In the bitterly cold winter of 1992, Col Joe Verster, the shadowy former Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB) chief, was rumoured to be recruiting a second generation of operatives to illegally rebuild that notorious counterinsurgency unit to destabilise the coming democracy.
Verster’s timing could not have been at a more delicate juncture, with the ANC having just withdrawn in high dudgeon from the Codesa 2 negotiations on a new democratic dispensation in response to the June 17 1992 Boipatong massacre, which left 45 people dead — an action in which the hand of the deep state’s “third force” was apparently discernible.
The original bloodstained CCB had been shut down by July 31 1990, a process that was triggered after its outrageous assassination in Windhoek of popular Swapo advocate Anton Lubowski 10 months earlier convinced the SA Defence Force (SADF) brass that the dirty tricks outfit was a liability.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) later claimed Verster had access to R19m of unknown provenance, so the ripples of his alleged conspiracy to reconstitute the CCB without official sanction widened.
Within six months then president FW de Klerk felt compelled to decapitate most of the “old white guard” of the SADF, in the words of a foreign diplomat who had served in Pretoria in the mid-1990s.
Among the generals in the crosshairs was SADF deputy chief Lt-Gen Georg Meiring, who was accused of running his own agenda contra to De Klerk’s and of ordering military reconnaissance to look the other way on right-wing terrorist organisations destabilising the country.
Those to fall in this night of the long knives included SADF chief Gen Andreas “Kat” Liebenberg, assessed as being “caught in [the] momentum of [the] past”, biological warfare head Brig Wouter Basson, and a long list of former CCB operatives who had transferred to military intelligence’s Directorate of Covert Collection (DCC).
Yet when the storm blew over, it was Meiring — who died on September 3 at his home in Pretoria at the age of 84 — who emerged as one of the few survivors of the purge, rising a year later to chief of the SADF, a post he held on to with the creation of the new SA National Defence Force (SANDF) in 1994.
Investigative journalist Giancarlo Coccia — whose book Tango with Death carries the first published transcript of the “ultra secret” report of the commission of inquiry instituted by De Klerk under SADF chief of staff Lt-Gen Pierre Steyn — quotes DCC chief Brig JJ “Tolletjie” Botha as suggesting the purge was instigated by Steyn because he was competing with Meiring for the top military post.
The December 20 1992 report, whose existence was denied by De Klerk, urged “immediate and all-encompassing actions” against those who Steyn accused of running third force death squads or were otherwise complicit in covert destabilisation operations.
Steyn claimed there were “definitive signs of third force activity or an unofficial revival of the CCB”, implicating the DCC, some Special Forces units, and Army Intelligence and Operations, which by drawing in top management like Meiring implied “the SADF itself can thus be construed to be involved in the creation of violence and intimidation”.
For Meiring, he tersely noted: “Lt-Gen Meiring — following own political agendas; misusing of covert projects’ funds; unwillingness to exercise proper control ... Lt-Gen Meiring was also known to have given instruction to [reconnaissance] not to gather information on right-wing individuals and groups ... It was thought, however, that this could simply be part of ‘eventuality planning’.”
If it was true that Meiring ordered his men to look the other way on right-wing organisations, that would have been a serious miscalculation. The far right was escalating a terror campaign that would culminate in widespread bombings during the first democratic elections.
But what is certain is that Meiring was not beyond intrigues himself, as demonstrated in 1998 when he presented then president Nelson Mandela with a bizarre report claiming that his replacement as SANDF chief, former uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) commander Gen Siphiwe Nyanda, was plotting with high-ranking ANC members, including deputy defence minister Ronnie Kasrils, to topple the government. The report was debunked by a judicial commission headed by chief justice Ismail Mahomed as lacking substance.
Secret negotiations
Meiring fell on his sword and retired. He joined the SADF Contact Bureau, an outfit headed by retired apartheid generals who co-ordinated the secret negotiations with a select group of ANC cabinet ministers under first Thabo Mbeki and then Jacob Zuma between 1997 and 2003 aimed at preventing any prosecutions flowing from the TRC, bureau co-ordinator Maj-Gen Dirk Marais confirmed to Business Day.
The diplomat suggested that the enmity between the former MK network and Meiring possibly derived from two sources: Meiring’s known bittereinder attitude of holding on to the privileges of the “old white guard” for as long as possible, and his commanding of the South West African Territorial Force, an arm of the SADF, during the hottest phase of the border war in 1983-87.
Georg “Jimmy” Meiring was born in Ladybrand, Orange Free State, in 1939. Somewhat uniquely, he took a BSc in physics into a career in the SADF, becoming a towering strategic intellect, buttressed by a physically imposing frame of about 1.98m, and dominated any room, despite his quiet voice.
Marais said “his door was always open for anyone who wanted to talk to him ... and he was very popular with his subordinates”.
Brig-Gen As Kleynhans, who served under Meiring in former South West Africa (Namibia), said: “Somewhere ... I still have a photo taken in the middle of the Namib Desert where Gen Meiring helped push a stuck vehicle over a sand dune.”
Meiring and his immaculate wife, Ännchen, “looked like a king and queen”, the diplomat recalled. And indeed, he said the couple were feted at dinner at Edinburgh Castle when the British attempted to convince SA to purchase their warships (unsuccessfully) and fighter trainers (successfully).
That embroiled Meiring in the scandal over the R30bn strategic arms procurement deal, drawing fire for not pursuing those who allegedly took bribes. Yet the biggest regret of Meiring’s career, Kleynhans said, was having to disband the famous 32 Battalion in 1993 for political reasons. “I am convinced that he went through hell the day that he had to disband 32 Battalion, but that was not his decision.”
Meiring leaves his wife, Ännchen; sons Pieter, Wouter and Georg; daughters Mari, Anna and Sanet; and grand and great-grandchildren.
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