THE high command of South Africa's fallen apartheid regime goes on trial for murder today, when the former defence minister, Gen Magnus Malan, and 17 others make their first appearance in Durban's Supreme Court.
Gen Malan, who in the 1980s led South Africa's security forces in a "total onslaught" against the opponents of apartheid, is charged with organising the 1987 murder of 13 civilians in a Durban township. According to the indictment, Gen Malan organised the training and funding of a political assassination squad for the Zulu nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party, to be used against their mutual enemies in the African National Congress and anti apartheid movement.
With him in the dock will be 17 other defendants, including senior retired army officers, a former colonel in the security police, six KwaZulu homeland policemen accused of carrying out the killings, and the deputy general secretary of the Inkatha Freedom Party.
The trial is the result of a year long investigation by a special task force of "clean" police and human rights lawyers, set up to inquire into political violence in the Zulu heartland of KwaZulu Natal.
The indictment in the case, released last December after Gen Malan was arrested and released on bail, claims the hit squad was part of a 200 strong group of IFP supporters trained secretly by the South African army in Namibia's Caprivi Strip.
It says the force was conceived in 1985 after the IFP leader, Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, became fearful that he would be assassinated by the ANC. Only half the force was trained for VIP protection, however, while the rest were trained in intelligence gathering and assassination techniques.
Over 10,000 people have been killed in feuding between supporters of the IFP and ANC in KwaZulu Natal since the mid1980s, and in the run up to the 1994 elections thousands more died in the Johannesburg region in inter party feuding and mysterious "third force" attacks on civilian targets. The ANC and many human rights groups have long alleged that IFP hit squads, working in collusion with the apartheid security forces, were responsible for much of the violence.
Despite frequent mentions in the indictment, Chief Buthelezi in not among the accused in the trial. Gen Malan's former political superiors in the National Party, some of whom are still serving in South Africa's government of national unity, have also escaped charge.
The trial begins only a month before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission is scheduled to begin its hearings.