Qualla: Vlakplaas https://qualla.com/vlakplaas en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:25 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/k/e/7/v/vlakplaas-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Vlakplaas https://qualla.com/vlakplaas Vlakplaas: Introduction https://qualla.com/vlakplaas/ Photo credit Guinnog, CC BY-SA 3.0. From the road it looked like nothing: a flat smallholding west of Pretoria, the kind of unremarkable Highveld farm whose Afrikaans name simply means "flat farm." That ordinariness was the point. Behind the fences of Vlakplaas, the apartheid government ran one of its most notorious secret units, a police death squad that kidnapped, tortured, and killed people whose only offense was opposing white minority rule. To understand this place is to remember the people who were brought here and never went home, and the families who spent decades searching for the truth of what was done to them.

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Image: Guinnog | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/e/7/v/vlakplaas-wp/ke7v-vlakplaas-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Vlakplaas: The Quiet Farm https://qualla.com/vlakplaas/ Photo credit Guinnog, CC BY-SA 3.0. The police bought the land in 1979, and over the next decade it became the headquarters of a Security Branch unit known by the bureaucratic codename C1, and later C10. Its first commander was Dirk Coetzee, who ran the unit from 1980 to 1981 and later admitted his role in the murd...

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Image: Guinnog | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/e/7/v/vlakplaas-wp/ke7v-vlakplaas-the-quiet-farm.mp3 0:06 2 full Vlakplaas: The People They Killed https://qualla.com/vlakplaas/ Photo credit Guinnog, CC BY-SA 3.0. The victims must come first, because the state worked hard to erase them. In November 1981, operatives murdered Griffiths Mxenge, a respected human rights lawyer who defended detainees and belonged to the African National Congress. He was abducted near Durban and stabbed more tha...

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Image: Guinnog | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/e/7/v/vlakplaas-wp/ke7v-vlakplaas-the-people-they-killed.mp3 0:06 3 full Vlakplaas: The Cruelty of the System https://qualla.com/vlakplaas/ Photo credit Guinnog, CC BY-SA 3.0. Vlakplaas was built on a particular cruelty: it turned the oppressed against themselves. Captured liberation fighters were brought here, tortured, and pressured to switch sides, becoming what the unit called askaris, after a colonial word for African soldiers. Broken and coerced,...

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Image: Guinnog | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/e/7/v/vlakplaas-wp/ke7v-vlakplaas-the-cruelty-of-the-system.mp3 0:06 4 full Vlakplaas: Reckoning and Remembrance https://qualla.com/vlakplaas/ Photo credit Guinnog, CC BY-SA 3.0. When South Africa became a democracy, the secrecy began to crack. Before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the late 1990s, the unit's last commander, Eugene de Kock, whom the press called "Prime Evil," detailed the killings he had ordered and carried out; he was convicte...

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Image: Guinnog | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/e/7/v/vlakplaas-wp/ke7v-vlakplaas-reckoning-and-remembrance.mp3 0:06 5 full