Civil Cooperation Bureau
The South African Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB) (Afrikaans: Buro vir Burgerlike Samewerking (BSB)) was a government-sponsored death squad,[1][2] during the apartheid era.
[3][4][5][6] When South African newspapers first revealed its existence in the late 1980s, the CCB appeared to be a unique and unorthodox security operation: its members wore civilian clothing; it operated within the borders of the country; it used private companies as fronts; and it mostly targeted civilians.
However, as the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) discovered a decade later, the CCB's methods were neither new nor unique.
Instead, they had evolved from precedents set in the 1960s and 70s by Eschel Rhoodie's Department of Information (see Muldergate Scandal[7]), the Bureau of State Security (B.O.S.S.
[10] From information given to the TRC by former agents seeking amnesty for crimes committed during the apartheid era, it became clear that there were many other covert operations similar to the CCB, which Nelson Mandela would label the Third Force.
Besides these, there were also political front organisations like the International Freedom Foundation, Marthinus van Schalkwyk's Jeugkrag (Youth for South Africa),[12] and Russel Crystal's National Student Federation[13] which would demonstrate that while the tactics of the South African government varied, the logic remained the same: Total onslaught demanded a total strategy.
As a reformulation of Project Barnacle, the nature of its operations were disguised, and it disassociated itself from all other Special Forces and DMI (Directorate Military Intelligence) structures.
The CCB was approved as an organisation consisting of ten divisions, or as expressed in military jargon, regions.
The killing of political opponents of the government, such as the slaying of Dr Webster, never formed part of the brief of the South African Defence Force.Reports about the CCB were first published in 1990 by the weekly Vrye Weekblad, and more detailed information emerged later in the 1990s at a number of TRC amnesty hearings.
[19] Nominally a civilian organisation that could be plausibly disowned by the apartheid government, the CCB drew its operatives from the SADF itself or the South African Police.
[20] In the wake of the National Party government's Harms Commission, whose proceedings were considered seriously flawed by analysts and the official opposition, the CCB was disbanded in August 1990.
The rest of the board included Joe Verster (managing director), Dawid Fourie (deputy MD), WJ Basson, Theuns Kruger, and Lafras Luitingh.
Slang Van Zyl, for instance, started a private investigation business while Chappies Maree ran an electronic goods export company called Lema.
[29] Proceeds from all blue plan activities vastly exceeded the funding CCB received from the state.
Of the estimated one hundred covert members, evidence exists that the following individuals were deployed as administrators or operatives:[54] Although the entire truth about the Civil Cooperation Bureau may never be known, South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) concluded that:[111] ...the CCB was a creation of the SADF and an integral part of South Africa's counter-insurgency system which, in the course of its operations, perpetrated gross violations of human rights, including killings, against both South African and non-South African citizens.
According to General Malan, the CCB's three objectives—comparable to those of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE)—were: In his testimony before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Malan declared that he had never issued an order or authorised an order for the assassination of anybody, and that the killing of political opponents of the government never formed part of the brief of the South African Defence Force.
[112] The front company Oceantec among others was used to embezzle $100 million US from private investors and a collateral trading house as part of a supposed sanctions busting operation between 1989 and 1991.
