Dirk Coetzee was co-founder and commander of the covert South African Police

South African Police

The South African Police was the country's police force until 1994. The SAP traced its origin to the Dutch Watch, a paramilitary organization formed by settlers in the Cape in 1655, initially to protect civilians against attack and later to maintain law and order...

 unit based at Vlakplaas

Vlakplaas

Vlakplaas is a farm 20km west of Pretoria that served as the headquarters of the South African Police counterinsurgency unit C10 working for the apartheid government in South Africa...

. He and his colleagues were involved in a number of atrocities including the murders of Sizwe Khondile and Griffiths Mxenge

Griffiths Mxenge

Griffiths Mxenge, was a South African anti-apartheid activist. Trained as a lawyer, he was assassinated by the apartheid secret police in 1981. He was a member of the African National Congress . He was sent to Robben Island in 1966 because of his political activities...

. Coetzee lifted the veil on the existence of the unit in a 1989 interview with Vrye Weekblad

Vrye Weekblad

Vrye Weekblad was a groundbreaking progressive, anti-apartheid Afrikaans national weekly newspaper that was launched in November 1988 and forced to close in February 1994. The paper was driven into bankruptcy by the legal costs of defending its charge that South African police general Lothar...

 confirming a story that death-row convict Almond Nofomela told a Johannesburg weekly the previous year.

Dirk Coetzee was granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on 4 August 1997.

In 1997 Eugene de Kock

Eugene de Kock

Eugene de Kock is a former colonel of the South African Police force during Apartheid in South Africa. Dubbed "Prime Evil" by the media, he was the commander of C1 unit of the South African Police counter-insurgency group, well known for kidnapping, torturing and murdering hundreds of...

, a former commander of Vlakplaas, was convicted for attempting to murder Coetzee