[2][5][6] In addition to collecting and evaluating intelligence, the Branch also had operational units, which acted in neighbouring countries as well as inside South Africa, and it housed at least one paramilitary death squad, under the notorious Section C1 headquartered at Vlakplaas.

[6] The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) found that the Security Branch engaged in "massive and systematic destruction of records" in 1992 and 1993, following an instruction from head office in 1992.

Several former members, though a small proportion of the overall staff complement, submitted amnesty applications to the TRC and testified at length about the Branch's involvement in extrajudicial killings and other human rights violations.

Perhaps the most famous application of the Act is the prosecution of Nelson Mandela and 155 other anti-Apartheid activists during the 1956 Treason Trial, which followed a series of investigations, raids, and arrests by the Security Branch.

[18] With the blessing of Minister of Justice John Vorster, van den Bergh set up a special unit, known as the "Sabotage Squad," to monitor and interrogate anti-Apartheid activists.

In this legislative environment, the Branch was often able to detain people in poor conditions without the knowledge of their families or lawyers, and it is suspected to have been responsible for numerous forced disappearances.

[36][37][38] Adriaan Vlok, Minister of Law and Order, denied the allegations and said they were part of a plot to undermine the security police "to make it easier to bring about... a Communist state.

[41][42] Its report, released in November 1990, was "famously vacuous":[40] it did not name any specific units or officers as participants in death squads, and it was denounced by anti-apartheid groups as a whitewash.

Officers sent the parcel under the name of Bheki Mlangeni, a human rights lawyer who had represented several clients during the Harms Commission, but Coetzee was suspicious and returned it to its ostensible sender in Johannesburg.

[47][48][49] Two ANC operatives detained in July, Charles Ndaba and Mbuso Shabalala, were missing until 1998,[50] when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) found that they had been arrested and killed by the Security Branch and their bodies thrown in the Tugela River.

[64][65][66] When the TRC was set up to investigate human rights violations during Apartheid, several former Security Branch officers submitted applications for amnesty and testified.

In the 1980s, the Branch had 14 sections, many of which had their own regional units or divisions, and which included research desks for the ANC, PAC, and South African Communist Party (SACP).

The C-Section of the Security Branch, founded in 1979, was nominally its "anti-terrorism" unit, and housed its counterinsurgency and counterintelligence activities, with almost exclusive focus on the domestic anti-apartheid movement.

The two corpses were lifted onto the pyre and as the sun set over the Eastern Transvaal bushveld, two fires were lit, one to burn the bodies to ashes, the other for the security policemen to sit around, drinking and grilling meat.

[6] In 1996 he faced criminal prosecution and was sentenced to 212 years and two life terms, though the TRC granted him amnesty for the several crimes it found to have been politically motivated.

[31] The "soft" operations involved propaganda and disinformation (see below), and general "dirty tricks," especially harassing and intimidating activists "by damaging their property; constant and obvious surveillance; making threatening phone calls, and firing shots at houses or throwing bricks through windows.

[6] In the north of the country, many were detained in Johannesburg at the Gray's Building or, from 1968, at John Vorster Square police station, where the Branch had offices on the top two floors.

[6] Effectively permitted by the law to prolong detentions indefinitely, officers frequently interrogated activists for weeks or months at a time, often combining different methods over that period.

In relation to the Security Branch "particularly but not exclusively," the TRC further found thata considerable number of deaths in detention occurred, either as a direct result of torture or as a consequence of a situation in which the circumstances were such that detainees were induced to commit suicide.

"[98][99][100]Along with Peter Mokaba and Chris Hani,[101] Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was apparently a central target of the Security Branch's "concerted disinformation campaign against the ANC and the South African Communist Party.

Under Operation Romulus, the Stratcom unit fed intelligence on Madikizela-Mandela – including about the murder of Stompie Seipei and her alleged affair with Dali Mpofu – to national and international media.

In the clip, Madikizela-Mandela claims that prominent liberal journalists Anton Harber and Thandeka Gqubule-Mbeki "actually did the job for Stratcom" while working at the Weekly Mail during apartheid.

"[31] The Branch carried out numerous other attacks on buildings housing civil society organisations, political groups, and their leaders,[6][51] including the 1982 bombing of the ANC's London offices.

[115] Koevet was a counterinsurgency unit in South West Africa, based in Oshakati and Rundu, and undertook both operational and intelligence-gathering activities, primarily against SWAPO and its armed wing.

Louis le Grange, then South African Minister of Law and Order, called it "the crowbar which prises terrorists out of the bushveld like nails from rotten wood.

"[6] As early as 1985, the SSC through Stratcom sought to exploit conflict between the ANC-aligned UDF and the Azanian People's Organisation (AZAPO) – a memo was circulated with a list of possible themes that could be used, such in a covert pamphlet campaign, to further entrench divisions between the groups.

[6] The state's contra-mobilisation policy eventually escalated to the point that security forces were willing to actively facilitate violent conflict between factions of the anti-apartheid movement.

As revealed during the Inkathagate scandal, the Branch had materially supported Inkatha-aligned groups since at least 1986, when it provided covert funding for Inkatha's establishment of the United Workers' Union of South Africa as a competitor to the ANC-aligned COSATU.

[121] Several Security Branch agents are household names because they made extensive disclosures in TRC hearings, in criminal trials, or in the press, usually in the mid-to-late 1990s.

[a] Most recently in the case of the Cradock Four,[112] there has been and remains considerable mystery and contestation around the question of the level at which certain killings were authorised, and whether, for example, the State Security Council sanctioned or ordered them.