Captain Dirk Coetzee Takes Over Command of Vlakplaas
On 15 August 1980, Captain Dirk Coetzee of the apartheid South African Police arrived at a forty-four-hectare farm located approximately seven kilometres out of Erasmia, on the Schurveberg Road, outside Pretoria. On the southern border of the farm was the Hennops River, and on the plot itself was an old farmhouse with an outbuilding that had a garage and two servants’ quarters.
On the farm, there was some livestock, including chickens, geese, ducks, turkeys, a cow, some goats and two dogs. There was also a garden with a few maize plants, some pumpkin and sweet-potato creepers, tomatoes, green beans and onions. There were also several black African males living in the farm, who were either assistants or employees in the farm.
The farm, known as “Vlakplaas”, was used as a facility for the Security Branch, which Coetzee was going to be in charge of, as the new commander of Section C1. Actually, Vlakplaas was the headquarters of Section C1, which consisted of black African men that were previously in the liberation movements and had “turned” to work for the Security Branch, as “askaris”. On that day when Coetzee arrived at Vlakplaas, all the entities existing there, including the “askaris”, were to be under his Command.
The “Askari” project was established by the Security Branch in 1979, using a handful of defectors and captured African National Congress (ANC) and Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC)
