On 19 October 1989, hours before he was scheduled to be executed for an unrelated non-political murder, Nofomela confessed to his involvement in a police assassination squad that killed and terrorized opponents of apartheid.
Coetzee, who was hiding in Europe, confirmed that he had led one of five "hit squads" run out of a restricted police base at Vlakplaas near Pretoria.
[4] Nofomela said he was one of seven men who raided a suspected safe house of members of the African National Congress (ANC) in Swaziland in 1983, using a hand grenade and automatic weapons.
[4] In another affidavit he stated that in November 1981, he helped kill Griffiths Mxenge, a Durban human rights lawyer said to have links to the outlawed ANC, and made the murder appear as a robbery.
John Dugard, a law professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, said an identical incident occurred in Chesterville in 1986 in which four members of a youth organization were slain.