A high-ranking police official has accused his superior of ordering the 1985 killings of four black activists, laying the blame for some of apartheid's worst abuses on the upper echelons of South Africa's security forces.
Gen. Nic Janse van Rensburg's testimony Wednesday was the clearest indication yet provided to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that senior commanders were involved in the murders of activists."This is the highest-reaching accusation in terms of giving a direct order to kill," said commission spokesman Mdu Lembede.
Van Rensburg testified before the commission's amnesty committee in the southern town of Port Elizabeth. The hearing continued Thursday.
Lembede spoke in a telephone interview from Pretoria, where he was attending a separate hearing featuring testimony from former Police Commissioner Johan van der Merwe - once the nation's highest-ranking police official.
Van der Merwe is seeking amnesty in the case of another activist, Stanza Bopape, who died while being tortured by police in 1988.
His lawyer denied the former police commissioner condoned Bopape's killing. Van der Merwe has admitted helping cover up the death.
In the Port Elizabeth hearing, however, van Rensburg said the former Eastern Cape police commander, Col. Harold Snyman, authorized the murders of four sus-pected activists, now known as the "Cradock Four" after the village near where they were killed.
Snyman, terminally ill with cancer, has not testified. He and van Rensburg are among seven current and former officers applying for amnesty in the deaths of Mathew Goniwe, Fort Calata, Sparrow Mkonto and Sicelo Mhlauli.