Brian Ngqulunga

Brian Boy Elliot Ngqulunga (17 August 1948 - 19 July 1990) was a South African askari for the apartheid regime who was based in Vlakplaas. First served as a member of the African National Congress (ANC), then turned a counterinsurgent police informer, Ngqulunga was recruited as a constable of the Security Branch in Vlakplaas. He was assassinated in 1990 by his own colleagues over suspicions of disclosing clandestine and incriminating police secrets to insurgents of the ANC.^[1][2]

When recruited to the police, Ngqulunga first reported to Captain Dirk Coetzee and later to Colonel Eugene de Kock who successively commanded the Vlakplaas counterinsurgent death squad.^[5] He was a close friend of Joe Mamasela, also an askari at Vlakplaas.^[6]

On 19 November 1981, Ngqulunga, Mamasela, Coetzee and two other policemen - Almond Nofomela and David Tshikalanga - drove to the home of prominent human rights lawyer and ANC activist Griffiths Mxenge in Umlazi and murdered him, stabbing him 45 times all over his body and slit his throat.^[7]

Since its establishment in the 1970s, the Vlakplaas death squad operated as a secretive unit of the South African Police targeting ANC and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) activists and its clandestine inhumane activities were only exposed in 1989 by Nofomela and Coetzee after both fell out with commanders of the police system, shocking revelations that led to public pressure being put on apartheid state President F.W. de Klerk to establish the Harms Commission of Inquiry to investigate the allegations of the existence of a death squad within the police structure.^[8][9]

Ngqulunga was called to testify at the commission on the issue and on Mxenge's murder but flatly denied his or the police's involvement in Mxenge's murder as well as allegations of the hits squad's existence. Mamasela also testified and they were given a R1,000 each by Major-General Krappies Engelbrecht for covering up Vlakplaas at the commission.^[6]