Apartheid assassins meet match in Iraq

By Gavin du Venage in Cape Town

April 27, 2004

SOME of the worst human rights violators of the apartheid era, including a man who helped kill 14 civilians while they slept, have been employed as security contractors in Iraq.

A South African killed in Iraq two weeks ago once worked for a secret apartheid death squad known as the Civil Co-operation Bureau. The CCB specialised in assassinating civilians who sympathised with black liberation movements.

Gray Branfield, 55, was the latest South African casualty with a record of human rights abuse to have obtained lucrative employment with one of the many private security companies operating in Iraq. His decapitated and mutilated body was found after a gunfight between Shi’ite radicals and Ukrainian forces in Kut, 185km southeast of Baghdad.

Author Peter Stiff says Branfield spent most of his life working for various covert units and developed a fearsome reputation.

He began his career as a policeman in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, where he joined an elite paramilitary unit. His colleagues called him "hound dog" because of his talent for sniffing things out. His enemies called him "bushman" because of his tenacity in hunting guerillas in the toughest terrain.

Later, after white-ruled Rhodesia won independence as Zimbabwe, Branfield took his murderous skills to South Africa to use against liberation guerillas fighting the apartheid regime. He proved extremely effective.

In 1981, when a South African commando was captured on a raid into Zimbabwe, Branfield led a successful rescue mission to get the man out. He kidnapped a senior Zimbabwean policeman, strapped explosives to his body and took his family hostage, and so secured the commando’s release.

Later, Branfield helped plan a raid into neighbouring Botswana, in which 14 people, including a child, were killed. The attack was on a safe house for the exiled African National Congress, now in government. Most of the dead were shot in their beds as they slept.

Branfield is not the first apartheid enforcer to become a casualty in Iraq. Earlier this year a bomb attack on the Shaheen hotel killed Francois Strijdom, who had been a member of the police special forces unit Koevoet (Crowbar). Another CCB assassin, Deon Gouws, was injured.

According to the United Nations, South Africa is a favoured recruiting ground, after the US and Britain, for the private security firms. At least 1500 of the estimated 10,000 private contractors operating in Iraq are South African.

"Most of these guys have spent 15 to 20 years fighting and know nothing else," Stiff says. "After apartheid ended, the former soldiers found themselves unemployed after their units were disbanded. Many became mercenaries.

"When the war in Iraq broke out, and private security companies began to seek recruits, they rushed to join what seemed to be a safe well-paid venture. Instead, they found civilians who shot back."

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