LA112089-0041 137392

November 20, 1989, Monday, Home Edition

Part A; Page 23; Column 4; Foreign Desk

99 words

WORLD IN BRIEF;

SOUTH AFRICA;

3RD EX-OFFICER BACKS DEATH SQUAD REPORT

From Times staff and wire reports

A dispute over the existence of an official South African death squad gathered momentum when a third policeman alleged that the squad killed anti-apartheid leaders between 1980 and 1982. The Johannesburg Sunday Times said former police constable David Tshikalange, a black man, admitted in an interview that he helped kill black civil rights lawyer Griffiths Mxenge in 1981. Tshikalange's claims supported charges by former police Capt. Johannes Coetzee, who left the country after telling the liberal Afrikaans-language weekly Vrye Weekblad that he headed an official police death squad.

Brief

DEATH SQUADS; APARTHEID; RACIAL RELATIONS -- SOUTH AFRICA; MURDERS -- SOUTH AFRICA; POLICE -- SOUTH AFRICA