Chikane\'s alleged would-be assassins on NPA list
Publish date: 25 January 2006
Issue Number: 1507
Diary: Legalbrief Today
Category: Tenders
Those involved in the apartheid-era assassination attempt on the Reverend Frank Chikane are \'in the sights\' of the NPA, the National Director of Public Prosecutions, Vusi Pikoli, said yesterday, adding the murderers of the \'Pebco Three\' and the \'Cradock Four\' are also on the list.
According to a report on the IoL site, Pikoli said the National Prosecuting Authority already had five \'prosecutable\' cases arising from Truth Commission hearings, and several others were being investigated. Chikane, then the General Secretary of the SA Council of Churches, survived a sophisticated attempt to poison him in 1989. On three occasions during that year, once while he was in Namibia, and twice during a visit to the US, he fell suddenly and inexplicable ill. The names of three security branch officers, Chris Smit, Manie van Staden and Gert Otto, emerged as possible suspects during the trial of the apartheid state\'s biological warfare expert, Dr Wouter Basson. The three had not applied for amnesty from the TRC and in 2003 Chikane wrote to each of the men begging them to come forward.
Full report on the IoL site
However, the political bosses who gave the orders might escape prosecution, according to a report in The Mercury. It claims Pikoli acknowledged that age and health would be taken into consideration. Pikoli was asked whether former president PW Both and former Defence Minister Magnus Malan would be targeted, but he declined to identify individuals by name.
The Mercury report not available online
