The Brutal Murder of Bheki Mlangeni

The Brutal Murder of Bheki Mlangeni

On 15 February 1991, 35-year-old Bheki Mlangeni, who was a lawyer working for the African National Congress (ANC) in the 1990s, died instantly after he pressed play on a Walkman cassette player he received as a package intended for Captain Dirk Coetzee. Mlangeni opened the package at his office to find a cassette tape player, which he took home with. When he placed the booby-trapped headphones close to his ears, the right headphone exploded, as soon as he pressed play. Mlangeni was on study leave for his board exam at the time but collected the parcel when clearing his pigeonhole on 15 February 1991 and took it home.

Mlangeni and former apartheid police Captain Dirk Coetzee had worked together to expose the existence of a secret police unit based at Vlakplaas. The unit carried out assassinations of anti-apartheid activists. Coetzee himself was the first commander of the unit before he left the police force. In 1989, Coetzee exposed the existence of the C-10 Unit he once led. Fearing for his life, he fled to Zambia after making allegations of police assassinations of apartheid government opponents. When a package disguised as coming from Mlangeni failed to reach Coetzee in Zambia, it was sent back to “sender” (Mlangeni’s office).

On 17 November 1989, prompted by the death row confessions of a police officer, Bhutana Almond Nofomela, former apartheid Security Police Captain Johannes Dirk Coetzee made his own revelations about his activities as the commander of the covert Security Police’s death squad. Following these confessions, apartheid President F W de Klerk responded to a public outcry by setting up the Harms Commission of Inquiry on 5 March 1990. Coetzee gave key testimony to this Commission.

In May 1990, a Walkman cassette player with an explosive device in the headphones was sent to Coetzee in Zambia. The bomb was specially designed, built and tested by the apartheid SA Police’s technical division in Pretoria and the Vlakplaas unit packaged the device and sent it by registered mail to Coetzee in Lusaka. The sender’s name was given as Bheki Mlangeni, with whom Coetzee had been in contact, and the return address was Mlangeni’s firm in Johannesburg. Coetzee was suspicious of the parcel so he refused to accept it. In February 1991, it was returned to the “sender”, Bheki Mlangeni, of the law firm Cheadle, Thompson & Haysom (CTH), Johannesburg. At the time, Mlangeni and his law firm were investigating the apartheid government’s hit squads.

Colonel Eugene de Kock, a former Commander of Vlakplaas was trying to assassinate Coetzee in 1990 by sending him a parcel bomb in Lusaka, Zambia. He used the name Bheki Mlangeni, as the “sender”. In 1998, after the matter was investigated, De Kock told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that the sender’s name and address had been chosen based on the belief that Bheki was the only person Coetzee would trust to receive anything from South Africa. De Kock and several other apartheid police members were granted amnesty for Bheki’s death by the TRC’s Amnesty Committee.

Bheki Mlangeni was born on 28 December 1958, in Jabulani, Soweto, south of Johannesburg, and he studied law at the University of Witwatersrand. He was a member of the firm’s legal team representing the Independent Board of Inquiry into Informal Repression and various other clients at the Harms Commission of Inquiry into assassination squads in the then apartheid police and the racist South African Defence Force (SADF). His law firm had presented evidence in 1990 to the Harms Commission, which later issued a report concluding that no proof existed that either the army or the police were involved in political assassinations. Coetzee, then in London, had been an important witness in the inquiry, and Mlangeni had been in frequent contact with him during the process.

Mlangeni’s law firm, Cheadle Thompson & Haysom (CTH), said he had received an anonymous telephone call in April 1990, a month before the bomb parcel was first sent, warning that a hit squad had been dispatched to kill Coetzee in Zambia. At that time, it was not generally known that Mlangeni was in contact with Coetzee and the firm suspected wiretaps were used to obtain that information.

Peter Harris, an attorney who had worked on the case of the Delmas Four, was called to Lusaka in January 1990 to take a detailed statement from Coetzee. He described the way in which Jacob Zuma gained Coetzee’s confidence and demonstrated his solicitude for the latter’s welfare. This was all the more remarkable as Coetzee had been involved in the murder of Zuma’s close friend Griffiths Mxenge. According to Harris, “Throughout the discussions, Zuma is impressive and considered, even sympathetic to Coetzee. A true professional, chewing the information from his charge like cud, extracting the nutrients” (Macmillan).

Following Mlangeni’s callous murder, Adriaan Vlok, the apartheid Minister of Law and Order, said he was outraged by Mlangeni’s death, and he promised that the police would launch an investigation. However, frustrated by the intransigence of General van der Westhuizen and Captain Kritzinger who oversaw the police investigation into his death, the law firm Cheadle, Thompson & Haysom (CTH) launched its own massive investigation into Bheki’s death. It also investigated a subsequent assassination plot against Dirk Coetzee in London by South African military intelligence agents who had been arrested by the British Anti-Terrorism Unit.

The ANC said Mlangeni and Coetzee had exposed the activities of both the Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB), a secret South African Defence Force (SADF) unit that carried out surveillance and attacks on anti-apartheid leaders, and “other assassination gangs in the employ of the Pretoria government”. In 1990, the apartheid government claimed that it was disbanding the Civil Cooperation Bureau, and the police also denied that hit squads operated within their ranks. Nevertheless, the ANC said in a statement “We demand that this murderous deed be investigated with vigour and its perpetrators be brought to justice.”

Supporting the ANC Statement, the Human Rights Commission said the sophistication of the explosive device and “the manner of setting the trap bear all the hallmarks of highly skilled and totally ruthless professional assassins. Once again, we see the ugly face of apartheid.” Nelson Mandela described Bheki as one of the finest young leaders of the day and lamented his death as a great loss for South Africa during Bheki Mlangeni’s funeral in 1991.

Sources:
South African History Online (SAHO).
Hugh Macmillan, “The Lusaka Years: The ANC in Exile in Zambia”.
Scott Kraft, “Bomb Kills ANC Lawyer Who Tracked Hit Squads”, Los Angeles Times, 17 February 1991.
Brendan Barry, “Remembering Bheki Mlangeni – a human rights lawyer with a formidable history of activism”, Daily Maverick, 14 February 2021.
Cheadle Thompson & Haysom (CTH) Inc Attorneys, “The Circumstances of Bheki’s Death”, https://www.cth.co.za/circumstances-of-bhekis-death-2/ accessed 15 February 2025.

Castro Khwela
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