Cape Town - The ANC has called for a DA councillor, who was a former commander in the apartheid SADF’s citizen force and present at the planning of the 1985 Trojan Horse Massacre, to be axed from the City of Cape Town.
Sam Pienaar has been a councillor since 2011. Prior to that, he had been a deputy president of the mostly Afrikaner Suid Afrikaanse Onderwysers Unie (SA Teachers Union) while a principal at Excelsior Primary School in Bellville.
On October 15, 1985, railway police hid themselves in crates on the back of a SA Railways truck that drove down Thornton Road in Athlone.
The area had been a flashpoint of violent anti-apartheid protests. The truck was pelted with stones as it drove up Thornton Road.
After it turned back, security personnel emerged from the crates and opened fire at protesters – killing Jonathan Claasen, 21, Shaun Magmoed, 15, and Michael Miranda, 11, and injuring several others.
The next day the same modus operandi was used in Crossroads. Mabhuti Fatman, 20, and Mengxwane Mali, 19, were shot and killed.
In his submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in May 1997, Pienaar insisted that while he had been part of the planning for the operation, the soldiers under his command were not part of the massacre.
He told the TRC that the situation on the Cape Flats in 1985 was akin to a civil war and his duty as a soldier was to protect and maintain the interests of the state.
Because most of the unrest was taking place in urban areas, Pienaar told the commission the role of SADF soldiers was to support the police and protect civilians.
While he was never prosecuted, the TRC found that Pienaar and 12 of his colleagues, which included junior members of the SAP, SADF and SA Railways Police – in conjunction with the joint operations centre (based at Manenberg police station) – had planned and executed an action which resulted in several gross violations of human rights.
Pienaar, 73, now heads subcouncil 6, which includes parts of Bellville as well as Belhar and Bishop Lavis, where he earns a salary of just over R800 000 a year. Called to respond to the ANC charge that he be fired over his involvement in the massacre, Pienaar refused to comment.
The DA’s chief whip in the City, Andrea Serritslev, said Pienaar had joined the party in 2000 and became a councillor in 2011. Last year he replaced disgraced councillor Willie Japhta to head subcouncil 6.
Xolani Sotashe, ANC chief whip in the City of Cape Town, said Pienaar had conceded to the TRC that he had been part of the security apparatus, along with the police, who planned and executed strategies to combat anti-apartheid protests on the Cape Flats.
“If (DA leader) Mmusi (Maimane) is serious about this (issue of fighting racism), he must deal with this guy. He’s sitting there preaching non-racism, yet his party members have blood on their hands. Pienaar does not deserve to be sitting in the council.
“He deserves to be rotting behind bars, because the DA are such hypocrites… They are not going to fire that man,” said Sotashe.
National Party SA councillor Achmat Williams said the DA were not serious about fighting racism, and that Pienaar was an example of the party being a haven for racists.
“Racism starts within the DA. All the culprits are there within their party,” said Williams.