Klerksdorp- Matlosana Local Municipality
Vlakplaas, Pretoria
Vlakplaas is a Farm about 20-kilometres West of Pretoria. Established in 1979, a 100-hectare Farm nestled in the Hills outside Pretoria, on the Hennops River. This was a secret operation against terrorism, formed here under the arm of a division of the South African Police, headed by Brigadier Schoon. These unit comprised of recruits mostly from the Local population. They were then trained to take military, or political action against the activities of guerrillas or revolutionaries of the Apartheid Government.
In 1982, a 33-year-old; Colonel Eugene de Kock was replaced by Dirk Coetzee. It was Coetzee who eventually exposed the atrocities at Vlakplaas. Operating within South Africa as well as beyond the Country’s borders, it will never been known exactly, how many victims can be attributed to the Vlakplaas agenda – with much of the execution taking place on the Farm itself – but a conservative figure of 1,000 murders and assassinations has been raised as a possibility.
The Farm was formally shut down during the transition to democracy in the early '90s. "Government plans to turn Vlakplaas into a Museum. but for now it remains eerily empty – with the ghosts of the past never far away." Thursday 10 July 2014