[1][2][3][4] Coetzee was influenced by both the Black Consciousness Movement whilst he was in high school Uitenhage and the politically charged atmosphere of the University of the Western Cape in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
In 1983 he was arrested by the apartheid government for his involvement in the ANC after documentation with his details were found during a raid led by the South African Defence Force into Lesotho.
He was arrested in 1983 after information linking him to the banned organisation was found during a raid by the SADF in Lesotho, where some of the ANC's underground structures were based.
He was then charged with perjury for refusing to testify against other ANC members and spent a year in Allandale Prison.
[5] Following South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994 he became secretary to the Gauteng Provincial Legislature.