was held at a safehouse, tortured with electric shocks, suffocated with plastic, and beaten severely. She was later moved to a farm near Thabazimbi, where she was last seen alive. Her body was never found.
Mamasela later confessed to his role in the abduction and torture, and implicated senior officers—including Eugene de Kock—in orchestrating her murder.
International media attention intensified. The walls were closing in. On January 30, 1994, Eugene de Kock was finally arrested at his home in Pretoria. The era of Vlakplaas was coming to an end.
When news broke of De Kock's arrest, public reaction was divided. To some, he was a monster finally brought to justice. To others, especially within the structures of the former regime, he was a scapegoat. But as the charges against him became public, the scale of the crimes attributed to Vlakplaas stunned even seasoned observers.
De Kock faced 121 counts, including murder, conspiracy to commit murder, fraud, and kidnapping. The trial, held in Pretoria, lasted over two years. Witnesses included former colleagues, survivors, askaris, and families of the disappeared. Joe Mamasela testified against him, laying out in harrowing detail how suspects were tortured with car batteries, suffocated with plastic bags, and executed—sometimes in cold silence, sometimes while pleading for their lives.
Many of the murders were planned on a whiteboard inside Vlakplaas's main building. Targets were reduced to numbers—"X-11," "Y-13"—human lives stripped of their humanity. After each "successful" operation, De Kock would log the outcome in a personal notebook, using coded language. The prosecutor described it as "the diary of a death factory."
The trial revealed a chilling pattern: victims were often executed with a single shot to the back of the head, their bodies wrapped in plastic sheeting and driven to remote locations. There, they were doused in petrol and burned until nothing remained.
At trial, De Kock did not deny the killings. He admitted to them. He accepted that he had committed acts of unspeakable cruelty. But he insisted that he was following orders—part of a chain of command that reached the highest levels of government. When pressed to name names, he did. Generals, ministers, senior police. He claimed they had all known. And that when the political winds changed, they left him to take the fall alone.
He described himself as a soldier abandoned by his commanders—a claim that would be echoed by other Security Branch veterans who appeared before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Two other figures emerged as key architects of the Apartheid government's elimination program: General Lothar Neethling and Dr. Wouter Basson—men who brought scientific precision to the business of murder.
General Neethling was chief deputy commissioner of police and head of the South African Police forensic laboratories. But his role went beyond forensic science. This decorated chemist, with degrees from Germany and the United States, allegedly oversaw a covert chemical weapons program. The goal was to eliminate political opponents using untraceable poisons and biological agents.
Investigative journalists uncovered evidence that Neethling had supplied poison-filled vials to interrogators. These substances could trigger heart attacks, strokes, or induce suicidal behavior—all while leaving minimal forensic evidence. In one documented case, a political detainee collapsed in his cell just hours after drinking tea. The official cause of death was listed as "natural causes," but his family suspected murder.
Even more controversial was the role of Dr. Wouter Basson.
A trained cardiologist, Basson headed Project Coast, a secretive chemical and biological weapons program run under the guise of military research. At its height, Project Coast employed over 200 scientists and technicians. It had access to vast resources, operated in multiple countries, and enjoyed near-total autonomy.
Project Coast's goals were staggering in their scope and racism. Scientists worked on race-specific poisons, contraceptives designed to sterilize Black populations, and assassination methods that left no trace. They developed water-soluble capsules, aerosolized gases, and toxins that could be absorbed through skin contact.
The program also produced advanced crowd-control chemicals and sedatives. Prisoners were used as unwitting test subjects, while other substances were deployed against anti-Apartheid activists in the field.
At the TRC, Basson was called "Dr. Death." He admitted to producing chemical agents but denied using them on people. He claimed he was merely a scientist working under government orders.
When he was finally brought to trial in 1999, he faced more than 60 charges. The trial lasted four years. In a controversial ruling that shocked many, Basson was ultimately acquitted. He returned to private practice and resumed his work as a medical doctor in Cape Town.
In recent years,the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) initiated renewed disciplinary proceedings against Basson. In response, he filed a High Court application seeking a permanent stay of these proceedings, arguing that the charges pertain to actions taken over four decades ago during his military service, not his medical practice.
As the TRC hearings progressed in the late 1990s, the picture of Apartheid's covert war came into focus. Dozens of former Vlakplaas members applied for amnesty. Some were granted it after full disclosure. Others were denied, either for lack of political motive or for failing to disclose critical details.
Families came forward with photographs, birth certificates, faded letters. They wanted to know what had happened to their sons, daughters, brothers, and sisters. In some cases, they received answers. In many others, they did not.
One mother from Soweto, whose son disappeared in 1987, told the commission that for years she believed he had fled the country. Only in 1996 did she learn that he had been captured, tortured, and killed at a safehouse near Krugersdorp. His body had been burned. There was nothing left to bury.
The TRC confirmed what many had suspected. Vlakplaas had operated as a death squad, protected by the state, funded by public money, and supported by a network of scientists, doctors, bureaucrats, and spies. It was not an aberration. It was policy.
The TRC's investigations extended beyond South Africa's borders. In 1986, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme—a vocal critic of Apartheid and supporter of the ANC—was assassinated while walking home with his wife in Stockholm. While the Truth and Reconciliation Commission suggested possible involvement by South African intelligence services, though they could not prove it. The Swedish authorities officially closed the investigation in 2020, naming Stig Engström as the most likely perpetrator, though the case remains contentious.
As South Africa transitioned to democracy, the question of what to do with the perpetrators remained unresolved. Some were jailed. Others were quietly retired. A few disappeared.
Dirk Coetzee, the man who founded Vlakplaas, was granted amnesty after testifying before the TRC. He died of cancer in 2013.
Joe Mamasela never faced trial for his apartheid-era crimes and murders at Vlakplaas. Despite his involvement in multiple assassinations, he was shielded by his cooperation with authorities. He withdrew from public life.
Eugene de Kock was sentenced in 1996 to two life terms plus 212 years. He served just under 20 years in prison. In 2015, he was granted parole—a decision that sparked public outrage. Supporters argued that De Kock had shown remorse and helped locate victims' remains. Critics said justice had not been served.
After his release, De Kock vanished from public view. It is believed he lives under protection in an undisclosed location.
Today, Vlakplaas stands as a crumbling monument to state-sponsored terror. The buildings are decaying, doors hang from rusted hinges, and vegetation grows through cracks in the concrete. There are no official memorials, no plaques—just the oppressive silence of a place where unspeakable acts were committed.
Photographer Jo Ractliffe visited the site in the 2000s. Her images captured desolate fields, broken fences, and rusted light fittings—ordinary remnants in an extraordinary place. In interviews, she reflected on the oppressive quietness of Vlakplaas:
“There are no ghosts. Only silence. That’s what makes it worse.”
There have been repeated attempts to turn the site into a memorial or museum. Proposals have been drafted, committees formed, and plans submitted. But each time, political interest wanes, funding disappears, and the project stalls. For now, Vlakplaas remains what it was always meant to be—hidden in plain sight.
The legacy of Vlakplaas extends far beyond its physical boundaries. For many South Africans, it represents unfinished business—crimes that were exposed but never fully resolved. Hidden graves remain undiscovered. Victims remain unnamed. Families still wait for answers that may never come.
Yet the truth endures in fragments—in TRC testimonies, in declassified documents, in the painful memories of survivors. The bones may lie buried in unmarked graves, but the memory of Vlakplaas persists, not in granite monuments but in the collective consciousness of a nation still grappling with its past.
The transition to democracy brought new challenges. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, despite its noble intentions, was an imperfect instrument. Amnesty was granted in exchange for truth, but not everyone told the truth. Not every victim was named. For countless families, closure remains an impossible dream.
What Vlakplaas represented was something deeper than a rogue unit gone out of control. It was evidence of a system that saw people as obstacles, not citizens. It reflected a mindset that treated certain lives as disposable, all in the name of preserving a political ideology that had long been condemned by the rest of the world.
The askaris who carried out these killings were often victims themselves—tortured into compliance, threatened with death, or worn down by years of conflict. Some switched sides to protect their families. Others were motivated by money or power. Many simply grew numb to the violence. Few offered any justification for their actions.
Most of the original Vlakplaas operatives disappeared into anonymity. Some returned to communities they had once terrorized. Others assumed new identities and started fresh lives. Occasionally, their names surface in news reports or court documents, but largely, they have been forgotten by a nation eager to move forward.
Yet the ghosts of Vlakplaas were not easily exorcised. Survivors carried the weight of memory. Mothers continued to visit police stations with photographs, asking the same questions they had asked for years.
Vlakplaas is more than a location—it's a symbol of what happens when a government abandons its humanity. When ideology justifies atrocity. When silence becomes complicity.
The legacy of Vlakplaas cannot be erased, nor should it be. It should be studied, remembered, and taught—not as a wound to be picked at, but as a lesson. Not in abstraction, but in names. In faces. In lives lost.
There was Griffiths Mxenge, who defended political prisoners in court, only to be cut down on a quiet Durban street. There was Nokuthula Simelane, the young woman whose disappearance in 1983 helped unmask the full horror of Vlakplaas. She was never seen again—but her story became one of the most haunting testimonies to emerge from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
There were the Cosas Four, students still in their teens, blown apart by men who wore the same uniform as the police meant to protect them.
And there was Phemelo Moses Ntehelang—executed by Eugene de Kock, then buried upright in a shallow grave. A final act of contempt for a man who dared to resist. One of countless victims who suffered the same fate.
The full death toll of Vlakplaas may never be known. Files were destroyed, records falsified, bodies incinerated. But each victim had a name, a family, a story. They were teachers, lawyers, students, activists—people who dared to dream of a different South Africa.
Today’s South Africa is filled with monuments to the liberation struggle—renamed streets, new statues... But some scars can't be healed by architecture. They live in the missing photographs in family albums, in the silence at dinner tables, in the knowing glances when the past is mentioned.
Vlakplaas is one of those scars.
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