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ON RESUMPTION ON 3 JUNE 1998 - DAY 3
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 ON RESUMPTION ON 3 JUNE 1998 - DAY 3

CHAIRPERSON: Good morning Mr Van Jaarsveld, you are still under oath.

MR VAN JAARSVELD: (s.u.o.)

CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR BOOYENS: (cont)

&#9;Thank you very much Mr Chairperson. Mr Van Jaarsveld once again thank you very much for the fact that you made these documents available to me. I would just like to ask you, because I think it would be good to hand it in as an exhibit. I've got a document here which was attached to your Affidavit and it's about the National Management Services. Is that correct?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: What are you referring to?

MR BOOYENS: I will just show it to you. I will hand it in as an exhibit. It's the two documents that I got from you or received from you. Mr Van Jaarsveld I cannot see what you just showed me. If I can just show it to you it will be Exhibit Q or QQ. Can you just look at the document, it's there at Mr Bizos, you have got the original?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: That is correct, yes.

MR BOOYENS: There are just a few aspects, or before I begin with this, yesterday I heard from my colleague Mr Hugo that you have got tertiary education. Is that correct?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: Could you just tell us what qualifications you've got.

MR VAN JAARSVELD: I've got a BA Degree, a Honours Degree, a Masters Degree and an MBA Degree.

MR BOOYENS: The MBA is that a Business Degree?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: That is correct, yes.

MR BOOYENS: Your specialised field in the Masters Degree, what was that?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: It was for strategic studies. It was specific research regarding the ANC and PAC's strategies.

MR BOOYENS: While studying the revolutionary strategies you also gained a lot of knowledge in the counter revolutionary strategies?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: That is correct, yes.

MR BOOYENS: Now the National or NSMS and, you'll have to correct me if I'm wrong, the National Security Management Structure was a para-military organisation compared to the civil organisations. I don't know if I have just described it correctly?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: You have, that's correct yes.

MR BOOYENS: You explain here that there are enormous amounts of sub structures that fell under this management system or NSMS system and it seems as if the securocrats in the Botha era jointly managed the system?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: That's true, yes.

MR BOOYENS: Specifically on page 9 of Exhibit Q, this State War Book that later became the Administration War, could you just in short say to us and I know it is probably a lot to ask from you, but could you just tell the committee in short what this is about?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Mr Chairperson the State War Book is a government document that was drawn up to manage the government in a war situation.

MR BOOYENS: And this war that was talked about in this National War Book or the State War Book, was this now the revolutionary struggle that was apparently going on?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: It was for conventional warfare, but as you can see, that the main components was used in the revolutionary warfare.

MR BOOYENS: I see, and I would just like to mention a few aspects of the evidence. You've said what your background was and the way in which they operated, the instructions they received etc. If one would for example now - or there's an Affidavit from Colonel Snyman who is unfortunately terminally ill, but at a previous opportunity he said and he gave evidence under oath and I'm going to try and summarise - that before him and others he was at a meeting in Cradock, this is now Snyman, in his capacity as Head of Security, where certain ministers were also present. There was a discussion between him and Louis Le Grange, the then Minister of Law and Order, after he said the normal security options had been exhausted and that Louis Le Grange said that they must make a plan with the activists in the Eastern Cape. Snyman said that he interpreted that Le Grange in essence or as said, that if legal methods do not work, then they must take these people out, to use this euphemism that was used during that time. This type of action or this man to man conversation, was that something that - did this work like this in this security community. 

MR VAN JAARSVELD: It's difficult to say that it always worked like this, there were various informal discussions and the securocrats worked like this. 

MR BOOYENS: Yes, and the securocrats were also very careful talking about the orders that they gave. They were very careful in that there were never any documents or paper records of it, is that no true? (Transcribers translation).

MR VAN JAARSVELD: That's very true, yes. (Transcribers translation)

CHAIRPERSON: Is that the same reason why they gave such unclear orders and never gave direct orders?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: That's right.

CHAIRPERSON: They were scared?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Yes. I won't say they were scared, but they tried to cover various things up.

MR BOOYENS: At various opportunities discussion were held and someone is told to take another person out instead of killing him, using simple language. Why would that be?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: I think it's part of the human factor that you don't want to use the words just to kill someone, I think it's part of the human factor, a euphemism, it's another way of saying it. 

MR BOOYENS: Wasn't it rather a question that someone didn't like the idea of death and he couldn't bring himself to say "kill the man" and so used other language. Is that no so?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Sorry Mr Chairman I didn't quite understand?

CHAIRPERSON: Isn't it a question that certain of these people who gave orders disliked the idea of death so much that they couldn't even talk about it. Is that not so? (Transcribers translation).

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Mr Chairman I would speculate if I say how people thought or what they thought about death. 

CHAIRPERSON: Well there was evidence given here that the person who possibly gave the orders in this case never had it in his heart to say "kill Mr Goniwe", but rather said "do what is right for the country" and that was interpreted as "kill Mr Goniwe". (Transcribers translation).

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Mr Chairperson yes, our earlier discussion or interaction this morning it is a fact that it indicated that the people did not directly say kill, so by implication various things were said and that people could have interpreted it in a different way and that was the style of speech or the way they conveyed things.

MR BOOYENS: Let us talk about your own situation. Your order from Craig Williams was to go and see if you can take out Goniwe?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: That is correct.

MR BOOYENS: Now the word "take out" in the neutral sense -in Afrikaans it means to take out this glass between the other two objects?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: That is correct.

MR BOOYENS: But it ... (intervention)

MR BIZOS: ... (inaudible) an attempt was made to do that with an Affidavit from a Professor from the University of the Orange Free State, where under examination I think that the matter disappeared, so I merely want clarity as to what is being put, that "uithaal" from a top security officer to a junior security officer in relation to a person who is considered an enemy of the State, is to take him from one place to put him an another. Is that what is being put?

CHAIRPERSON: No, I think it's common cause that it was intended to mean that someone should be killed and I think that what Mr Booyens wants to illustrate now is the strange type of language, in the strict sense, meant something else but was understood in the fraternity as meaning to kill.

ADV BIZOS: We would accept that veiled language was used, but it's meaning was clear both to the speaker and to the recipient.

MR BOOYENS: I'm indebted to my learned friend Mr Chairman. Another possibility that one cannot lose from sight is that especially the politicians, who one knows regularly speak with forked tongues, deliberately used terminology like to take out, elimination etc because it gives you a back door to retreat and say if someone confronts you, you can say well I did not mean that, I never said that you must kill someone and that is also a possibility why that terminology was used.

ADV BIZOS: Mr Chairman, there's a matter that I want to raise. I want to refer to page 40 of Mr Snyman's application for amnesty, because if my learned friend wants to change the basis of his application without leading any evidence to support it, because Mr Snyman is ill, then he must please explain to the committee before he continues with this line of cross examination. 11(a) The question is whether the deed was performed as a result of an order of any organisation and; 11(b) The particulars concerning the order and approval and the date of it, and it is known the name and address of the person or persons who gave such an order and gave approval for it. Answer: self. Are we now going to hear an application for amnesty that this was ordered by Mr Le Grange. Now Mr Chairman my learned friend has served an Affidavit on us that Mr Snyman can't give evidence, at the same time he's putting to him - he's suggesting to the witness that the deaths came about as a result of a conversation between Mr Le Grange and Mr Snyman at Cradock. Something that Mr Snyman has not said in his application, we know that he is not going to give evidence. On what basis is this hypothesis being put to the witness Mr Chairman?

MR BOOYENS: Mr Chairman maybe I should make a copy of what I've got of Mr Snyman's application available. My learned friend obviously has not got it, because at page 37: During adjournment in a discussion with the Minister of Law and Order it was expected to make a plan with the activists in the Eastern Cape. I understood and interpreted that these people were activists etc.

ADV BIZOS: This may be but (indistinct) to the direct question on the basis of the application, we are told that he did this not as a result of the order or suggestion of anyone, but on his own account. 

MR BOOYENS: Mr Chairman really, if my learned friend reads that then maybe that answer should have been, but one cannot read that in isolation. Snyman's whole Affidavit tells us that Le Grange told him that they must make a plan with these people and how he interpreted it. That question obviously it's never been suggested, not in Snyman's order or anywhere that he received a direct order in respect of Goniwe, a direct one on the day before or something like that, but certainly his application goes wide enough to say that he received an instruction from Louis Le Grange even if it were regarded as a general instruction and that's the basis on which I'm putting these questions. Perhaps the committee should make a ruling.

CHAIRPERSON: To do that Mr Booyens perhaps you should deal then with the answer as it appears in question 11(b) on page 40 of the record. I don't quite follow your argument in view of the direct question and answer at 11(b).

MR BOOYENS: Mr Chairman, my argument is very simply the following: let's say for arguments sake Snyman has not answered that question, he's left it blank. I know he said "I gave it myself", he gave the order himself, now that is the evidence that Snyman himself gave the order for the specific carrying out of the operation. That's what the applicants say, that's what Snyman says but if you go back and you read what Snyman says, what the run up to this was, it's clear that throughout and in fact the other applicants testified that Snyman in fact reported that to them, that what Le Grange said.

CHAIRPERSON: You are arguing that he gave this order, which he accepts that he gave himself, as a result of an order given to him in general terms by Le Grange?

MR BOOYENS: He's gone under oath as far as that is concerned. It may be a question of how you interpret that question or so but it's certainly not improper to suggest that what Le Grange said to him and what is relevant in this regard. It's specifically once again one of those vague word "make a plan" and that's why I'm asking these questions of the witness.

CHAIRPERSON: That's precisely the question that Mr Bizos raises. On what is Mr Snyman going to rely, on the instruction that he says he got from Le Grange in general terms or is his application based on an order that was embroiled by himself and that he gave to other underlings.

MR BOOYENS: Mr Chairman if you read Snyman's application ... (intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: At the end of the day I, or this committee is going to have to decide on what basis does Snyman make this application and on what basis are we going to grant it or refuse it. Here I think what Mr Bizos wants to know at this stage is on what basis is going to be argued that Snyman makes this application at the end of the day.

MR BOOYENS: Mr Chairman Snyman makes the application ... (intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: No, no you carry on.

MR BOOYENS: Snyman makes the application on the basis that Le Grange gave me an order to make a plan. I then in execution of that general order, gave an order after certain submissions were made to me, that to kill the (indistinct) as he ... (intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: As he interpreted general instructions?

MR BOOYENS: Well he certainly says so in his application Mr Chairman. That second small paragraph that I've just quoted to you ... (intervention)

ADV BIZOS: Mr Chairman we're in the middle of the cross examination of a witness. We have a situation that Mr Le Grange is dead and according to the Affidavit, the committee will not have the opportunity to hear the evidence of Mr Snyman. Let my learned friend finish his cross examination of the witness and we can deal with this question, but in putting hypothetical questions to this witness ... (intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: Of which has no prospect of any certainty?

ADV BIZOS: Yes, that he must put to him at least that in answer to the direct question Mr Snyman said that he took the decision himself, so that we can proceed and complete the cross examination of the witness and we obviously cannot hear Mr Le Grange and it looks as if we will not hear Mr Snyman. We can leave the rest to argument, but in putting the hypothetical questions my learned friend must please put them on the facts as they appear on the documents.

CHAIRPERSON: There's this sort of double edged application here, firstly that Snyman took the decision as a result of a general order that he received and then possibly made a decision - specific decision on his own - I'm not too sure at this stage upon which line he's basing his application.

ADV BIZOS: Can we leave that for argument Mr Chairman because these are not the only factors that really muddle the waters for my learned friend.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Booyens then proceed.

MR BOOYENS: Thank you Mr Chairman. Mr Van Jaarsveld we've just talked about the general phraseology that was used. I've already said to you that the term "make a plan" as it appears in Snyman's Affidavit, is that also a term that was used. Did this "make a plan" in some instances mean to kill?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Mr Chairman, yes like I've said it was a terminology, the language in which it was conveyed and the interpretation in the security society was what we are dealing with today. 

MR BOOYENS: Can you just deal with one aspect. I would like to deal with the attitude that was conveyed after the police acted in a counter revolutionary fashion. You mention here officials who were sent to Taiwan for training in I think, psychological warfare. I do not exactly remember in which document you mentioned it. Is that correct?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: That's correct, it's in the document in front of you.

MR BOOYENS: Do you have any knowledge of what the training in Taiwan entailed and what the purpose of it was?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Yes it was large number of officials, I cannot exactly say to you how many, they were sent to Taiwan but I was one of them who did the training as well and was trained there in political warfare and that entails the following, and I quote from the following books that we received from the Taiwanese and it is about ideological warfare, intelligence warfare, strategic warfare, psychological warfare and mass warfare and that was the training, how to understand it and how to counter it.

MR BOOYENS: I see. In that training - I'm trying to put it as short as possible - in that training did the idea appear that in certain circumstances, although there has not been a declared war, that you could kill the enemy. I'm not talking about the type of things that form the topic of so many of these amnesty applications. 

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Mr Chairperson yes and if I go back to the documents that I mentioned yesterday and that is the report from the ANC. There's a quote there once again in the document from Sarcescian (?) an author who is internationally acclaimed for his revolutionary, counter revolutionary writings and I quote: "Defence against revolution requires an effective, efficient and understanding government but the very existence of a revolutionary environment is a manifestation of political, social and psychological weakness and effective counter revolutionary action must derive from the same vulnerable environment". I hope that answers your question. (Transcribers translation).

MR BOOYENS: This is my interpretation, or is it correct that it fits in with what you said happened to Colonel Victor and where he then gave the commands to Jacques Hechter, on page 10, in that you must act and where he basically said that you must fight fire with fire and that you must fight the acts of terror.

MR VAN JAARSVELD: That is correct, yes.

MR BOOYENS: And that is how you understood it during your training in Taiwan or the course you did in Taiwan?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: It was not only the course in Taiwan, we also in our training in South Africa, we also conveyed that, we also gave them the message for counter revolutionary actions. 

CHAIRPERSON: Was this all in defense of apartheid?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: That's correct Mr Chairman.

MR BOOYENS: And was that what was conveyed to the policeman. In other words, something that created a culture that people - or that there was a culture in the security branch that in some instances it was justified to kill someone if you couldn't do anything else, that a mindset was created.

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Mr Chairperson it was the situation, one could actually call it a sub culture within a culture and it did exist.

MR BOOYENS: Might I just have a moment to take instructions Chairperson? With all this strategic planning, smoke screens and so forth, evidence was given here that approximately at the same stage, I think I did touch upon that yesterday, I would just like to return to that briefly. At the same time that this signal was sent a committee in Pretoria was busy discussing or considering the reappointment of Mr Goniwe as a teacher. By nature of the fact that your knowledge wouldn't be specific but rather general regarding this point, but was there anything like that which was actually a smoke screen so that they could wash their hands in innocence afterwards ... (intervention)

MR BIZOS: Mr Chairman this is a finding of fact which the committee is called upon to make, it is not a matter for the witness's opinion without all the facts being set up in front of him. It would depend on the personnel, there were nine of them there from different disciplines including the Air Force and the navy. There are too many factors I submit for a witness who knows the system to answer a specific question for the committee Mr Chairman.

MR BOOYENS: Mr Chairman I hadn't even completed my question when my learned friend objected. The question was specifically aimed at - and I said I know you would not have specific knowledge of this - the question was aimed specifically within the structures that he had intimate knowledge of and that's obvious whether this could have been nothing else but a smoke screen or the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing or a deliberate effort to hide the real intention. We must remember that also emanating from my learned friend we've got a signal at round about the same time which tells us exactly the opposite of what's being planned.

ADV POTGIETER: For example was that signal fed into the process of this GVS Committee for example. So I think that the point that Mr Bizos makes is that you know it's inappropriate unless you put the entire picture to this witness to elicit the kind of comment that you want, that this could possibly have been a smoke screen.

CHAIRPERSON: In other words is he able to give us a proper opinion upon which we can rely. Given his inability to appreciate the broad picture?

MR BOOYENS: His opinion will only be on the very broad picture Mr Chairman. Perhaps I should rephrase the question and just ask him were things sometimes done to appear to be the one thing whereas the true intention was the other?

CHAIRPERSON: You rephrase your question, we'll see what the ... (inaudible)

MR BOOYENS: Let me ask you a general question. An aspect of this entire strategic warfare with which people were busy in the counter revolutionary warfare, was the use of misinformation, the creation of misimpression that they pretended to be doing one thing and then in actuality were busy with something else. Is that part of the general tactic?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Yes Chairperson, the National Security Management System made specific provision to give the government a very strong propaganda arm and the name of this was the branch of Strategic Communication which was seated within the National Security Management System and it was so effective that it established it's own committees on the local JMS level by name of CONCOM Communication Committees, that's what they did, that was the propaganda wing of the National Security Management System. 

MR BOOYENS: Did that propaganda wing include the use of misinformation, faulty information, the creation of misimpressions?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Yes, if one takes into consideration the propaganda, the things that Mr Booyens has mentioned, all those aspects fall within the term of propaganda.

ADV BOSMAN: I beg your pardon. Could you tell us about this disinformation. Was it aimed at creating confusion for the public out there or was it aimed at creating confusion within the system itself.

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Disinformation, depending upon what the objective of it would be, sometimes it would be operated to firstly create confusion in the public, to create a situation within which one could accomplish certain things. It could be used among your own peers in order to create certain impressions or misimpressions. It had a whole spectrum of uses.

ADV BOSMAN: The question is actually what the appearance of it would be within the system. Was it used for the purposes of creating impressions within the public or within the system. Did you have any experience of that?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: In that case, within the branch of Strategic Communication it was aimed essentially outward, either to conceal or to camouflage that which the government was doing or to create a certain situation within which the government could do certain things. Internally I would say at certain occasions misinformation would be fed back.

ADV BOSMAN: There has been evidence here that persons who knew each other relatively well within the same division communicated with each other and at times fed misinformation through. What would the purpose of this kind of strategy or action have been?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: A typical example of this would be where certain actions had taken place and there might have been certain errors or faults during that action and another division of the police would be investigating the case, then misinformation would be sent from the security branch to the other divisions so that the investigation could be hindered and therefore not completed.

MR BOOYENS: Thank you Chairperson. Just another aspect which I would like to discuss with you. There is an Affidavit which arrived at my attorney's offices this morning from General Erasmus, Gerhard Erasmus, from his attorney. According to this Affidavit - and I will submit copies of this Affidavit - according to the Affidavit Erasmus says essentially the following: he discusses three aspects ... (intervention)

MR BIZOS: Is he going to be called? Well on what basis, on what basis has a contrary version been put if you are not told that he is going to be called?

MR BOOYENS: Mr Chairman, Mr Van Zyl testified that he never worked with Erasmus, that Erasmus wasn't here at the beginning of 84 when he came here. I am surely entitled to ask the witness for his comments if Erasmus makes a certain statement?

MR BIZOS: Mr Chairman I object to the inclusion of an Affidavit of a person who is apparently available and you are not given an assurance that he is going to be called.

If General Erasmus wants to deny this there is the stand and I would now suggest that the Affidavit be returned to my learned friend.

CHAIRPERSON: Isn't Mr Bizos correct?

MR BOOYENS: Mr Chairman I've received an Affidavit, I don't know why it was - I haven't even asked leave to hand it in yet.

CHAIRPERSON: Well it's been handed in.

MR BIZOS: Well you must take responsibility for your side.

CHAIRPERSON: What's the purpose of relying on an Affidavit purportedly made by a person who is available and able to come and testify.

MR BOOYENS: Mr Chairman is the committee ruling that I cannot ask him about information that I've got. I'm not suggesting that because Van Zyl testified it and I've received additional information from Erasmus know, I'm not saying - I've got no brief for Erasmus.

CHAIRPERSON: Well Mr Booyens the simple question is that are unable to put that version to the witness without the Affidavit?

MR BOOYENS: Mr Chairman if I spoke to Erasmus on the telephone last night, I haven't got an Affidavit and he said to me no that's not the way it happened, that is the way it happened, would I be entitled to ask the witness for his comment about that or not?

CHAIRPERSON: And then you stop with his answer, unless you call Erasmus to testify.

MR BOOYENS: Yes, I'm ... (intervention)

MR BIZOS: Mr Chairman could I clarify. I have no objection to a version being put to a witness, but we must be told whether it is in - and he can cross examine on it if he so desires - I object to the Affidavit going in in the absence of an assurance that General Erasmus is going to be called and I would ask that the Affidavit that was handed in by a member of my learned friend's team be returned to them until such an assurance can be given.

CHAIRPERSON: Well Mr Booyens, is Mr Erasmus going to be called?

MR BOOYENS: Mr Chairman we received this from Mr Wagner which went on record, Wagner is an attorney, I think there's ... (intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: No, but the point of the matter is Mr Booyens, is Mr Erasmus going to be called to testify?

MR BOOYENS: I'm not going to call Erasmus, he's not my client.

CHAIRPERSON: Then on what basis can we then receive this Affidavit?

MR BOOYENS: I didn't ask you to receive the Affidavit Mr Chairman. I've never asked you to receive that.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Booyens I have a document here before me that purports to be an Affidavit from Gerhard Nicholaas Erasmus.

MR BOOYENS: Quite true Mr Chairman, people ... (intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: I'm not too sure how it landed here.

MR BOOYENS: People jump the gun, that's all I'm trying to say to you. I haven't even asked you whether I can hand it in and the record will show nowhere ... (intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: I agree, but I found it in front of me and you started asking questions.

MR BOOYENS: Mr Chairman I full well realise. The committee can call Erasmus after what I've put. Mr Van Zyl who testified here testified that he and General Erasmus never worked together, in other word that Erasmus was away before he arrived here in the beginning of 1984. Just to complete the picture a little further, I received an Affidavit wherein which it is stated and it apparently comes from Erasmus, that he confirms that he was transferred from Port Elizabeth in January 1984 and he took over as the Commander of the Security Branch in Johannesburg. All that I want to know from you and please don't misunderstand me Mr Van Jaarsveld, I'm putting this on the level that you might make an error and that you are not purposefully lying, but all I want to know from you is whether it is possible that if indeed it is so, that either in 1983 that you were either here in 1983 when Erasmus was still here, that you spoke to him then or that a member other than Van Zyl accompanied you - that is one possible connotation - the other possible alternative is that you are confusing somebody with Erasmus who was here in 1984 because Erasmus was no longer the Commander here in 1984 and because of that you are making an error. That's the basic idea. Just for the sake of background it is also - this has been said to me and it can be double checked - that it was said to me that Erasmus never had anything to do with Eastern Province Rugby. Later when he was in Transvaal he became involved with that provinces rugby affairs, but in the Eastern Province he had nothing to do with rugby so therefore my question is simply the following: is it possible that you were here earlier when Erasmus was the Commander or is it possible that when you say that it was Erasmus, you are confusing him with somebody else or the third alternative naturally is to say no, I don't accept that Erasmus was away, he was still here and as a result I spoke to both Erasmus and Van Zyl. I'm asking you to think very clearly before you give an answer because it is possible that you might have made a mistake?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: I have submitted my Affidavit, I have read my Affidavit and that which appears in it is exactly how I remember it clearly. 

MR BOOYENS: No that's why I asked you or told to you that you were not purposefully lying to the committee. I'm just asking whether it's possible for you to make a mistake regarding the identities of one or the other, that means Van Zyl or Erasmus. In other words you are remember incorrectly?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Yes, well it is humanly possible to make mistakes. In the discussion which I had with Erasmus - I said yesterday that we spoke about rugby. When I said that I knew I was one hundred percent sure that he was involved in rugby, we'd spoke about rugby. At that point I'd only met him twice in my life, once was here and later in Pretoria.

MR BOOYENS: Is this the same person?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Definitely the same person. That which appears in my Affidavit is that which I remember which I have said. If there is some kind of argument regarding dates and times, I would not be able to comment about that. 

ADV BOSMAN: Mr Van Jaarsveld is there any manner in which you could narrow it down in terms of the fact that you were here in 1984. Is there any specific reason or any specific connection that you can make which leads you to say that you were here in 1984?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Yes, Mr Bizos said yesterday that the date had been confirmed because of an action of mind when I threw a stone through Janet Cherry's car window.

MR BOOYENS: Did I understand you correctly that you conceded that there would be a possibility that you could be remembering incorrectly regarding the two actors in the drama, Erasmus and Van Zyl, that not both of them may have been present, either one or the other?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: I have conceded that I could make an error, but what I remember is what I remember. I might have made a mistake during the process, but that's what I remember.

MR BOOYENS: I am satisfied, thank you. Thank you Chairperson, no further questions.

NO FURTHER QUESTIONS BY MR BOOYENS

CHAIRPERSON: Do you think you're making a mistake?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: No Chairperson.

ADV BIZOS: Yes, firstly Mr Chainman we were supposed to receive a photograph in relation to the identity of Mr Van Zyl or the presence of ... (indistinct). What is my learned friend's attitude?

MR BOOYENS: I indicated Mr Van Zyl is not available Mr Chairman, I can't get - as I said in chambers yesterday, I've got no objection if we make use of the photograph. I also said yesterday that I do not normally keep photographs of my clients, I haven't got one.

CHAIRPERSON: I now you don,t, but perhaps your clients do?

MR BOOYENS: Ja, but my client's not here to give it to me. I wonder if we cannot perhaps - I'm sure we should be able to find a photograph of Van Zyl somewhere, lots of photographs were taken. Perhaps - I know my friend who's standing just down here takes lots of photographs, maybe he's got one of Van Zyl?

MR BIZOS: We could have a rerun, I understand that the proceedings are being videoed Mr Chairman. If we can rerun a couple of seconds of Mr Van Zyl's appearance here? We live in an electronic age and these difficulties can be so easily solved.

CHAIRPERSON: ... (inaudible) adjourn for that purpose?

MR BIZOS: I'd rather re-examine Mr Chairman and leave just that issue over because we may do it informally and then during an adjournment the witness can be excused. Let me just re-examine the witness.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.

RE-EXAMINATION BY MR BIZOS: Mr Van Jaarsveld on the 21st of March 1984 or on the day that you were here, how long were you in the company of Mr Van Zyl, approximately?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: It's very difficult to say. How long is the drive from Port Elizabeth to Cradock? And then the hour, two hours, perhaps three hours that we spent at Cradock.

MR BIZOS: And after that you returned?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Yes, that's correct.

MR BIZOS: In the same car?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Yes.

MR BIZOS: And when you came to Port Elizabeth you went to a place where the meeting was being held, that's where the stone throwing took place.

MR VAN JAARSVELD: I wasn't present at that point, there were other members of the security branch who I didn't know.

MR BIZOS: While you were in the company of Mr Van Zyl did you tell him what the objective of your visit to the Eastern Province was?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Chairperson in truth, I'm trying very hard to remember. It wasn't unknown, we spoke about his Koevoet days, the fact that he had just come down from Koevoet and all such issues. I am sure that we would have discussed it.

MR BIZOS: Now you had a job to do here. Your job was to determine whether Mr Goniwe could be eliminated. Did you tell this to Mr Van Zyl?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Truthfully, in all honesty I must tell you that I believe we discussed it, because I can't think of any other reason why he would have been with us. I can't think of any other reason why he would have driven with us.

MR BIZOS: Didn't he want to know why you wanted to visit Mr Goniwe's home?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: I think it's quite obvious why we visited Mr Goniwe's home. We wouldn't have come all the way down from Pretoria just to come and see how Matthew Goniwe's home looked, to see whether or not he had a TV or a radio. 

MR BIZOS: When he told you that the house was being monitored in any manner, did you and he both know why you were interested in the tapping devices which existed?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Regarding the tapping devices, Henry Fouche who was the Commander, wanted to boast about how well he was functioning in the Eastern Cape. 

MR BIZOS: Was it for your purposes, was it important for your purposes to know how well Mr Goniwe was being monitored?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Yes and no. Yes in the regard that at all times, when such an operation was being planned, we had to be aware of the person's movements and know in the sense that for this specific situation the assumption wasn't was that the information was available and that it would arrive timeously at the right place.

MR BIZOS: Did you and Mr Fouche, in the presence of Mr Van Zyl, ask about the habits of Mr Goniwe, how early he got up, what time he would arrive at home, who his friends were, whether there were people who walked with him if he went to the cafe, whether he went to a club or a shebeen who would accompany him. All those aspects?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Mr Chairman that type of information was already at the disposal of the security branch at head office and we did not discuss it on a local level with Henry Fouche. I don't think at any point did we give an indication to Henry Fouche what the reason for our visit was. 

MR BIZOS: Pertinently Mr Fouche, but you did indicate to Mr Van Zyl?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Yes, that's correct.

MR BIZOS: Thank you Mr Chairman, I have no further questions.

NO FURTHER QUESTIONS BY MR BIZOS

CHAIRPERSON: Mr ... (inaudible)

DR TSOTSI: I always thought that misinformation operated among the enemies of the State. It appears from the evidence that it did operate also within the reigns of the police, that you regularly misinformed one another as police officer?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: That's correct.

DR TSOTSI: How is one to know where the truth really lay?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: That's why we're sitting here today in order to determine the truth, so I can't tell you where the truth lies.

DR TSOTSI: Are you saying that there has to be a sitting of the Amnesty Committee to determine what the truth is among the police officers?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: That would be a very interesting issue, but I think that you should begin your search with the politicians and not the police.

DR TSOTSI: It's just that we are dealing with the police at the present time. You say that the expression "to make a plan" meant to kill. Is that what I understand correctly to be that?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Yes Chairperson, we debated that, it has been discussed here. The methods of communication, the use of words and phrases in the security forces among the securocrats indicates that that's what it meant.

DR TSOTSI: Supposing there was no Goniwe to kill, somebody came to you and said lets make a plan. What would that convey to you?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: If someone said to me "make a plan", the first question I would ask is with who or with what. Make a plan could mean let's have a braai, but if a person's name was connected to it, then that would be the interpretation which would be connected to it.

DR TSOTSI: We are surprised to learn that in this case there was no question put to Mr Snyman as to the wherefores and the why's, it was just said "make a plan" and something in the best interest of the country, State. But surely the expression of "make a plan" could mean something else other than to kill in the circumstances, wouldn't it? Couldn't it mean for instance that have the banned or banished from the country or that kind of thing?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Yes Chairperson it is very difficult for me to comment what the circumstances where under which Louis Le Grange spoke to Mr Snyman. I can't specifically tell you what they meant in that case.

DR TSOTSI: Yes I appreciate that, I don't expect you to do that but I mean this question of a meaning of words. If I say "make a plan" can you say without other information that that definitely meant that you must kill.

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Depending upon who had the discussion, if it was a discussion amongst legal persons it could mean something about restriction, the available methods of restriction and so forth. I think we're actually speculating here regarding a discussion of which I have no knowledge.

ADV BOSMAN: Mr Van Jaarsveld can you remember who the Minister of Police was at the stage when you were in Port Elizabeth?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: When did Mr Vlok take over? 

I think it was still Louis Le Grange.

ADV BOSMAN: And your own responsible Minister, you did not resort under the police?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: No I did.

ADV BOSMAN: Okay, thank you. When you were sent to Port Elizabeth, and my impression is that you were sent here to go and look at the logistics of the process of killing Mr Goniwe.

MR VAN JAARSVELD: That is correct.

ADV BOSMAN: Well if you came then to observe or think about or recommend the logistics, did you not at that stage think who will do it in the end?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Mr Chairperson, no it did not always work like that. If you can remember we talked - I was part of the planning, the logistics - logistics means support, it was more planning and the planning group said that or had to say if it can happen or not happen and my feedback to Major Williams said that we cannot do it here in Port Elizabeth at his house.

ADV BOSMAN: But if you must now decide if it can happen or not happen then you must also decide then who can do it.

MR VAN JAARSVELD: No it was not my decision, it would be senior officers who decide who will actually carry out this.

ADV BOSMAN: Would it be senior officers in Pretoria or senior officers here in Port Elizabeth?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: It would be senior officers in Pretoria in consultation with officers here.

ADV BOSMAN: Why do you think that would Pretoria then be involved in such a case?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Well I said earlier on in my evidence, I talked about the structures of the Security Council and the MSM and who were the decision makers and that they sat in Pretoria.

ADV BOSMAN: Are you saying in other words that if you had a Brigadier here in Port Elizabeth then the Brigadier in Pretoria would have the edge or was ... (intervention)

MR VAN JAARSVELD: It resulted in a lot of tension because the people in - the Brigadiers in Pretoria thought that they were better Brigadiers than the Brigadiers in PE.

ADV BOSMAN: So the practical work was done here and those in Pretoria had the edge?

ADV SIGODI: You say that when you looked at the planning you came down to see if Mr Goniwe could be killed, or how he could be killed. Is that correct?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: We decided if he could be eliminated or not. The responsibility was not mine.

ADV SIGODI: And your conclusion was that it could not be done at his house?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: That's correct.

ADV SIGODI: And to whom did you communicate that?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: To Major Williamson.

ADV SIGODI: What made you come to that decision that he could not be eliminated at his house?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: It is in my statement where I said that there were too many people around him - can I just read it to you - my recommendation was that there were too many people and it would have made the operation very difficult.

ADV SIGODI: And did you make any suggestion as to how he should be killed?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: No.

ADV POTGIETER: Mr Van Jaarsveld can I come back to the signal that was showed to you yesterday. The signal, according to the documents here, was addressed to General Van Rensburg and it seems - I'm not sure if it was one of the short pants or trouser Brigadiers, but anyway Van Rensburg - it seems as if it was general knowledge that he as an important person in the secretariat of the Security Council - it was addressed to him and it contained suggestions from the EPJMS - I think it was also general knowledge - if it was addressed to this General would it then have been fed into the system, the National Council System?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Yes Mr Chairperson, I cannot tell you what General Van Rensburg's position was exactly at that stage, but securocrats also had an illness where there names and post descriptions varied and changed a lot, but yes he was senior enough where such a message would be received by him, it could also have been discussed on a Cabinet level. I cannot say that in this specific case that was the case.

MR BIZOS: May I be of assistance Mr Chairman. It was common cause at the inquest that General Van Rensburg was the secretary of the secretariat of the Security Council.

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you, thank you Mr Bizos. There our problem has been solved, so he was definitely a long trouser person. This signal was dated 17th of June 1998 and we know that according to the information that we have, that the previous day there was a type of action committee under the Chair of the Deputy Minister, Mr Vlok, they were appointed to consider the whole Goniwe issue and that action committee again appointed a work committee or asked the secretariat to appoint a work committee who will consider this matter further and then make recommendations concerning the fate of Mr Goniwe and it seems as if around the 7th, during that time when that committee sat and the piece that was sent back to Mr Vlok's action committee, with certain recommendations, how they must act on Mr Goniwe or on this matter - would that be probable that it was fed in that process of consideration concerning Mr Goniwe?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: That is very difficult to say Mr Chairperson. What is important there is it depended on who sat on that committee or if that signal would have been fed in. 

ADV POTGIETER: You see the signal is addressed to General Van Rensburg, the secretary of this secretariat and the secretariat appointed a work committee in answer of the Vlok's committee who reported back to this action committee. Why would this signal not have been fed in into this work committee, in their workings and activities?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Mr Chairperson if it was purely a committee which was appointed to decide about the action or the killing of Goniwe it would have been fed in.

ADV POTGIETER: Well it considers Mr Goniwe's fate, what was going to happen about him. There were different ideas, but the goal was to decide what would ultimately happen to him.

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Then I doubt if that signal would have been fed in.

ADV POTGIETER: Why do you doubt that?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: If it was purely about the social aspects the signal would not have been fed in there.

ADV POTGIETER: There is a work committee who considered all the inputs. There were seemingly, or in the document in front of us, a difference on how people decided how to act upon Mr Goniwe and this action committee of Vlok had to finally decide what to do. We've got a whole list of about thirty two high ranking officials, safety or security police ... (intervention)

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Was that committee thirty two big? 

ADV POTGIETER: Yes and we've got it here in our minutes, it was from the Deputy Minister to Lieutenant Generals, National Security, Intelligence etc. 

MR VAN JAARSVELD: No Mr Chairperson it is just too big to decide on elimination of one person, it was just too big. Things like this was done on a need-to-know basis. Thirty two people would have been too big. 

ADV POTGIETER: I'm not saying that, I'm not talking about the action committee, I'm talking about the work committee.

MR VAN JAARSVELD: How big was the work committee?

ADV POTGIETER: We've got the pieces here.

MR BIZOS: If I can help, there were eight of them.

ADV POTGIETER: It was a committee of eight.

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Depending on how it was compiled and who were in it, what was their level of decision making. I think there's various questions one can ask with a signal like this that it would have been fed into a committee of eight. The signal would have been dealt with on a level where the secretary of the secretariat would have sat, where the Ministers or Attorney Generals or police, Defence Force etc, it would have been the people who made such a decision. That group would have been very small.

ADV POTGIETER: You see the document we've got here that reports back from the work committee says that there was input from the EPJMS and then they made a recommendation, it was a recommendation that Mr Goniwe must not be killed but that the solution is that he must be reappointed.

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Yes Mr Chairperson where people said that he must be reappointed I can just come back to what we talked about earlier on and disinformation, governments, propaganda, it could have been the decision that to kill Goniwe had already been taken and that they went through the steps as a smoke screen, as a disinformation propaganda process saying that the government has got nothing to do with it.

ADV POTGIETER: Including Mr Vlok?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: I cannot say if Mr Vlok was there or not.

CHAIRPERSON: No he's on a committee here that appointed a work committee and your suggestion is that that whole operation to appoint this work team to decide on what must happen to Mr Goniwe regarding his work as a teacher and that it is a smoke screen. The suggestion is that Mr Vlok then was part of that smoke screen and he knew what was going to happen?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Well then he knew what was going to happen, but you summed it up very well, it was a suggestion of mine and nothing else. 

ADV POTGIETER: Yes but certainly it is a suggestion that you make, but the other possibility is also that the sincere or attitude was that Mr Goniwe must be reappointed but that this murder or killing was not agreed to or that their attitude did not agree with what was spelt out here.

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Yes Mr Chairperson but you must remember that there's always been a large struggle between the doubts or the do's and the don'ts, the securocrats and the politicians they were very strong at that stage, they only lost their power later on.

ADV POTGIETER: So there could have been another scenario in that the official attitude was indeed that it would have been the best thing to reappoint Mr Goniwe but that another group or that the other group disagreed with that and decided that he must be killed?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Mr Chairperson it is the closest that we can get to it and I think very close to the truth.

ADV POTGIETER: I would just lastly like to ask you - I just need clarity - at various times yesterday you were asked about the revolution and the whole warfare issue. If I heard you correctly, you quoted from a piece in front of you and you said and the quote that you read was that the goal of this revolution was to replace apartheid and not to reform it. Is that correct?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: I think the word was to destroy apartheid.

ADV POTGIETER: In other words - I am just trying to understand the concept of revolution. Is it revolution in a sense that it implies the destruction of a certain system?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: If we talk about destruction of a system through election, it is a normal democratic way but if it's a military struggle or infiltrate a country and there's sabotation and terrorism then it's a revolutionary warfare.

ADV POTGIETER: So you are you saying that it was in the modus operandi in the action of the ANC was revolutionary, but not in their viewpoints. In other words it is not revolutionary in that it wants to replace apartheid with a democracy, it's not a revolution for that reason, it's a revolution because of the methods, the modus operandi. Is that your position?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Yes, if I can just say to you that Mr Thambo himself said in '84, on the 8th of January in the annual remembrance of the ANC, that all revolutions - he himself talked about a revolution. If you go further in the ANC piece, he talks about a struggle ... (intervention)

ADV POTGIETER: Could you just read that quote for us again please, that that you read yesterday?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: If I can just find it. ... (indistinct) power, ours is no exception. The slogan "power to the people" means one thing and one thing only, it means we seek to destroy the power of apartheid tyranny and replace it with popular power from the government whose authority derives from the will of all our people, both Black and White. We do not fight to reform apartheid, but to abolish it in it's entirety. 

ADV POTGIETER: You see that is what - is the point there not the viewpoint that it's a revolution in that it wants to destroy or replace apartheid, whatever the concept is that we want to use, but is it not focused on the viewpoint?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Mr Chairperson yes, I think we can discuss this for a very long time or debate for a very long time but the viewpoint of a revolutionary is, if it is as they call it a justified struggle because they want to replace such an evil system like apartheid. I do not know. I know what you're asking and yes revolution as it is done and - it always, violence was always part of it and that was to destroy an evil system like apartheid and it was to place democracy in it's place and I think if there's been no violent - I don't know if it will be justified if people died in the process. For the revolutionary and the counter revolutioner it would have been the same, so if we talk about this we would have to go into the principle of revolution and counter revolution.

ADV POTGIETER: You see one of the applicants in this matter who was a very senior officer, he gave evidence before you and he said to us that the solution for the problem that the security police fought on a political level, it was a political solution. That is what he said. So what I'm trying to understand is what did you do, if you can comment on that. I know you may not be involved on the same level as that applicant, but the struggle of the security police, was it to prevent a system that is today in South Africa from being put in place. In other words the viewpoint of that revolution that is mentioned in that quote of yours?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Mr Chairperson yes, at that stage the National Party was the governing party and their policy was based on the apartheid system and we can now with hindsight think of it, discuss it and dissect it and to think or to say that if it was justifiable for the police to then support the government, it was the police force of that government as the same police force, or the great percentage of it, of who then support the government of that day, now support today's government. It was a police force which supported the government of the day. If you can now, a few years later, say that the police force were wrong or that they were right or that they were wrong because they supported an evil system, I think those are things that you could write books about at a later stage. ADV POTGIETER: You see our task is not a philosophical task, but our task is to, in this case as unsavoury as it is, to decide if it was justifiable in these circumstances. In other words the point I would like to make or that I'm struggling with is the question if to kill people, as in this case, would that have been justified? If one considers the viewpoint of the revolutionary which was fought according to the security police, if it was wrong or right and we accept it that way, if it was justifiable to act in such a manner to stop that revolutionary goal.

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Mr Chairperson, although it was the viewpoint of the revolutionaries to replace the government, they did it by means of violence, mass action, sabotage and it was an acceptable norm and practice and if you read about it, it was counter revolutionary that you fight him in the same way that he fights his own revolution and the policemen did the same things. I think if one reads up on what the revolutionaries, the PAC and ANC did when they were still a liberation movement, they also committed violence and it is internationally acceptable that a revolution or counter revolution is committed in the same way and I mentioned it yesterday - it's about the winning of the hearts and minds of people, it's a mass warfare, a mass movement and you must get the support of the masses and to quote counter revolution is to remove the leadership from the revolution in order to intimidate them in such a way that they would follow you.

ADV POTGIETER: You are right yes, we can debate about it for a very long time. This is a more concrete case but thank you very much for your input.

ADV BOSMAN: Mr Van Jaarsveld you mentioned that it was, or would have been a possibility, on a question from my colleague here, that it is a possibility that this decision to reappoint Mr Goniwe could have been a smoke screen. Let us consider or say that it was a smoke screen. Who would you suspect would have known that it was a smoke screen?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: To call it a smoke screen there would have been very few people who knew about it.

ADV BOSMAN: So the people who were part of the elimination of Goniwe, would they have been informed about it?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Not on local level, no but if we make this assumption that it was a top level decision to kill Mr Goniwe, it would have been on that level but on local level they would not have known about it.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Van Jaarsveld do you know why Mr Van Zyl was sent with you to Cradock?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Yes Sakkie van Zyl, we drove with him in the car. In the second place he was a person who came from the local security branch in Port Elizabeth who had to support us and give us assistance.

CHAIRPERSON: But I assume that he must had to know something about the visit and that is the reason why he was sent with you?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: That is correct.

CHAIRPERSON: Yesterday you gave evidence or if you remember that he knew something about your visit, why do you say that?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Mr Chairperson I think here in my statement - I just want to read it if you could excuse me. In my statement I say that Colonel Erasmus was here for the purpose of our visit and that Sakkie Van Zyl accompanied us ... (intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: Yes, we talked about this. Are you sure about that?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: I cannot for certainty remember, one drives from Port Elizabeth to Cradock and back and the whole day you're in each other's company. I believe that we would not have discussed it for the whole day, that for today I cannot remember completely what was said that day, but I am convinced that we would have discussed it.

CHAIRPERSON: So he knew from '84 of the plan to kill Mr Goniwe?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: In '84 there was the plan to do it. That plan was only realised in '85, but that's not to say that during that period is was daily said that he will be killed.

CHAIRPERSON: But at that stage he would have known that it was being considered to kill Goniwe? But according to your evidence I get the impression that the decision was already made and it was just and where he would be killed that had to be decided on. That is why you were asked to go and look if it would be possible to go and kill him at his house?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Yes Mr Chairperson I would say that the decision has already been made.

CHAIRPERSON: Tell me also, and it's something that bothers me, policemen who at that stage worked at the security police, did they have to have certain qualifications apart from what the ordinary policeman had?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Mr Chairperson, no not really. What did happen was that we were selected and the form of selection I cannot really tell. They had to be trustworthy, they had to be good policeman - if you can then say that people who killed people later - they had to be good policemen, they had to investigate, had to be a policeman who could see a case through. 

CHAIRPERSON: But someone who was properly trained or people who didn't have a loose mouth and talk about it in bottle stores?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Yes that is debatable because many of those policemen did become alcoholics because of the pressure and stress that they lived in and some of the people who were called the operators.

CHAIRPERSON: To find a person in that system in the security branch, he must be one of the brothers?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: No, I do not think that is correct. Any person could have worked there, if you were a policeman who was trustworthy and a person who could see the case through - maybe later he could have become an inner circle brother, but when he started there it was just not the case.

CHAIRPERSON: Did you have the potential to become a brother?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Yes Mr Chairperson, if you talk about brother you talk about the "Broederbond".

CHAIRPERSON: No, I'm talking about the community in the security police.

MR VAN JAARSVELD: What did happen and Adv Booyens did discuss it with us earlier on, sub cultures developed within the security forces and to fit into this sub culture you had to be taken in and it brought people closer to each other and you could have talked about a brother relationship, but if you looked at the groups it was always the same type of groups. They were always brought together, it was not a secret situation or a secret group it was situations that brought them together or circumstances that brought them together and there then a brotherly relationship would evolve.

CHAIRPERSON: These people who then decided to go and work in the security forces, you probably knew what dangers there were and what type of work you had to do?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Mr Chairperson it was very interesting and I will tell you how I ended up at the security forces and you will then see. I went from University to the police ... (intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: Oh I see you have a degree.

MR VAN JAARSVELD: And directly to the security forces. 

CHAIRPERSON: When that happened, did you know what dangers there were?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: No, not at all. No, you do not know anything because you haven't been there. Only when you are there you see that it's very different and policemen who have been in the force for years knew that these people worked in a different way.

CHAIRPERSON: And these people would not have known that the so-called terrorists had to be faced or will come face to face with these terrorists. They did not know it?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: Yes they would have, definitely.

CHAIRPERSON: Do you know whether the policemen in the security police received any psychological training in order to manage these problems?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: You're touching upon an issue which in my opinion is one of the greatest issues which should be presented to those who were in charge back then. This war was the war of the captains, most of those who were applying for amnesty had the rank of captain, they were the commanders of units and they have been thrown to the wolves. They were never given any kind of psychological treatment.

CHAIRPERSON: The reason why I asked this question is because of one of the other cases which I have heard and in this case a person was shot dead and burnt out and right next to the hole which they dug in order to burn this person out, a braai was held and beer was consumed and it boggles me to think how people could do this?

MR VAN JAARSVELD: That's one of the strangest things that one could find in a war situation. If you consult the reference books you'll see that wars were fought in South America, revolutionary wars where corpses were draped over cars, placed in streets and so forth. Policemen, the men who were specifically involved in these affairs lost a lot and the most serious thing that they lost was their own sense of humanity, that's what they lost and that is why things like that happened because there was absolutely no psychological counselling, no structures to help these people who worked on ground level and that's why they did things like that.

CHAIRPERSON: That's why I initially asked the question as to what kind of person would be selected to work in the security police. Did this person have to possess a certain type of character in order to work there and do that type of work.

MR VAN JAARSVELD: No, not at all. The work gave them a specific character.

CHAIRPERSON: You said that your proposal in 1984 was that Mr Goniwe should not be killed at his home for certain reasons but that it would be preferable to kill him along the road, I suppose in the still of the night and that's exactly what happened, he was found by the roadside. He was killed very far away from his home.

MR VAN JAARSVELD: I only ... (end of tape)

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Booyens are there any questions you would like to ... (intervention)

MR BOOYENS: No thank you Mr Chairman.

NO QUESTIONS BY MR BOOYENS

MR BIZOS: No, no questions arising from the committees questions Mr Chairman but my learned friend has apparently been favoured with a photograph from some member of the press corp.

CHAIRPERSON: You do have a photograph?

MR BIZOS: ...[indistinct] Mr Chairman for the purposes of ... (indistinct).

MR VAN JAARSVELD: That is definitely Sakkie van Zyl.

MR BIZOS: Yes I think that members of the committee would remember the image of Mr Van Zyl. If we can hand it in as an exhibit or the members can, we can record it as a fact ... (inaudible) identified him as Mr Van Zyl from a photograph produced by his own counsel.

CHAIRPERSON: Everybody's in agreement that that is correct.

MR BIZOS: Now Mr Chairman there's just something that I want in fairness to put on record as a result of some of the questions asked by Adv Potgieter because I know the record, because I was in the inquest. The inset that is referred to in Exhibit H - the report to the Minister of the works committee, was said in evidence not to have been the signal, but probably was the document of the 23rd of May - the "Nooit-ooit" inset. None of the members that sat on the committee admitted that the signal was placed before them Mr Chairman. The evidence of Mr Van Rensburg of what he did with it was a ping-pong game Mr Chairman on the finding of his Lordship Mr Justice Zietsman, he couldn't really decide what he did with it, but the members of the committee, in fairness to them, all said that they did not have that signal before them. I thought that I would place that on record in order to ...(intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: ... (inaudible).

MR BIZOS: Yes, we are ready to call another witness. I don't know if you want to take an adjournment. 

CHAIRPERSON: ... (inaudible)

MR BIZOS: Yes. Well for the next witness Mr Chairman, this may be an appropriate time. Thank you.

COMMITTEE ADJOURNS

WITNESS EXCUSED

MR BOOYENS: ... (inaudible) witness, I would like to place on record that it is common cause that - and my learned friend must help me to tell me if I don't say exactly what he wants to hear, that on the night of the 21st of March 1984 somebody threw a stone or a brick or something through the windscreen of the car of one Janet Cherry.

MR BIZOS: It will make it unnecessary to call the witness ... (indistinct). The next witness Mr Chairman is Mr Derek Swartz. He'll speak in English.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Swartz have you got any objection to the taking of the oath?

DEREK SWARTZ: So help me God.

CHAIRPERSON: Be seated. 

EXAMINATION BY MR BIZOS: Mr Swartz what is your 

occupation?

PROF SWARTZ: I am presently a University Professor at the University of Fort Hare.

MR BIZOS: So we'll call you Professor Swartz now?

PROF SWARTZ: Well, if you wish.

MR BIZOS: What are your academic qualifications?

PROF SWARTZ: I have a PhD.

MR BIZOS: In what?

PROF SWARTZ: In Industrial Sociology.

MR BIZOS: Where you a teacher of history in Port Elizabeth in 1985?

PROF SWARTZ: That's correct.

MR BIZOS: And were you an office bearer of the United Democratic Front or UDF?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes I was.

MR BIZOS: What office did you hold?

PROF SWARTZ: I served as General Secretary of the Eastern Cape Region of the UDF, as well as a member of the National Secretariat and National Executive Committee of the UDF during that time.

MR BIZOS: Where was the office of the UDF in the Eastern Province?

PROF SWARTZ: The head office was in Court Chambers in Port Elizabeth.

MR BIZOS: And the national office of the National Executive that you were on?

PROF SWARTZ: In Johannesburg.

MR BIZOS: Were you conversant with the policies of the United Democratic Front in 1985?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BIZOS: And were you aware of it's objectives and that manner in which it wanted to achieve it's objectives?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes I was as I was one of the founder members of the UDF.

MR BIZOS: It was founded on the 20th of August 1983 in Cape Town?

PROF SWARTZ: Uh uh.

MR BIZOS: Now in view of what this committee has heard from a number of policemen in the security police, who apparently equated UDF activities with terrorism, I want you to please tell the committee what the UDF stood for, what it's policies were and how it wanted to achieve them and whether violence against persons or so-called, what the authorities called terrorism, was any part of it's policy.? Please give us a short overview of these matters Professor Swartz.

PROF SWARTZ: Thank you. I will try to give my assistiological review of what I understand to be the origins and character of the UDF in as succinct terms as possible. Now the UDF, as far as I know, is one of a range of organisations or movements that have emerged since the 1960s when the African National Congress and Pan Africanist Congress were banned. It was formed in the early eighties in opposition to - in other words as a reaction to the tricameral initiatives, that is to say the attempt by the then government to put into place an apparently multi-racial parliamentary system based on the inclusion of Whites, Coloureds and Indians, with the exclusion of the African majority and the internal opposition movements, which by the end of the 1970s had begun to mushroom again after the 1976 uprisings, felt that they needed to create an umbrella body that will represent democratic interests nation wide in opposition to the particular dispensation that was coming about in the early 1980s. Now the organisations that constituted the UDF at the time were essentially community movements, student youth bodies, some church or religious based organisations, cultural as well as even social movements at the time and these were in my view, not necessarily ANC aligned or even ANC sympathetic organisations in the main. They were of course organisations and individuals within the UDF at the time that did identify and were sympathetic with the ANC's aims but presumably there were also people that were sympathetic with other types of ideological movements at the time. Now with regards to the constitutional structure then of the UDF was one that was heterogenous in terms of political ideology as well as political origins. It was explicit then in terms of it's principles and it's constitution a non-violent organisation and this was a reflection of our understanding of the reality at the time. If it had assumed itself to be a military type organisation or a para-military organisation, it would have met the same fate at the ANC and the PAC and other organisations of the past. So we were quite clear about this tactical distinction from a very early age on as well and this view was conveyed publicly as well as in our constitution. In terms of our tactics and our strategies, our policy was quite clear that it was non-violent but mass mobilisation in opposition against the apartheid system. We were unapologetic about this because we felt that passive resistance of the kind that was pursued in the 1920s and 1930s during the Ghandian era had not been terribly effective in bring the message across to the regime that enough is enough and we needed to mobilise as far as we were concerned as vast numbers as people as possible to apply pressure that would hopefully cumulatively over time, lead to a decline in the obstinance of the regime and bring the regime to the table to have talk and I may well recall also that during the 1980s there had been many many press statements made about the UDF leaders for talks between the opposition movements, including the ANC and the banned organisations, as well as the South African government so we saw our role essentially as a pressure group. As an agent to mobilise as many people as possible to delegitimate the South African government and it arose out of the particular set of legislation that founded the tricameral parliament, so to the extent that there is an argument that the UDF formed a logical part of a wider insurrectionary movement, I think that that is a questionable hypothesis as far as I was concerned, there was no logical connection or a necessary link between the work that the ANC was doing through it's military or the PAC was doing through it's military incursions and the mobilisation that we were doing in the country. However ... (intervention)

MR BIZOS: May I interrupt you? I'm sorry, finish your sentence.

PROF SWARTZ: There was a contingent link, there's no necessary linkage. So in other words what I mean by a contingent relationships is a relationship founded around agreement around the need to mobilise the South African population. The ANC was, as far as I know at the time and perhaps even the PAC, in agreement that there was a need to mobilise the internal population to make sure that they do not support the institutions that have been set up at the time. To that extent there was a convergence of interest. So around the issue of mass mobilisation of the conscientisation, the raising of awareness of popular consciousness about the system that we were living in, I think there was probably broad agreement in perspective that we needed to make sure that as far as possible, that the apartheid system would become unworkable. And the final contribution that I have on this is to say that we then, broadly speaking, have a similar end goal. The Freedom Charter, as our understanding goes, had a similar goal as the UDF's vision of a non-racial democratic South Africa. As you read the constitution of the UDF and you look at the Freedom Charter which is the defining document of the congress movements since the 1950s, it had a similar perspective of the kind of society that we needed to work towards, so although we had different strategies or pathways to get to that end goal, we had different means, different tactics how that should be accomplished.

MR BIZOS: Mr Swartz, did the government through the legal process in the '50s try to criminalise the principles of the Freedom Charter by having a massive treason trial between 1956 and December 1956 when the arrests of 156 people were made and lasted until June 1961 in which we all know the Adams case, the 3 judges in the Transvaal Provincial Division sitting in this special court said that there was nothing treasonable or unlawful in propagating the Freedom Charter. From 1984, 1985, 1986 were there 3 trials in which the leadership of the UDF was put on trial in the Rumgobin case, in the Maleka case and the ... (indistinct) and similarly were attempt made to equate these with revolutionary activity and did those attempts fail? They were all acquitted at the end. Is that correct?

PROF SWARTZ: My interpretation is broadly then that was the case.

MR BIZOS: So when we hear that Mr Goniwe was a terrorist or Mr Calata was a terrorist or Mr Mkhonto or Mr Mhlauli were terrorists, you who were in this and aware of the situation, were there any valid reasons to characterise people like these in the UDF in that way?

PROF SWARTZ: There were terrorisms, obviously a very relativistic concept in the nomenclature of South African politics as you may well understand, I would be quite circumspect in who I would define as a terrorist, even the legacy of that particular apartheid lexicon, but if I understand by terrorism you mean somebody who acts out, for whatever political or otherwise reason, an act of terror or violence of coercion to achieve political ends which could otherwise be achieved through other means, then my answer would be, in respect to the person you are asking me about, Matthew Goniwe and the three others, unqualifiedly no. They were not people that saw their role as military officials and in my discussions and my many experiences in organising with Matthew in particular, but also Ford, I was given you know quite a clear idea that we were in a similar broad movement together and that we couldn't possibly pursue other tactics like military tactics because that would compromise or set us up basically for banishment by the regime, so we were quite clear about the boundaries, if you like, within which the UDF had to operate at the time and to go back to your comment that you were making about the comparison between the 1950s and the 1980s, our strategic perception at that time was quite clear, that the regime would do anything in its way to compromise the integrity and the legality of the UDF and many legal and semi-legal and often illegal means had been used to narrow the grounds, if you like or the boundaries, within the UDF was operating at the time, but we wanted to resist that as far as possible.

MR BIZOS: Now, having heard our learned friends and their witnesses, they appear to have regarded mass action, school boycotts, shop boycotts and such activities as terrorism or protesting against illegitimate structures such as council as terrorism. How did you view those accusations at the time?

PROF SWARTZ: You see, in terms of our own theoretical understanding of how to effectively oppose and hopefully to overcome the apartheid system, the first line of political contestation if you like is to render the institutions by means of which it attempted to exercise it's power and impose it's own legitimacy ineffective. In other words, the shortest way would be to render those institutions that they try to impose on our people and on South Africa in general if you like, unworkable and we - in that sense the UDF shared a similar perspective with the ANC as well as also since the 1940s the non-European Unity Movement a strategy of non-collaboration. In other words that we would try to desist people from participating in institutions which in our view did not represent democratic interests and had no basis to claim of legitimacy. So to that extent the argument that it was an attempt at insurrection would be a more far fetching hypothesis. The strategy at the time was to render these institutions unworkable so that it would force the regime to speak directly to the institutions that we felt represented the broadest interest of the people and we clearly did not recognise the tricameral parliament and the political parties that were participating in it, as legitimate representative organisations. So the short term political strategy if you like was to basically make sure that the regime recognises and speaks to the representative organisations of the South African majority. 

MR BIZOS: In 1985 you told us that you were a close political colleague with Mr Matthew Goniwe and how would you describe your relationship with Mr Calata?

PROF SWARTZ: I obviously knew at the time about the history of Ford, he comes from a legendary family routed in the history and traditions of the ANC, but I met him essentially through my relationship with Matthew and it is through that relationship that I began to develop an understanding of where they were coming from and the difficult conditions under which they operated. My closest friendship, collegial and in the latter days also at a much more personal and emotional level, was clearly with Matthew, but in my interactions with Matthew and others, I then established a relatively collegial relationship with Ford Calata.

MR BIZOS: Just one detail for the sake of completeness. In relation to Ford Calata, was his grandfather an ordained Minister of the Church of Province in South Africa and the ANC Chaplain from the late '20s to the early '60s when he died?

PROF SWARTZ: That's what I was implying by the legend behind Ford himself, yes that's true.

MR BIZOS: And your relationship with Mr Sparrow Mkhonto?

PROF SWARTZ: I knew Sparrow for probably over two to three years before then, mainly also as again through Matthew who was my main point of access to the people that we worked with in Cradock at the time. As a person I probably didn't know him as well as I would now want to today, sadly so I cannot say that I knew him very deeply and as much as I did in the case of Matthew, but I knew of where he was coming from and his general dispositions and so on and he often accompanied Matthew particularly on driving because Matthew didn't have a licence at the time. One of the tragedies of the apartheid era also on his side and therefore often needed somebody to drive him to various locations and Sparrow performed that role many times.

MR BIZOS: And what about Mr Mhlauli?

PROF SWARTZ: Mr Mhlauli ... (intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: ... (inaudible) Professor tell me did you make that statement with the aid of an interpreter?

PROF SWARTZ: Did I make that statement to?

CHAIRPERSON: With the aid of an interpreter?

PROF SWARTZ: No, at the time, with Lieutenant Els?

CHAIRPERSON: Ja?

PROF SWARTZ: No I'm afraid not.

CHAIRPERSON: What language did you speak?

PROF SWARTZ: (inaudible) and he probably - I don't know what he knew of myself. He wasn't, as far as I remember, and I knew most of the UDF operatives at the time, one of the serving officials on the structures of the UDF in the Eastern or the Western Cape, but I certainly knew him as - from Matthew again as a reliable comrade involved in the democratic movement at the time.

MR BIZOS: Was he an office bearer in any way?

PROF SWARTZ: As I said, as far as my recollection is concerned, neither in the Eastern Cape, certainly not, but not in the Western Cape as well. I don't think he at the time served in any branch structure of the UDF at that time.

MR BIZOS: You had regular meetings of the region, did you, during 1985?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes we did.

MR BIZOS: On a specific date?

PROF SWARTZ: The 27th.

MR BIZOS: No, on a specific day of the week, generally speaking?

PROF SWARTZ: There was a measure of regularity about our meeting, but as historical circumstances go, we often changed that because of conditions.

MR BIZOS: Was there a meeting to take place on the 26th of June 1985, the Wednesday?

PROF SWARTZ: I think originally, yes. We tried to set up a meeting on that day and then we realised that it was also Freedom Charter Day and that made it a bit difficult to pull together a meeting of the kind that we wanted to.

MR BIZOS: And did you change the date?

PROF SWARTZ: As far as my recollection goes I think we decided then that we would want to - the Port Elizabeth group - the vast majority, except for Matthew, the regional committee of the UDF of the Eastern Cape were based in Port Elizabeth so naturally it was easier for us to meet as a group then it would be the case of Matthew and I think at that stage Matthew then informed us that he would be unable to make it for the 26th and if we do go on with the meeting, then perhaps what he would do is to come down a day or two later for a debrief by myself.

MR BIZOS: Did you hold a meeting on the 26th of the people that could make it?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes, I think we did.

MR BIZOS: And was there any communication with Matthew for you to meet on the 27th?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes, as far as I can remember, we had a telephone conversation if not more, certainly on the day of his coming down to Port Elizabeth, on the 27th.

MR BIZOS: A communication by telephone?

PROF SWARTZ: By telephone, that's right.

MR BIZOS: On the telephone, were you told whether he would be coming alone or who would be coming with him?

PROF SWARTZ: No, he simply indicated that he would be coming down.

MR BIZOS: Do you remember the time which this telephone discussion took place?

PROF SWARTZ: I think it was very early in the morning, he had a habit of calling me quite early on in the mornings, probably about five thirty or 6 o'clock that particular morning. The reason why we decided to communicate because I was working at the time and I would naturally - seven thirty I would be on my way to work.

MR BIZOS: I see and was he able to tell you early in the morning whether the meeting would take place or was there another telephone call later on during that morning?

PROF SWARTZ: Perhaps I should describe the nature of communication at the time to give you a sense of why the conversations were cryptic at the time. At the time the UDF was under tremendous pressure from the State (inaudible), from particularly the intelligence and the security branch services of the government, so in order to make sure that our activities can take place as far as possible uninterruptedly, we kept conversations about details on telephone and public lines to a minimum on the assumption that the telephones may have been bugged, electronic devices may have been used and so on, so I remember in most of my conversations in the past with Matthew - it was almost a standard conventional practice at the time that we rarely discussed on telephone lines that we suspected that were bugged, matters of detail, only if we really had to then we did. So I think at this stage my recollection is that I may have had another contact during the day, once he was in Port Elizabeth, then he would have called us, once he was safe. You may also remember that a couple of months before then there was a gruesome murder of the Pebco three so that sort of like raised a level of vigilance and awareness that may have not been there in years before, so we were quite careful in the way that we were communicating so I think my arrangement with him on that day was that once he is in Port Elizabeth, he would call me and then we could establish the details of where to meet and the time. 

MR BIZOS: Did you arrange a meeting on the telephone on that morning?

PROF SWARTZ: Subsequent to the first conversation?

MR BIZOS: Yes.

PROF SWARTZ: I think so.

MR BIZOS: Where was the meeting arranged for?

PROF SWARTZ: The original venue was supposed to be the UDF offices but then Matthew and I felt that that may not be the safest place, again for the same reasons that I've outlined earlier in relation to electronic bugging of telephones, our assumption was by then that the security branch to be specific, was observing and monitoring the offices so we probably felt it would not be a safe place to have a confidential and uninterrupted, you know, set of conversations and for that reason we decided to shift it to another private venue, to the house of Michael Coetzee, a friend and colleague of ours.

MR BIZOS: Now we have heard that this - your house was the meeting at which - was the place at which a meeting took place between you, the four deceased and others and that your house was under surveillance and the applicants who killed them knew that the four deceased were in your house holding a meeting. What do you say about that evidence Mr Swartz?

PROF SWARTZ: Well I can be quite emphatic that the meeting did not take place at my house. The principle reason for that was that I never had meetings at my house again on the assumption because I was a fairly high profile political figure at the time, that it would be monitored or it would be bugged and I've never had meetings at my house, so it would be consistent with that arrangements. The venue was arranged at Michael Coetzee's house because we felt that the house would be relatively safer than any of the others places that we used to meet at, particularly the UDF offices and my own house so that would be untrue.

MR BIZOS: Who was Mr Coetzee?

PROF SWARTZ: Michael Coetzee was a colleague and friend of ours. He's was also working for the Chemical and Industrial Worker's Union at the time. He was an activist and (indistinct) was politically involved but not at the same level I suppose as Matthew and myself and we felt it would be safer to meet at his mother's house as opposed to the others as well.

MR BIZOS: And did you see the four deceased at Coetzee's house later that day?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes I did.

MR BIZOS: Did you expect the other three to come?

PROF SWARTZ: No, I cannot say that thinking back about that period, no it wasn't mentioned on the telephone conversation with Matthew. I probably expected somebody to accompany him simply because he never drove so that could be a reasonable assumption, but I didn't know the particular persons that would be accompanying him.

MR BIZOS: How far is Michael Coetzee's house from yours?

PROF SWARTZ: Gosh, probably about six to eight kilometres away.

MR BIZOS: In different townships?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes definitely.

MR BIZOS: Yes, and did you have a meeting with all the persons that came to Coetzee's house or just you and Matthew Goniwe?

PROF SWARTZ: My meeting was set up for the specific purposes of seeing Matthew Goniwe because he was an office bearer and he was the rural organiser for the UDF at the time so I've only met with him on that evening. I had been - obviously had social conversation with the others as we came into the house, but we almost immediately separated because we were under pressure and we probably both wanted to get the business done and it was in the evening already at the time.

MR BIZOS: Did you brief him on the matters discussed the previous day?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BIZOS: Did they want to set off and was there any discussion as to whether they should set off or not?

PROF SWARTZ: Set off, in other words?

MR BIZOS: Back home?

PROF SWARTZ: Oh back home, yes. As I think I remember I stated to the Lieutenant that took a statement from me at the time is that we were very well aware at the time of the dangers of moving around between cities and town in the Eastern Cape and we were very gravely worried at the time about Matthew and the others, their safety as well, so we tried to as far as possible to reduce the times when people would be driving during the night. So my first point to Matthew was wouldn't it be a good idea for him and the others, now that they are in PE, to sleep over and to set off the next day. He felt, unfortunately now in hindsight, that he needed to see Nyami and that they had other social commitments, family commitments at home and for that reason he wanted to leave as soon as he could that same evening. We then - I then remember quite explicitly asking them about if there are any security arrangements that he would be making to make sure that his trip is safe, because we were quite aware of the times that we were being followed and monitored and the chances of being abducted or kidnapped or even being arrested at the time were obviously quite high and he told me almost towards, as we were going out of the house that he would not stop unless he'd be signalled by a police vehicle or a traffic vehicle and I think that that was basically where we ended the conversation about him leaving or not.

MR BIZOS: What were the other three doing whilst you were reporting on the discussions of the previous day to Matthew?

PROF SWARTZ: I can remember quite well, that period they were sitting in another room and they were busy meeting and talking to Michael Coetzee who came in also later.

MR BIZOS: You later heard about their deaths?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes, the first time when my concern levels started going up was when his wife, Nyami, called me the following morning and asked me whether I knew where they were and I remember at time when her words started coming out that I felt this sense of worry coming up because I had then assumed that they were already at home and I felt that something was wrong, so it was only the following morning that we suspected that something was wrong because that evidently had not arrive back at home, but we obviously didn't know, at that stage I didn't know what was to be their fate.

MR BIZOS: Thank you Mr Chairman.

NO FURTHER QUESTIONS BY MR BIZOS

CHAIRPERSON: Ms Patel have you got any questions?

MS PATEL: Mr Swartz there's just one aspect that I'd like you to elaborate on if at all possible. Much has been made by the applicants of the state of anarchy at that stage and part of their motivation I suppose for targeting Mr Goniwe as a high profile activist at that stage was based and motivated by the fact that he was the author of the G-Plan. Do you bear any knowledge of this plan and if so, could you please outline the aims of the plan, the manner in which it was executed and the consequences thereof?

PROF SWARTZ: Right, I assume the G in this case means Goniwe and that it is similar to, as far as my own recollection of the political theories of the times concerned, is similar or analogist to the Mandela Plan of the 1960s when he was in the underground so to speak and I think if I can basically give my own sense of what it was, it's to set up grass roots, neighbourhood based structures through which communities then can express their legitimate interests in exercising political power and decision making in a particular geographical community. That is essentially the essence of it, it is nothing originally South African, it is an idea that comes from many liberation, you know, texts in Brazil, in the Philippines and at the time we were studying various sorts of historical context in order to draw lessons from that. Now far from being an instrument to foment anarchy, as far as we were concerned, that the old apartheid local councils had collapsed at the time and the erection of the Mandela or the Goniwe Plan structures was to supplant those illegitimate structures and to create and restore democratic order again in those townships. So instead of you know, encouraging the breakdown and collapse of social and cultural life - most of my conversations with Matthew and Ford and number of other leaders in the Province was that now that the State structures are collapsing, how do we build new alternative forms of democracy already as apartheid was beginning to cave in. Our assumption was that we should not begin to build the rudiments, the building blocks of a new South Africa at the time of a future elections. We already calculating and talking about future scenarios. We were saying that we should create local organs already during the course of the struggle to undo the apartheid system. So my thesis and I think a lot of my other colleagues may point this out as well, is that this was hardly any indication of an anarchistic movement that leads to a disillusion and annihilation of order, but it was the erection of the establishment of alternative structures to manage a new emerging social order. That's my response.

MS PATEL: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Any questions Mr Van der Merwe?

MR VAN DER MERWE: No questions at this stage, thank you Mr 

Chairman.

NO QUESTIONS BY MR VAN DER MERWE

CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR BOOYENS: Mr Swartz you said that you wouldn't describe Mr Goniwe as a terrorist. Would you describe him as an activist?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: When would you describe somebody as an activist?

PROF SWARTZ: Well activism is a word that basically denotes somebody that, in our terms at least, was actively involved or committed to the pursuance of democratic goals in that time and also through democratic means.

MR BOOYENS: So in other words a politically active person?

PROF SWARTZ: Ja, at the very least a politically committed person.

MR BOOYENS: I see. And now on a scale of importance as an activist in '84/'85, where would you rate Mr Goniwe?

PROF SWARTZ: Gosh that's a difficult question I must confess because it's often - I could read to be callous if I rate somebody low and he could be or she could be rated by somebody else on different terms, but if you comparatively talk about the Province or if you talk about the country as a whole ... (intervention)

MR BOOYENS: Let's stick to the Eastern Cape.

PROF SWARTZ: Eastern Cape - I think Matthew would have been somebody in the front line of activity.

MR BOOYENS: I see.

PROF SWARTZ: Certainly.

MR BOOYENS: And Mr Calata?

PROF SWARTZ: At the time my recollection is that Ford was also prominent, but not as prominent as Matthew in the Province as a whole. I would suggest that he would have been much more focused on that particular sub region of Cradock and the surrounding areas as opposed to the entire Eastern Cape in terms of his leadership projection.

MR BOOYENS: So Mr Goniwe was, if we talk about leadership potential and leadership capability, was certainly, on everything I have seen about him, was an outstanding man, a man that had he lived would probably today have been in high office?

PROF SWARTZ: You could reasonably assume so. I could also say the same about Ford as well.

MR BOOYENS: I see.

PROF SWARTZ: Because I qualified it by saying that I think Ford chose or between Matthew and Ford they chose that the one would play a more local and backseat support role and the other one would play a more external role. Probably the same relationship between myself and Michael Coetzee as well.

MR BOOYENS: I see and Mr Mkhonto?

PROF SWARTZ: Now the difficulty comes in. I cannot rate humanity on such scales.

MR BOOYENS: Okay, let me ask you this, would you rate him as an activist?

PROF SWARTZ: Oh yes, yes.

MR BOOYENS: Playing what sort of political role?

PROF SWARTZ: I think my recollection, if it's correct, then Sparrow at the time focused a lot on Cradora and Cradoya, the two main democratic organisations in Cradock.

MR BOOYENS: Let's refer to him as an important man in the local affairs as Cradock and not necessarily Provincial. Would that be a more or less correct description would you say?

PROF SWARTZ: Well I could say it's a reasonable assumption.

MR BOOYENS: Reasonable assumption, ja I'm basing on what you tell me. Now you knew about Mr Mhlauli, you told us. Is that correct?

PROF SWARTZ: Uh uh.

MR BOOYENS: Knew about him as an activist, a person that was active in politics also?

PROF SWARTZ: No I didn't know precisely about the nature of his activism. I had all these conversations with Matthew about the networks, about the people that he was, because he was doing a lot of work in the rural areas and he was so phenomenal in his success that he often worked outside of the parameters of the area that was given him. You may well remember that the area where Mr Mhlauli was coming from was in Oudtshoorn. Now in the UDF constitution that falls under the Western Cape UDF, so in a sense, I mean if somebody had been very bureaucratic in the UDF at the time he or she would have argued ... (inaudible - change of tape) an outlying of the hemisphere that we were organising in. So it was only in that context when I began discussing with him different networks and people that I think on one occasion at least he did mention the name. I didn't know and he didn't elaborate on the level of activism or whether he was involved in a particular structure, if I can correctly remember.

MR BOOYENS: Yes, but I'm just trying to understand. He also obviously didn't just mention him as a casual acquaintance, he mentioned him as a contact person in connection with his political activities, obviously?

PROF SWARTZ: Let me be much more specific what I think I'm probably working towards suggesting is that I was probably asking at the time whether in the Oudtshoorn area who were the sorts of people you know that are involved in structures at that level and I presume that in that context you know his name may have been mentioned, but he was never mentioned in a sense of being a UDF leader in that sense.

MR BOOYENS: He was not in other words, and once again unfairly so, as far as profiles go at that stage he was certainly not a man with a prominent profile. Would that be more or less correct?

PROF SWARTZ: At least in so far as the UDF structures is concerned, ja.

MR BOOYENS: I see. You were unaware of his local involvement in that Oudtshoorn area?

PROF SWARTZ: I'm afraid, ja I didn't know that.

ADV POTGIETER: I'm sorry. What sort of knowledge did you have about the Oudtshoorn situation?

PROF SWARTZ: What sort of?

ADV POTGIETER: What sort of knowledge did you have about the situation in Oudtshoorn?

PROF SWARTZ: From two sorts of sources, from Matthew as well as from people involved in Oudtshoorn like Reggie Olifant and the Saamstaan newspaper people and I'd actually spoken in Oudtshoorn and many of the activists there were trained in fact by us in Port Elizabeth at the time so I could say I had a general knowledge of the area, but certainly not the details of the individuals and then again in the 1980s so many new activists came into the fold that it was hardly possible to keep track of people hence my discussion with Matthew about individuals.

ADV POTGIETER: But on the whole you had a fair idea of what the big names, if I might put it that way, were in Oudtshoorn?

PROF SWARTZ: Oh I think so, I think so. Of the UDF structures anyway. I can't speak ... (intervention)

ADV POTGIETER: Yes, that's what I'm talking about. You referred to Mr Olifant, Mr Mhlauli in so far as your recollection goes, wouldn't fall into that sort of category?

PROF SWARTZ: Again you're compromising my ... (intervention)

ADV POTGIETER: Yes, I'm sorry, we've got to be quite frank, it's very important I must add for our purposes.

PROF SWARTZ: Ja, I can see. With the qualifications that I've added, please accept that. I would suggest that you know the person that - Mr Mhlauli was not as prominent, at the time anyway, in UDF structures in the Oudtshoorn area, as for example Mr Olifant at that stage.

ADV BOSMAN: At the time of the death of Mr Goniwe and the others, did Mr Mhlauli's position not come up, wasn't it discussed in the context of the four of them having being killed as far as you know?

PROF SWARTZ: Could you just repeat the first part, I just missed that?

ADV BOSMAN: At the time of the death and the funeral of Mr Goniwe and the others, was Mr Mhlauli's sort of position within the context of the broad movement not discussed?

PROF SWARTZ: I can at least remember at one stage that we were trying to figure out why the four, why - we know Ford and we certainly knew Matthew were targets and there'd been many death threats as you may or may not know against at least Matthew and I know on one or two occasions Ford as well, but we couldn't figure it out why Sparrow and Mr Mhlauli was basically also included in you know, this case so in that context then we were trying to speculate or work out why, you know they were killed to put it bluntly, but there was never really, as far as I, at least not in the circles that I moved, an attempt to establish that as a legal fact so to speak, it was purely a political discussion and speculation on our part.

ADV BOSMAN: Was it accepted that Mr Mhlauli regularly moved in the circle of the other three or was it sort of - did you feel that it was exceptional that he had been there, that he had been in their company?

PROF SWARTZ: Well to this day I think it was an exception. I haven't seen, you know, in my past you know meetings with Matthew and Ford I've never had the occasion to meet Mr Mhlauli so I think it's a reasonable assumption on my part to assume that it was exceptional set of circumstances that may have brought him to Port Elizabeth at the time because on the basis of historic occurrences, he's never, as far as I know, accompanied him in meetings with myself in Port Elizabeth or elsewhere.

CHAIRPERSON: Professor we - you were the Secretary General of the UDF in the Western Cape. Would you have had a broad knowledge of who was doing what within the UDF circles in the Eastern Cape?

PROF SWARTZ: I would suppose that my role would have been that, yes.

CHAIRPERSON: Ja, now during the course of this hearing we've been told that there was a list of people targeted for death which included the names of the four deceased amongst others. We're not too sure how many names were on that list. Let's be safe and say there were ten names, if that list did exist. Would Mr Mhlauli's name have - should it have appeared in the top ten of the UDF activists?

PROF SWARTZ: From a logical point of view I can totally try to detach myself from the morality of the circumstances under which these acts were occurring and put myself in the boots of the people that were calculating political interventions of this sort at the time, I would have said probably no. I would see no reason why that would benefit the State's interest.

CHAIRPERSON: You see this is especially so because from the evidence that we've heard, that the people whose names were on this list were being held, wrongly or rightly, held responsible for what was termed to be the mayhem in the Eastern Cape, that four of them came from Cradock is a matter that we won't discuss now and it is in that context that I asked the question that whether you being the Secretary General of the UDF would have expected a name like Mr Mhlauli to be on this target list.

PROF SWARTZ: As I said I don't think so, from a logical and strategic thinking point of view. I would have gone, and this is now really pushing it beyond the boundaries of my own sense of imagination, I would have probably gone for you know the formal leadership structures because they were essentially the organisational mechanisms through which the day to day activities were being co-ordinated. If you basically paralyse those structures then you stand a chance of dissipating the collective energies of the cumulative effect of the collective energies of the different branches and organisations in the UDF at the time, so from that point of view I would probably say, without the qualifications, no.

MR BOOYENS: Let's do the same exercise that his Lordship has just done and take the following into account. Mr Goniwe was the country districts organiser for the UDF at the time. Is that correct?

PROF SWARTZ: Uh uh.

MR BOOYENS: Now if one should go for the country district areas in the Eastern Cape at the time and I would now include Cradock and the other - sorry I'm not from the Eastern Cape, I don't know the area very well, but the other places in that area, the little towns and so on. Surely Mr Goniwe would have been a far more important figure as far as that areas are concerned, not so, the country areas?

PROF SWARTZ: It depends what you mean by important?

MR BOOYENS: Important in terms of his relative political importance in the area. That's what really I'm talking about?

PROF SWARTZ: Oh you mean relative to the other UDF leaders?

MR BOOYENS: Ja, relative - we are talking about the country districts now, we are not talking about PE, I'm not talking about the city. Yes I think we are at the same level Professor, thank you.

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: If we do the same exercise, I know it's unpleasant but let's just look at his importance not necessarily whether one - let's not talk about lists - his importance in that area. You've already told me that as an activist you would put him in the front line, you remember earlier on in your evidence. Now as far as the country areas are concerned, he must have been one of the most prominent people as far as the country areas are concerned. Would that be correct?

PROF SWARTZ: I think so.

MR BOOYENS: I see and Mr Calata?

PROF SWARTZ: I certainly think so as well.

MR BOOYENS: You think so as well and at least on, let's then talk municipal level, Mr Mkhonto would be an important man as well?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: Municipal level meaning Cradock itself. Now the Eastern Cape has been ascribed, and I don't know necessarily whether it was people sharing your political sentiments or people sharing the political sentiments that the security forces (indistinct), at some time as the engine of the revolution. Do you agree with that description?

PROF SWARTZ: That's a difficult one. I certainly would suggest that it was in the frontline of building new structures and developing a new political culture and energy all together unprecedented up until then. And so to that extent the Eastern Cape was perhaps certainly the leading force, you know a hegemonic political region in the UDF those days anyway.

MR BOOYENS: And I'm asking about matters of historic fact Professor, the Western Cape region, had that - I'm talking about '84/'85, I'll qualify it if I'm not talking about that era please. '84/'85 Would you say that the Western Cape are had already been activated or was it still in the process of being activated?

PROF SWARTZ: It had been activated as far as I am concerned.

MR BOOYENS: Obviously not on a higher level as the Eastern Cape because I think we have more a less an agreement that the Eastern Cape was really the example for many to look up to?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes, I would use the word intensive political mobilisation in the Eastern Cape whereas in the Western Cape it was perhaps more scattered and fragmented and concentrated in one area as opposed to another area so it wasn't at the same level as the Eastern Cape.

MR BOOYENS: Ja, that's the way I understood it. So not being a political man myself, but if one had political ambitions and you wanted to activate the area, that would certainly be an area that still needed to be concentrated on to get it on par with for example the Eastern Cape. Do I understand you correctly?

PROF SWARTZ: You could probably say that amongst a variety of other places.

MR BOOYENS: Oh yes, ja. If we do the exercise with the whole country we're going to spend far too much time here. So and in so far as national meetings of UDF was concerned, obviously one of the matters that was concerned is, especially where you've got the situation, is area Eastern Cape for example as being activated, it's politically active, Western Cape is sporadic or only small areas, some areas nothing is happening and so on that would, for an organisation like the UDF, obviously be a matter of some concern and a matter that needed to be addressed. Not so?

PROF SWARTZ: The UDF nationally?

MR BOOYENS: Ja, that's what I'm referring to.

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: And then one naturally wishes to pay attention to outlying areas like this and try to get them on par because it was a matter of some concern. Correct?

PROF SWARTZ: You say areas like this, meaning?

MR BOOYENS: Areas like, sorry areas that hadn't been properly activated, my apologies.

PROF SWARTZ: Oh in general terms obviously as ... (intervention)

MR BOOYENS: Ja, yes. Now are you in a position to deny that Mr Mhlauli was seen by Mr Goniwe as a man with great leadership potential?

PROF SWARTZ: I am, by virtue of my very limited knowledge of Mr Mhlauli at the time of his death, in hindsight I can probably try to do that, but now you're presumably asking me at the point of 1985. Is that a correct presumption?

MR BOOYENS: Well if you, you're welcome to go wider if you want to Professor. I think a man has potential or no potential, it doesn't really matter then from what time frame is looking. The question is really are you in a position to deny that Mr Mhlauli was seen as a man with leadership potential?

PROF SWARTZ: I am unable to consciously verify, you know, what might have gone on in Mr Goniwe's mind at the time when he was working with Mhlauli. I can make reasonable assumptions. If you ask me if it's a reasonable assumption whether Mr Goniwe had seen Mr Mhlauli as a potential leader then I could possibly say maybe yes, but I honestly have no objective means of ... (intervention)

MR BOOYENS: Of measuring it?

PROF SWARTZ: Ja, I'm afraid not.

CHAIRPERSON: Professor, the factual position is more interesting. Was Mr Mhlauli a person who was regarded within the UDF structures as a leader at that time?

PROF SWARTZ: Not within the UDF structures that I had, you know, been privy to. I'm afraid I cannot say that.

ADV POTGIETER: Professor what was the state of play in Oudtshoorn. There council for the applicants have asked you about the Western Cape, you say that Oudtshoorn in terms of the UDF infrastructure was part of the Western Province or Western Cape - I'm not sure what the terminology was. The level of activity or organisation in Oudtshoorn, was it similar to the situation in the Western Cape which left some potential for improvement?

PROF SWARTZ: No, in fact that actually the interesting case here that I wanted to point out earlier on but I didn't have a chance, is that you could probably say that Oudtshoorn was the exception to the general rule of a relatively weaker level of organisation in the Western Cape. It was probably more on par with, but not exactly the same as Cradock so there was a high degree of mobilisation taking place there and our concern at the time was to make sure that it doesn't dissipate and that it, because of the proximity between that particular town and other adjacent towns in the Eastern Cape we felt that, you know, nothing should prevent us from supporting the structures in the Oudtshoorn area. So I think it was probably different from you average cross section structure in the Western Cape political organisations.

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you.

ADV BOSMAN: Would it be correct to say that the schools were specifically targeted in this whole mobilisation effort?

PROF SWARTZ: I think you could make a case for that. Basically the assumption - can I establish the theoretical principle here if you like, is wherever people find themselves we felt that, you know, they should be organised. One of the reasons why the apartheid system succeeded for so long we felt was precisely by virtue of it's success to exclude and to marginalise people from participation in the socio, political and economic structures of the country. So the schools would naturally be an arena to organise and bring people together so that we can define and understand and also have means of representing their particular interest as a constituency, so targeted, well you could use the term, but yes.

MR BOOYENS: Oudtshoorn being active - stop me if I understood you incorrectly Professor, did I understand you to say and I - that you people from the Eastern Cape sometimes and I'm using the word advisedly but you as a man with a good command of the English language can understand what I'm getting at, you people from the Eastern Cape sometimes trespassed there although it was strictly speaking with Western Cape area. Is that correct?

PROF SWARTZ: I suppose if you want to stretch my lexicon, yes.

MR BOOYENS: Well you know what I'm getting at. You were also busy building up in Oudtshoorn although it was constitutionally outside your area, I thought I understood?

PROF SWARTZ: That's right.

MR BOOYENS: Were both you and Matthew involved there, Mr Goniwe?

PROF SWARTZ: No, not myself. Maybe I could just elaborate?

MR BOOYENS: Yes.

PROF SWARTZ: I think it must have been, I think by virtue of Matthew's historical ties to that particular area and also the fact that he was, as I say, quite an imaginative rural organiser. So my focus was basically keeping the UDF together as a whole province. I didn't specifically specialise or focus onto the details of rural organisation. Matthew's there, it's his province so to speak that.

MR BOOYENS: Ja, okay so in other words you didn't trespass there, but Matthew in enthusiasm for his cause certainly trespassed in the Oudtshoorn area.

PROF SWARTZ: Again I'm not using the same word trespassing. I would simply say that Matthew was more than what was expected of him and to that extent I never heard complaints from the Western Cape UDF and I've been in regular contact with Trevor Manuel and Cheryl Carolus and others that we've worked with at the time and being on the National Secretariat and the National Executive Committee, I probably would have had a view if there were difficulties in the relationship between Matthew and Oudtshoorn, even now (indistinct) coming from a constitutionally different area than the Eastern Cape.

MR BOOYENS: Okay, or if - so it is correct, Mr Goniwe was also played quite an active role in Oudtshoorn to your knowledge?

PROF SWARTZ: I think probably a supportive role and they saw him, presumably as a mentor, somebody that they could come to for advise with vision and a role model for the rest of the province.

MR BOOYENS: Yes, I understand that. And obviously I'm not suggesting that his acting outside his area of jurisdiction, it's obvious that it didn't cause any resentment from the Western Cape. 

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: Because the man was doing a good job. Now the ... (intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Booyens when you get to a convenient stage?

MR BOOYENS: Certainly Mr Chairman, this is as convenient as it would be in ten minutes time.

CHAIRPERSON: We'll adjourn till 2 o'clock.

COMMITTEE ADJOURNS

ON RESUMPTION

MR BOOYENS: Mr Chairman, Mr Swartz. I've got in my - as a matter of interest I presume you are quite capable of speaking Afrikaans as well?

PROF SWARTZ: Not quite, but I'm able to do so.

MR BOOYENS: And read it?

PROF SWARTZ: Read, yes.

MR BOOYENS: I've in possession of what was an Annexure, it's a certified copy of the statement you made which was handed in at the inquest, there's reference to it in the inquest. Would you mind just taking a look at this statement and tell me whether this is indeed the statement you made in connection with Mr Goniwe, A10. I see your council has handed ... (inaudible).

PROF SWARTZ: Given my explanation of what my meaning was behind it, yes.

MR BOOYENS: Now I would be glad if you can assist me. When you were talking to the four, that's now either before or after you and Mr Goniwe had your debriefing or your whatever one calls, it's not really material, did you discuss politics? 

PROF SWARTZ: With the other members, including Matthew Goniwe?

MR BOOYENS: Ja, ja.

PROF SWARTZ: No, except for the matter of, as I say, security.

MR BOOYENS: Just the security was discussed, the rest was just small talk?

PROF SWARTZ: Well I wouldn't call it small talk. Social conversation?

MR BOOYENS: Ja, in other words nothing of moment was really discussed?

PROF SWARTZ: Nothing of?

MR BOOYENS: Moment, nothing important?

PROF SWARTZ: Nothing with respect to the purpose of the meeting between myself and Matthew was discussed me meeting and discussing with the broader group in other words?

MR BOOYENS: Yes. And in that discussion, let's then just perhaps get back to it, apart from the security aspect did you discuss politics and I'm using the word in it's broadest possible sense, in other words UDF affairs and so on with the others or not?

PROF SWARTZ: Not myself I'm sure because I probably did not have the time that evening to do that, my explicit mission was to meet with Matthew and I remember as I was busy talking to him that my colleague Michael Coetzee then spoke to and that may have been more than simply what you call small talking.

MR BOOYENS: I see. But you obviously don't know the contents of any discussion there was. You can't assist us there.

PROF SWARTZ: I honestly can't recollect.

MR BOOYENS: If you can just go to the first page, the 1, 2, 3, 4. I have always been under the impression that individuals couldn't be members of the UDF, that the UDF was a sort of umbrella organisation to which the organisation is affiliated. Not so?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: Perhaps then if you could just explain this statement, referring to Messrs Calata and others: "They were all members of the UDF and not managerial members".

PROF SWARTZ: Well there's obviously a distinction between somebody, it seems to me, serving in an executive structure and executing authority so to speak of an organisation which itself is constituted by a number of other small organisations. Now if you then say somebody's an office bearer of that organisation then he's a designated official, Chairperson, Deputy Chairperson, Secretary and so on. Now in the case of people that are members or part of the UDF via membership of other organisations to the UDF, I think that ... (intervention)

MR BOOYENS: You don't need to bother to go any further, I understand what you are saying.

PROF SWARTZ: Okay.

MR BOOYENS: Because they were members of affiliated organisations they were regarded ... (intervention)

PROF SWARTZ: It means basically that they ... (inaudible)

MR BOOYENS: Whether it was right or wrong, the UDF was banned by the then government in 1987. Is that correct? It was declared an illegal organisation.

PROF SWARTZ: It was a restricted I think, I am not so sure ... (intervention)

MR BOOYENS: Well in any case they took some legal steps against it to curtail it's activities.

PROF SWARTZ: That's right.

MR BOOYENS: So would you agree with me that quite clearly the perception of the powers that be about the UDF and your perception were poles apart?

PROF SWARTZ: Between the State, the government and the UDF?

MR BOOYENS: Ja, that's what I refer to.

PROF SWARTZ: Well our calculations at the time and my own perceptions also to a large extent was that the State was divided, that there was a camp arguing for a greater degree of tolerance of accommodation of (indistinct) between the democratic forces inside the country and the government. In fact this particular wing so to speak, if like the doves of the government of the time felt that an accommodation scenario could well be an eventuality of the outcome of political struggle along the line. They had argued at the time as I also correctly remember from my knowledge of the period that it was possible to divide the UDF from the rest of the ANC. In other words if you can then co-opt so to speak the UDF into a kind of an accommodation arrangement, you may well be able to then dissipate the political mobilisation, the revolutionary moment so to speak. The other camp which is often referred to as a more "kragdadige" camp ... (intervention)

MR BOOYENS: The Hawks I think.

PROF SWARTZ: The Hawks, you know in English, in our view at the time and this was discussed in UDF circles, had a much more harder line and the supressionary strategy was at the heart of what they were doing and we felt by 1985 that the balance of power within the State was shifting towards the Hawks and that the room for manoeuvre on the side of the UDF as well as the government, ironically as well, to be able to find a meaningful way out of the crisis seemed to have diminished substantially, probably beyond return, we thought at that stage.

MR BOOYENS: Sometimes one also talks about the Securocrats, that was the sort of military/police faction of the then government, they are the ones that one would have regarded as the Hawks, not so?

PROF SWARTZ: That's right, you know our analysis has never been that the State or the South African government was a monolithic entity, we knew, just like in the UDF there were many different opinions about how to tackle and solve the crisis, but they fundamentally agree you know that surrendering powers so to speak, you know to the opposition, was a non starter. So by the mid 80s we were quite clear that the State to was divided but not sufficiently so to cause a collapse of the State itself. 

MR BOOYENS: Ja, I get your drift. The UDF, from it's inception, was there to basically co-ordinate organisations. Is that correct?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: What would you say - beg your pardon Mr Chairman - and the organisations that were affiliated to it, if one can use, and I'm using a very broad term and correct me please Professor because you obviously know more about it than I do. Would you say that it was more or less a collection for resistance organisations. In other words if I talk about resistance, resistance against the then government?

PROF SWARTZ: It probably would be one way in which to define the nature of the forces that fell under the constellation of the UDF, but one could probably make a much more complex argument about how to define them. Many of them were much more than simply resistance organisations. By resistance I mean simply opposing a political entity or not, but many of them had a transformation perspective and I'm using that term very carefully here, not in a sort of run of the mill way. Matthew and myself had written papers together on how we speculated about different scenarios on the outcome of the conflict in the 1980s and our position was that we should not allow the townships, so to speak to descend in a state of anarchy, in fact it was a joke in our circles when Adrian Vlok at the talked about law and order collapsing and anarchy because our position was precisely to prevent simply a disillusion of political structures and there's no authority, basically being wielded by any institution or social forces or actors in a particular community. What we wanted to do is to create alternative, more democratic, more representative vehicles of representation in the schools, in the communities, everywhere basically that could become the basis for an alternative society, so we had a vision about how to do this, so in a sense my long answer to your short question is that they were not only resistance mode organisations there were also organisations with a long term transformation perspective so to speak.

MR BOOYENS: Ja, I think just that we understand each others terminology, transformation with an ultimate aim obviously being that a democratic government should come into power in the country. Is that - if we talk about transformation organisations?

PROF SWARTZ: That would be my interpretation of it, yes.

MR BOOYENS: Well you used the word, that's why I'm asking. Now when did - was it also part of the strategy of some of these organisations, and I'm specifically more referring to the let's call them globally the civics organisations. You understand my drift what I'm talking about?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: To number one, oust the existing town councils or what were they called in those day?

PROF SWARTZ: Local authorities.

MR BOOYENS: Local authorities, that was part of the aim?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes you could say oust by political means.

MR BOOYENS: Ja, discredit, make them ... (intervention)

PROF SWARTZ: Yes, it was about the legitimacy yes, ja.

MR BOOYENS: And basically to get the masses not to accept them?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: And get them to resign?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: And that campaign, if I call quite correctly, I come from a different part of the country, was quite successful? I don't know how successful it was in the Eastern Cape, it was certainly successful through other parts of the country.

PROF SWARTZ: I think it was extraordinarily successful in the Eastern Cape and particularly so in the Cradock area, hence the notion, as you also earlier proposed, that the Eastern Cape was seen as the engine of the democratic movement in the country, so by all means, yes that was part of the strategy.

MR BOOYENS: And dealing with Cradock specifically, when Cradora was formed was there already a vacuum at that stage. In other words can you tell us whether there was already a situation that there were no counsellors and so on?

PROF SWARTZ: Well my recollection of that period was that Cradora was formed at the time when there was massive disillusionment with the local authority system and as you may or may not know, that the system itself was under reform through a series of legal initiatives during the early 1980s as the government, in our view anyway, was grappling or battling to keep these structures legitimate and afloat so there they suffered a lack of credibility for a long long time, since the early 1970s when these structures were formed as you may well know in traditionally or historically defined African townships, but by the early 80s when Cradora was formed, it was to harness and to focus that opposition in a way that will then bring about their total collapse and then supplanting them with these, what we would argue, having more democratically elected structures.

MR BOOYENS: In this process of transformation there was indeed some violent conflict, I don't think we can really argue that it was otherwise, not so?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes, it's a matter of historical record.

MR BOOYENS: I mean in PE and in Langelishe I think it is ... (intervention)

PROF SWARTZ: Lingelishe (?).

MR BOOYENS: There was conflict between the security forces, police reinforcements were sent in, that type of thing it was happening. Is that correct?

PROF SWARTZ: That's right.

MR BOOYENS: Now would you say that was a sort of natural result of the transformation process?

PROF SWARTZ: You see, natural suggests to me that there were no other strategic options, it's intrinsic. I would say that it is a result of the obstinacy of the system not to recognise the signals of it's own demise at an early stage and assuming that by simply smashing the opposition you can defer the moment of revolution or you can make sure that the revolution never takes place. The assumption was that you can use the same sort of like tactics of the 1960s and '70s in the '80s and as far as we were concerned, by then the social forces and the conditions externally and internally in the country made it very difficult for the regime simply to rely on force alone.

MR BOOYENS: Professor once again I'm at phrases, you talk about basically they were trying to put off the revolution. In your definition, what is a revolution in these circumstances?

PROF SWARTZ: A total transformation of society. 

MR BOOYENS: By violent or peaceful means or only by violent means or ... (intervention)

PROF SWARTZ: No you could presumably have a revolution taking place in non-violent ways as well. But yes there are historical examples of violent revolutions certainly, but in this case I'm not necessarily talking about the violent route, the UDF's strategy was non-violent and your question to me was whether I thought that the violence was a natural result of the strategy that the UDF pursued and my argument is that the responsibility probably lies more on the State's counter strategy to the non-violent resistance of the ... (intervention)

MR BOOYENS: So are we really talking about a situation of violence causes violence and ultimately you sit in a situation that nobody really knows who threw the first stone?

PROF SWARTZ: Well one can probably establish who threw the first stone if you use your metaphor, I presume, because if you establish legislation that basically dominates and basically oppresses people then that is the first stone, it seems to me, to use your metaphor. 

MR BOOYENS: I was using it in a very broad sense, you're quite correct.

PROF SWARTZ: So that naturally then triggers off people - throughout history it's been the case and I don't want to give a philosophical account of it, but throughout history where people have been subjugated, sooner or later they have arisen, whether through passive resistance as we tried for many many decades through the Ghandian era, whether through arms struggle as the ANC pursued in the 1960s or mass mobilisation as the UDF had tried to do in the 1980s, the fact of the matter is that sooner or later it seems to me that people will be compelled to rise against a regime that they perceive to be illegitimate and in this case I don't think it's an unnatural response that people then desisted the South African government during the 1980s.

MR BOOYENS: So what happened in real terms, there was an unjust system and through it's mass mobilisation you got the masses together and instilled in them a sense of resisting this unjust laws. Would that be correct?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: Now, taking the unjustness of the system as a departing point, but the system wasn't just going to go peacefully it had to be forced out. Not so?

PROF SWARTZ: But presumably force could also be going on by peaceful means as well. Force is not necessarily violence.

MR BOOYENS: No, but it could also be a combination of the two. Not so?

PROF SWARTZ: Absolutely.

MR BOOYENS: Because we've heard evidence here in a document handed in by Mr Bizos, my learned colleague that I'm referring to, Exhibit U Mr Chairman and I'm not going to bore you with all the details contained in there because it's there for everybody on the committee to read, I'm just going to try and summarise it for you. This is a meeting of some State organ that was held in Cradock, basically army and police and were they gave a sort of breakdown of the situation in Lingelishe from the first date that I've got here the 7th of August 1983, namely that is the date that Cradoya, Cradock Youth Organisation, was formed and then on the 25th of August, the date when Cradora was formed and it goes from that date in '83 it goes through to the 3rd of February 1985, I'm including both Annexures Mr Chairman. Now it seems to me that during this period the situation in the Cradock area was certainly everything but peaceful. There was a lot of stone throwing incidents, there was arson that type of think which I don't think any of us would call peaceful resistance. You start throwing stones at police vans I think you're over the stage of peaceful resistance, not so? Irrespective of who provokes it whether it's the police or whoever.

PROF SWARTZ: Certainly there was, during the 1980s, almost in all the Eastern Cape townships a high degree of political mobilisation often resulting in violent acts, either provocation by you know the police, shooting at people and then they naturally retaliate or in case, not necessarily under any particular organisational umbrella, I have to emphasise, committing particular acts which you could call violence. So certainly, whether if the argument goes that Cradora and Cradoya where in fact promoting that and instigating it, then I would have a disagreement with that thesis. 

MR BOOYENS: Would one be wrong to say that sometimes you can create, I think one would call it, could call it perhaps the infrastructure in which violence can break out. If we just take the situation Cradoya, Cradora succeeds, tells the people we don't like this illegitimate town council of ours now although Cradoya and Cradora doesn't tell the people go and stone the house of the counsellors, the people themselves may decide to do it or a group within the people, that surely ... (intervention)

PROF SWARTZ: But you see when you create, you say create infrastructure you seem to imply then that it predisposes the people that are mobilised under that structure to do certain things. Now my argument would be that there's no evidence to suggest and since I've been party to most of those organisations, either directly or indirectly and I also know ... (inaudible - end/beginning of tape) ... but active political resistance against the regime. The reason why we were so explicit about it is because we knew if we overstepped the mark it will invite more violent retaliation and it would compromise the legal space which the UDF had been able to occupy so creatively since the beginning of the '80s, so I can turn the question the other way around about infrastructure. I would say that the State created the infrastructure that basically forced people often to resort to violent acts, it doesn't justify the nature of those acts often taken, but if you want to talk about predisposing people to react in a particular way - if the police comes in with a police infrastructure, comes into the townships and randomly shoots at people, at 4 o'clock at night breaks down doors then it seems to me then you could argue that the police infrastructure and the way it was set up conditioned or predisposed the community or elements in the community to react in such a way.

MR BOOYENS: I think I quite understand what you're saying, but the bottom line is, to put it bluntly, not only in Cradock but also in other areas there was a fight going on between the police, so-called security forces on the one hand and the masses, the mobilised masses on the other hand ... (intervention)

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: And there was - we talked earlier on about the fact that the Eastern Cape was more or less perfectly organised and so on, if in your involvement in the UDF and also in the National Executive of the UDF, as far as violence is concerned and whether it was - let's not deal with justified or unjustified at this stage, let's talk about violence clinically that is violent, you throw a stone, that's violent whether you were justified or not, that's violence - would you say that it would be a correct perception if I say my perception as an outsider is that the situation in the Eastern Cape in the '84/'85 period is that there was a lot of violence in the Eastern Cape in general?

PROF SWARTZ: As a general proposition, absolutely. As far as I'm concerned, yes.

MR BOOYENS: Would you like to, in your opinion which I'm sure one can pay attention to Professor, would you say this level of violence was higher here than other parts of the country or ... (intervention)

PROF SWARTZ: No necessarily. In the old Transvaal, Gauteng now, townships of Katlehong (?) and you know Mamelodi and so on there was ... (intervention)

MR BOOYENS: Soweto.

PROF SWARTZ: ... (indistinct) In KwaZulu Natal, then Kwazulu and then Natal, there was intense political violence for example between the IFP and UDF structures for example. In the Western Cape in the Crossroads as you may well remember during that time the vigilantes that was set up to demonstrate what I would call the privatisation of terror had instigated, you know, significant violence against the UDF forces in the Western Cape - the "Witdoeke", you may recall them from newspaper reports?

MR BOOYENS: I remember.

PROF SWARTZ: So I'm not so sure whether that argument is necessarily true, whether it was unique. I know it was particularly focused in Cradock for example and Uitenhage but it certainly wasn't in my view, that's just my opinion, unique.

MR BOOYENS: No I think we're at cross purposes. What I asked you is, I know there was violence in other parts of the country as well, I'm talking about the degree as a matter of degree. If you can express a view on it, would you say that, on your own observations, that there was a higher degree of violence in the Eastern Cape round about the 84/85 period than in other parts of the country, or wouldn't you like to express a view on that?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes I want to express a view, but I don't want to agree with it. My opinion is that it wasn't the violence necessarily that worried the State, it was the state of the collapse of the State administration and giving way to what they considered to be insurrectionary revolutionary organs. So the violence wasn't particularly, as far as we were concerned, unprecedented or more in other parts of the country for the reasons that I've outlined earlier, I thought, but it was rather to do with the state of the collapse of it's own instruments of control and the fact that the UDF in the Eastern Cape had in their view been so phenomenally successful in taking root as alternative reference points and legitimation in those areas.

CHAIRPERSON: Professor just tell me, you say this policy of non-violence was a well considered deliberate tactic on the part of the UDF and discourage violence because there was a suspicion that it would lay itself open to being restricted or banned or whatever. Nonetheless, during that period there was violence in the area of the Eastern Cape, are you in a position to tell us how that occurred if the UDF wasn't responsible for it?

PROF SWARTZ: Yeh, the question of responsibility is obviously a tricky one if you may Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: Well maybe not responsible, caused it or how was it caused?

PROF SWARTZ: Again I would also have difficulties about your word cause in my view, my opinion that is. I would suggest that that would be a very narrow explanation. I'm not suggesting that what the UDF at all times did not in some way directly or indirectly contribute towards a climate which may have encourage individuals or segments of the UDF to think that the next step is now to go from non-violent active resistance to violent resistance, but that would have to be treated on individual case by case basis as far as I'm concerned, but I'm also saying that it was the structural climate in the country at the time, driven as it were by the policies of the government of the time that predisposed people in the UDF often and people outside of the UDF often to act in the name of the UDF in doing that. Now to that extent I think, as my colleagues have said in an earlier appearance, that we would like to, as the UDF, in hindsight say that there could be a measure of moral responsibility that we could take, but that it was not taken you know with our conscious support and it certainly wasn't within the policy remit of the and it wasn't encouraged by the UDF at all. But there were many instances where individuals may have done things and claimed it was on behalf of the UDF and if there is a measure of indirect moral responsibility that UDF leadership in the Eastern Cape can take on that, I suppose that is an argument that would have sympathetic readings in many circles now that used to be in the UDF.

CHAIRPERSON: Professor perhaps to be more concrete, can I in that vein, in that context, we have one of the exhibits which is a transcript of one of the conversations that was tapped of Mr Goniwe on the 23rd of June 1985, that's a few days before this tragic incident, that you can listen and I'll read to you what this transcript reflects, a particular incident. It's a telephonic conversation between Mr Thembula Rhumkon from Hofmeyer and he calls Mr Goniwe on the 23rd of June 1985 and he says: "I just want to report to you that the Boers and the police were provoking us so we stoned them, they ran to town. We chased another Black policeman here in the township, he could not run and we caught him, we've beaten him up and took his service revolver". And then Mr Goniwe says: "Where's the revolver now?", and he says: "It is here with me". And then Mr Goniwe says: "Hey man you'll be shot there by the police, I don't know what advise to give you but as I say you are busy with a difficult battle which you will not win, what you can do, try and restore peace there". And that's the end of the conversation. Does that correspond with first of all the sort of experience that the leadership had in that time and is that the sort of response that you would have expected from Mr Goniwe given the way in which you knew him and his attitude and his approach?

PROF SWARTZ: I think the statement speaks eloquently for itself that as far as I remember my experiences of most of the UDF leadership of the time and again I'm generalising here, but also in particular Matthew and Ford, that was a general philosophy that we were trying to portray. We felt that if we did embark on the route to encourage people to go over to violence then the regime would basically shut up shop, they will simply clamp down on the UDF and close the legal space that had been emerging with the reforms of the early 1980's and to that extent, as far as I'm - I would say that Matthew's intervention there would be consistent with the idea that we should take a responsible position as an organisation with a legal political platform in the country at the times, so we were not condemning what the ANC was doing in terms of it's arm conflict outside of the country, certainly not but we felt in terms of our own role and our own position that we were more capable to pursue legal but active political opposition to the apartheid system, so that would be my response Advocate.

MR BOOYENS: Professor I just want to join you on something the honourable Chairman has asked you. The organisation level and the organisations in the Eastern Cape, would you say that most if not all of the resistance organisations - I'm deliberately excluding the banned organisations, ANC, PAC and so on, but the resistance organisations in the Eastern Cape were affiliated to the UDF?

PROF SWARTZ: No, oh sorry no to the extent that the PAC or AZAPO alliance or sympathetic organisations weren't necessarily part, it was mainly the organisations that broadly subscribed to the principles of non-racialism, charterists. You could stretch that so far as to say, although not all the organisations in the UDF necessarily conformed to the principles of the Freedom Charters, so I would suggest that yes, in terms of numbers and in terms of people support, the UDF commanded the greater support of the time. We thought so any way.

MR BOOYENS: And developing from there the organisations are affiliated to the UDF, but obviously you cannot control everything that they do, not so. Is that correct?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: Can we exclude the possibility that an organisation like Cradora for example may have done things which caused a sort of violent reaction to the, and I'm using violence in the sense that you used it, the violence perpetrated by the government in the first place by it's policies, is that conceivable that that could have happened?

PROF SWARTZ: You see again I'm quite careful about the word causing, because there's no compulsion on the State's side. If an organisation such as Cradora has a legal protest in the street, there's nothing that causes the State to come and charge with batons and shoot people with bullets, I think there's no causality in the relationship between the two so I would suggest that the State basically provoked further violent reaction by it's reaction to peaceful means.

MR BOOYENS: Very well. Let's talk about violence in reaction to provocation ... (intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: Professor, this provocation that leads up to all this (indistinct) of violence, is that not in the strict sense a cause for that violence?

PROF SWARTZ: One could have an argument - I was beginning to suggest that in my reply that the relationship, rather in my way the argument should be turned around, that the actual causality in the relationship comes from the State. The State has a responsibility in any democratic nation and in any case we're not talking about a democratic nation, but a nation that purported itself or a government that purported itself to be democratic and to be judged by those norms has the responsibility to create an environment for it's citizen that they can peacefully participate in the socio, economic and political structures of the given country. Now here we had a State ostensibly democratic with a formal constitution purporting to be democratic and had all the legal apparatus and conventions to portray this image, yet flagrantly violating the very basis, normative basis of it's own power. A State which basically reacted to peaceful means, active peaceful means, mobilisation not violence through basically tear gassing people, whipping people, putting people in jail and murdering people as well so I would find it an ironic way of turning the logic around. In fact as far as I'm concerned, the violence of the State as a so-called reaction to the democratic opposition, generated more violence in the process and it is there where the moral blame I think from the beginning lies.

MR BOOYENS: Yes I understand your philosophy and I can also understand why you say what you say Professor, but the bottom line was provocation, reaction but provocation on the one side, reaction on the other side and we had a situation of severe violence in some areas in the Eastern Cape.

PROF SWARTZ: Yes but as I say it was not only violence. You see if you describe ... (intervention)

MR BOOYENS: No, not only, I'm not suggesting that.

PROF SWARTZ: There wasn't all the time - it seems to me it portrays the image that everyday in 1984 if I can zero back to the time of Matthew's death and the other three as well, if you can sum up the totality of what was going on in a township as just violence then is would be unspeakable, because people still, you know, had ordinary domestic life. Politics as far as we were concerned was a positive craft to rebuild the communities lives to give them a sense of social solidarity, give them dignity, self worth, empowerment - positive things were going on in the midst of the violence there was already the beginnings of a new vision emerging in the townships so if you then want to describe simply violence and anarchy as a totalist definition, it defines everything that happened in a township in the 1980s, I would argue absolutely not.

MR BOOYENS: No, no I wasn't suggesting that, I wasn't suggesting that there was a fulltime shooting war going on there, not at all, but if one would go back to the situation on the ground in Langelishe in '84/'85 and go there in '97/'98 it's simply a completely different ball game isn't it?

PROF SWARTZ: True, at least we don't have an undemocratic State there.

MR BOOYENS: No, but apart from that, as far as the violence is concerned there is simply - unfortunately we're not that fortunate that there will ever be zero violence in this country, but the violence we are talking about now is usually violence that is a criminal type of violence, but if we exclude the criminal violence, there is simply no violence in a place like that anymore. Would that be more or less correct?

PROF SWARTZ: In the 1980s?

MR BOOYENS: No, now.

PROF SWARTZ: Now. Yes probably.

MR BOOYENS: Ja, whereas in '84/'85 - to distinguish between political and criminal violence, just to make my distinction clear to you Professor if I talk about criminal violence I'm talking about the man assaulting his neighbour or his wife or I've got a fight with my neighbour and I throw his car with a stone, in other words where the old frailties of humanity comes in no matter who governs the country, but in those days there was certainly a fair degree of political violence provoked by the government, it doesn't matter there was a fair degree of political violence. Do you agree with that?

PROF SWARTZ: Now I would agree with your statement.

MR BOOYENS: Similarly we've hear evidence that ... (intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Booyens, I just need clarity on that answer. There's evidence before us that because of that violence and Mr Goniwe was one of the people held responsible for such tactics if you want to call it, including violence and school boycotts and boycotts of shops and that type of things and that was the reason, as we understand it at this stage, that he was targeted for death. Now in view of the last question and your answer, I'd like to hear what ... (intervention)

PROF SWARTZ: You see your Honour you seem to be mixing violence with non-violent things, you add for example a boycott. My definition of a boycott is not a violent act so already the line of argument is compromised.

CHAIRPERSON: No, one of the aspects was that he was perceived to be one of the people responsible for this mayhem in the Eastern Cape amongst other things.

PROF SWARTZ: Ja, the perception was and your question, I would like to know is whether that may have led to the act of killing against?

CHAIRPERSON: We have evidence to the effect that because of that he's being held responsible for certain occurrences in the Eastern Cape, with others and that is why he was targeted for death and ultimately killed.

PROF SWARTZ: That may well have been one particular perception on the side of the people in government or security branches.

CHAIRPERSON: But was it true?

PROF SWARTZ: In my view not at all, not at all for the reasons that I thought I had been outlining for the last half an hour here that principly the focus of the actions of Cradora and Cradoya was non-violent active political opposition to the State and you would then have a whole range of means to do that. You do not need to go over to violence to achieve the end result which is to discriminate the State apparatus and to create alternative frameworks of reference for people to associate with. In other words my argument would be that the State collapsed a number of realities into one and it simply suggested to the outside world and to itself sadly, that what the UDF was doing was basically a seemless, you know, act of anarchy where boycotts, which is a non-violent act, is the same as basically shotting an RPG rocket at a particular place and it didn't have the intelligence as far as I am concerned to discriminate the differentiated nature of the force that was basically confronting it in the '80s and if you can read the literature of political resistance of the time, the ANC even was quite clear on the distinctions, it spoke about four pillars of struggle. It never talked about collapsing these different pillars of struggle, the arms struggle, the political underground, the mass movement and the international arena, but it kept them apart and it was quite clear in it's statements also that it did not want to see a collapse of these structures because it would compromise the integrity and the legality of the internal movement which we had to protect for as long as possible, using non-violent legal means to make sure that we can change the State from within. So my - I would suggest that that proposition is not true Your Honour.

MR BOOYENS: Would there - it's a given that there was violence in Cradock. I don't think we can get past that. Would you say the UDF in those days had the power to stop that violence, that it had in it's power to stop that violence?

PROF SWARTZ: I would suggest that in same cases yes, probably, but the violence is systemic. What I mean by that is that the system generates violence if you like because it basically imposes itself through violent means on the people that it seeks to subjugate, so I think yes of course there could have been case for example where, and there were cases in fact where UDF leaders intervened to save somebody for example from being seriously injured or being killed in many cases by (indistinct) for example in the townships, but by and large if you have a situation where you throw people together in conditions of extreme poverty and deprivation and you police them in an almost Nazi-like way in townships like Cradock, if you can think back around the 1980s, they were literally ring fenced, literally surrounded, barricaded then that is what I call systemic violence and whatever the UDF, you know, it could not have stopped or prevented the systemic violence because it stems from the system itself so there may have been cases that the UDF could have, you know, been much more successful at trying to stop the violence, but if you ask me about being able to resolve the structural violence in society, the only solution as far as we were concerned is by abolishing the structure that basically produces the violence.

MR BOOYENS: And the problem was it seems to me that the structure didn't like the idea that you wanted to abolish it and that's where the problems started?

PROF SWARTZ: I could see that, ja.

MR BOOYENS: It seems to me that's the case. Professor to go on to the situation in those days, I've heard it being spoken of no-go areas of areas that were ungovernable, I've heard it being said that in certain instances the situation was so - let me tell you whose this speaking, this is not me speaking, this is the police speaking - that in certain instances the areas were so ungovernable that unless they went in with armoured vehicles it was highly dangerous for the policemen that there was certainly acts of violence perpetrated against people perceived to be - in some cases with justification, other cases I presume not - to be collaborators of the system, we're talking about the notorious necklace murders and so on. Would you agree that in certain areas the - and I'm looking at it from the eyes of the government now, in certain areas there was certainly areas, in their perception, would have been regarded as ungovernable, in other words they had no control over it anymore, I think that's what they meant.

PROF SWARTZ: There was certainly - in official records it's basically the case that there was a view within government, it wasn't the only view however so there were other voices in government having a much more sophisticated reading of the situation, but you could be correct in saying there was a dominant view within the State apparatus during the 1980s as far as we were looking at it as well, that tried to portray the situation as totally ungovernable and yes.

MR BOOYENS: Well let's get down to the situation on the ground, in practical terms. In certain of the areas, were they still in control?

PROF SWARTZ: The government?

MR BOOYENS: Ja.

PROF SWARTZ: Yes I mean you're paying the salaries of teachers for example in the schools to the extent that they were functioning at one time, sure they were in control, but there were many areas in terms of authority structures, counsellors for example being able to do revenue collection for example so it was a fragmentation of the socio economic and political order. It wasn't even, it was uneven in different areas, different level of control it had. So you cannot paint then a unified picture, a seamless web of ungovernability in the townships.

MR BOOYENS: Let's give you some examples that have been given to me: police couldn't enter anymore and do ordinary police work - what I'm talking about now is the ordinary cop on the beat - sorry did you want some water?

PROF SWARTZ: Thanks. You were asking me a question?

MR BOOYENS: No the question is this, what is phrased ungovernability - I've been told that there were situations where you ordinary policeman on the beat, the bobby on the beat as the Brits call them, in other words the man that goes in there with an ordinary police van, two of them, simply couldn't to into those areas anymore because they were being attacked. Would that perception be correct that there were certain areas where that was the case?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: And the perception that in certain areas people who were perceived to be government lackeys or stool-pigeons or people like that were killed or were driven out of the area?

PROF SWARTZ: In certain instances, yes.

MR BOOYENS: It was made impossible in some instances for the policeman to live in town?

PROF SWARTZ: Township you mean?

MR BOOYENS: Townships, sorry yes.

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: They were chased out, they were attacked and so on so these things did ... (intervention)

PROF SWARTZ: Can I just say in all three cases you're obviously putting a one-sided view of it as if it was only the community making life difficult for those individuals, you're forgetting the violence that those individuals often were making against the community.

MR BOOYENS: No, I told you deliberately before I started that I'm telling you that I'm speaking to you from the perception of the policeman.

PROF SWARTZ: Sure.

MR BOOYENS: Obviously there are other perceptions from the other side of the political spectrum that saw it differently, I'm quite ready to accept that. If you could just ask your attorney if he would be so kind to place Exhibit K in front of you? Professor just the one that you've got in front of you has got Commissioner/Minister on the first page and "voorgestelde optrede" etc etc, do you see that?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: If you would be so kind to go to the second page of that document, you see there's a paragraph starting with Oscar Mpeta.

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: Now you're obviously able to understand the Afrikaans of that as well?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: I just would ask you, if you don't mind to read that up to where you see paragraph 7 at the next page, it's about ... (inaudible)

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: Mr Oscar Mpetha was who?

PROF SWARTZ: He was an old ANC stalwart and also a patron, an honorary member of the UDF. He wasn't an executive member but he was a kind of patron Statesperson on the UDF structure.

MR BOOYENS: Elder Statesman I think I sometimes have heard it called.

PROF SWARTZ: Yes. 

MR BOOYENS: We're still talking about '84/'85. Now this allegedly seems to be a verbatim quote of something Mr Mpeta said on 20 October 1984. How do you read this, how do you interpret this? Certainly some part of his metaphor I've got not doubt about it but you see "If you see a stone in your way you first try to remove it and if it won't budge you take a hammer and break it". What does that mean to you?

PROF SWARTZ: To me?

MR BOOYENS: Ja, how would you interpret that?

PROF SWARTZ: It could certainly mean one of two things, either the physical act of crushing them, which would probably be a possibility or the political act of breaking their will to ensure that they are not basically present there in the townships. In fact why I'm, the reason why I'm (indistinct) on the latter is his statement there, and I've just read this for five seconds: I don't say that you must kill them. In other words his definition of crush would therefore not be violent it would be probably a reasonable way of reading the rest of the sentence. In other word crushing would be a political means of crushing them, so it's a metaphor as far as I'm concerned.

MR BOOYENS: Yes that's what I said, I thought it was. That metaphor can of course also mean don't kill them, but threaten them, coerce them. The bottom line is, would you agree with me and I'm not saying this was Mr Mpeta's intention, I'm talking about those people down here that you're addressing and if you say well if a stone is in your way and it won't budge, take a hammer and break it. Would you agree with me that there's a certain risk here that people might understand that to mean violence?

PROF SWARTZ: Not at all, I don't agree for the simple reason that I think his statement is quite explicit about the non-violent orientation of this and the words threaten as you were talking about it, it seems to me do not appear here as far as the speech is concerned. I'm afraid I'm only reading an excerpt of the speech as well and I'm assuming secondly that this is a correct version of the statement that was made. There are two assumptions that I think that I may probably have to think a little bit more, but as far as my knowledge is concerned what Oscar Mpeta may have been speaking about here was the idea of isolating, political isolation of people who purport to be representing the interests of a community through political means.

MR BOOYENS: Now I'm quite happy to accept that that is what Mr Mpeta might mean and you are quite right that we don't know how accurate this is. I'm talking from the perception of the policeman who reads this, not you not me, the policeman with his security cop head.

CHAIRPERSON: In other words the policeman who committed this deed?

PROF SWARTZ: I understand your honour. You would like me to respond to again coming back to that point?

MR BOOYENS: Ja.

PROF SWARTZ: Well my honest opinion is that it still does not make that policeman or police person, exonerate him or her from an act which is basically unconstitutional in his/her own constitution that they support or illegal in the same system of legality that they try to uphold. My argument would be that the mere fact that he/she interprets this according to his/her individual subjective prejudices, you know, does not in my view exonerate that person from making moral choices in that situation.

MR BOOYENS: No, I think you're missing the point. Perhaps I should put it to that for that security policeman, given his background and his beliefs, would you agree that to him this could also mean that the speaker is advocating some degree of violence and overthrowing of a structure?

PROF SWARTZ: Then he/she would simply choose not to read the meaning of that sentence at the top of the page that I don't say that you must kill them.

MR BOOYENS: No.

PROF SWARTZ: It seems to me that it would then be a one-sided reading of it.

MR BOOYENS: You know if you see two heavyweight boxers getting into a ring they may not kill each other, but they won't enjoy the experience. 

PROF SWARTZ: That's true but it doesn't mean that they have to be violent.

MR BOOYENS: You see we are talking about perceptions from two sides Professor and it's very obvious that, would you agree with me and I'm not going to go through the entire exercise, there's a lot of examples here, but we are dealing with perceptions, two types of perception the one perception and we've been speaking about that, the one perception is your perception that says but the government is really, they are the ones that caused the violence with their unjust system, the policeman on the other hand, whether his belief is right or wrong is not really material is it, for purposes hereof, may hold exactly the opposite belief, he may believe I'm defending a system which he personally subjectively believes is a fair system or a justified system and for that reason any form of resistance against that must be dealt with, forcefully if necessary. You can see that there is room for the two viewpoints here. Let's not talk about the right or the wrong of either of them, let's assume both of them are subjectively right in the belief of the mind of the person who holds that viewpoint. Now taking from that, would you say that if you read these reports of Mr Goniwe addresses a meeting, shortly thereafter violence breaks out, that he could very easily perceive Mr Goniwe to be a danger to the government?

PROF SWARTZ: I could certainly agree with that.

MR BOOYENS: I'm not say he's right.

PROF SWARTZ: I perfectly accept you point of view about the relativity of perceptions. He could certainly then assume - not also you're making a hypothetical situation. I don't know whether there's evidence that after this speech of Oscar Mpeta whether any violence broke out as a result of this speech, that is another question that needs to be pursued, but I don't see evidence of that.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Booyens, we're not even sure if this is a proper transcript of what was said and it's a bit late to ask him to come and give evidence to verify the contents of this. I wonder where we're getting to with this questioning if we are not sure as to the accuracy of what is contained in that document?

MR BOOYENS: Mr Chairman the relevance of that is - I accept, I'll accept for purposes of my answer that's incorrect, the applicants see this and they believe what is presented to them is correct. That's the relevance of this because it's their acts that must be judged. Accepting that that is incorrect, let's say that some evil minded person has sucked that thing out of his thumb or deliberately mistranscribed it, but that's not what we're dealing with.

ADV BOSMAN: What I'm saying Mr Booyens is, to the applicants this is real and whether it's in fact real or not, does not affect the influence it had on their thinking?

MR BOOYENS: Absolutely.

CHAIRPERSON: You've put the question to the witness and he's given you an answer, I don't know if you want to pursue it?

MR BOOYENS: No I just want to - the witness has spoken about an answer - no I was actually referring to a passage further down, if you would go to page 4 on that same Exhibit A. I think there are unfortunately - start in Maart 85 and read to "Geweld wat aanleiding gegee het tot polisie optrede" just above paragraph 9. 

PROF SWARTZ: Yes, I have a general view.

MR BOOYENS: Once again, you see it's perceptions once again. From - this is a police document because it comes from the Commissioner. The police clearly say that Mr Goniwe went there, addressed the meeting then there's violence then we have to act. You see so once again there are the poles of subjective belief from the two sides. You would say, and I think we've canvased that in the nonsense. The system was unjust - if Mr Goniwe went there and he pointed it out and the people are legitimately unhappy about it and they hold a demonstration the police arrive there with the tear gas and the dogs, the State in the first place is responsible for the fact that the violence broke out and not the people. So it's once again the two poles, do you agree with me Professor?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes I think you're raising the earlier point.

MR BOOYENS: If the committee would just bear with me Mr Chairman. 

DR TSOTSI: Have you found your reference?

MR BOOYENS: Depending on who my learned friend wants to ask the question to I don't mind.

DR TSOTSI: Professor evidence has been given here that the reason why Goniwe and the others were killed and burnt out in the bundu was that the police wanted the killing to appear to be by vigilantes and the name of AZAPO has been mentioned as a possible, it would have been possible for people to think that AZAPO had done it. Now I want to ask you two questions, first of all (inaudible - end/beginning of tape) of the victims, Goniwe and others were found lying out in the veld destroyed, the idea would be that they were killed by vigilantes. The second question I want to put to you on that point is whether the UDF had daggers drawn with the AZAPO, to understand that AZAPO might have committed this crime and killed Goniwe and others out in the veld in Port Elizabeth? Just those two questions in the time being, there are one or two others that I want to put afterwards for you.

PROF SWARTZ: Sorry, I slightly missed the first part of it but I thought it's connected with the second question which is to do with the AZAPO linkage and the bodies were found in the woods and the image was portrayed by the police ... (intervention) 

DR TSOTSI: They were killed, you know the circumstances I assume, where their bodies were found out in the bush somewhere.

PROF SWARTZ: So your question please?

DR TSOTSI: My question was why were the deceased killed in that particular area and not elsewhere for instance nearer Cradock. And the answer we got was that it was because we wanted the killing to appear to have been done by vigilantes like AZAPO.

PROF SWARTZ: Well whether there's a connection between AZAPO and green bush as a place is probably - I cannot authoritatively speculate on that one.

CHAIRPERSON: No Professor the question is that it became important for us to know why these bodies of these four unfortunate people were scattered near the sea in the St George's Strand bushes and the answer we got at that time was that the perpetrators of this crime or crimes wanted to give the impression to the general public that, one of the impressions that they wanted to give was that it had been committed by vigilantes or an organisation like AZAPO and the question that my colleague has put to you is that if that had taken root in the minds of the members of UDF or other members or other people, what would be the effect of this apparent dispute between members of UDF and members of AZAPO?

PROF SWARTZ: Well one of the possible consequences of that could have been that it could generate more inter-political rivalry and even violence between the two organisations because you displace then the onus of conflict from the State and the opposition to within the opposition, it is a tactic that they've used in many other countries and that they've used in many other historical periods in South Africa as far as we were concerned. We were quite clear and in my statement in 1985 when Lieutenant Els interview me I was quite blunt and specific about this that we suspected the State and the security branch, even though we didn't have evidence, we were convinced that it could have only been the State and the security branch with the intelligence to be able to have intercepted and assassinated them in the manner that they did. So yes, my answer to the initial part of your question is certainly, if that perception had been accepted in our communities, in our political communities as true, and they believed it, it could have caused very very serious political fall out between UDF aligned and AZAPO aligned organisations, but we intervened at the time and I even remember there were meetings between the AZAPO leadership and the UDF leadership whereby which we stated our opinion and AZAPO also explicitly came to us to say that they were not responsible.

CHAIRPERSON: Were there examples of such actions prior to this killing?

PROF SWARTZ: Actions of what kind?

CHAIRPERSON: Provocateur type of creating a non-existent political dispute between political parties.

PROF SWARTZ: Yes, I think during the 1980s there were many incidence, perhaps difficult for me to recall individual incidents, but the idea of an (indistinct) provocateur basically studying our inter-organisational conflict by saying for example that somebody is an informer and you know that may well be innocent, have caused a lot of dissention in organisations and division so that was a tactic that was often used and well known in UDF circles so when we looked at the different kinds of possibilities, the first one we were looking at basically and particularly when they started making insinuations, that is the security branch, that it might have been AZAPO linkage then it confirmed our suspicion that they were actually consciously planting this as a means to take the trail of the State institutions that may have been responsible for that. That was our conviction at the time, I'm saying.

DR TSOTSI: Do you or did you know the applicants at the time of the killing of Goniwe and so on, did you know the applicants?

PROF SWARTZ: Know probably from the point of view of being members of the security branch?

DR TSOTSI: Yes.

PROF SWARTZ: I probably knew of most of them yes.

DR TSOTSI: And do you know whether Goniwe knew them?

PROF SWARTZ: Gosh, I can't - maybe he could have known but I can't know for sure think back about mentioning names, he did mention names of people who used to interrogate him in the 1970s and that, but I can't remember whether any of the names of the applicants featured in that.

DR TSOTSI: You yourself were not interrogated by ... (intervention)

PROF SWARTZ: By any of the applicants?

DR TSOTSI: Yes.

PROF SWARTZ: No, can't recall.

CHAIRPERSON: Let me give you the names of the applicant: Taylor, Lotz, Janse van Rensburg, Snyman, Van Zyl also know as Sakkie, Du Plessis and I don't think you would have been interrogated by the last one, De Kock.

PROF SWARTZ: Ja I think Du Plessis, probably in the early 1980s had certainly you know, but never interrogated in a kind of an interrogation session, no. So my answer is no.

ADV BOSMAN: Professor is it correct then that the manner in which the deceased were killed was consistent with a vigilante attack?

PROF SWARTZ: No.

ADV BOSMAN: They were stabbed and burnt.

PROF SWARTZ: You see this is probably an unprecedented one because they were intercepted by what we considered to be fairly intelligent beings. We thought that Goniwe's departure there was a well kept secret. We assumed that it was fairly safe for him to go back, in hindsight we were obviously wrong, tragically so. But I don't think that those organisations would have had the capacity to be able to do that level of interception required, whether it was consistent with as your question specifically is asking, I don't seem to remember a pattern where they've actually abducted and then killed and murdered people in the way that they've done up until then. I assume that you're probably talking about vigilantes in general?

ADV BOSMAN: I'm more particularly referring to the stabbing and the burning, let's leave the abduction aside.

PROF SWARTZ: Are you letting me think about cases of vigilante activity, there were cases, as I remember in the Western Cape for example of gruesome murders of individuals by vigilantes which involved often stabbing and even burning as well, so yes probably in same cases yes.

ADV BOSMAN: In the Eastern Province can you recall any cases of that type happening?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes, whether there was cases of vigilantes having committed acts similar to the one that the Goniwe four were exposed to?

CHAIRPERSON: Or even thought to have been committed by vigilantes.

PROF SWARTZ: In fact my response would probably be - often acts were portrayed as vigilante actions and I was never really so sure that's why I'm so cautious in answering the former person's - I can't come on the Advocate's name - I'm so careful to say that it's definitely vigilantes. Unfortunately the 1980s was a period of a lot of intrigue and secrecy and innuendo and it is difficult, you know, it was even then much more difficult for us being so close to political events to ascribe responsibility to particular forces. A lot of the time we simply had to make intelligent guesses about who may have had an interest in being responsible for that. So there were a lot of acts that, even now thinking back, could have bee committed by a whole range of potential actors but then in the public minds, in the press, the government often portrayed them in a particular way as having been committed by say for example AZAPO in this case and we were quite sceptical about many of those claims at the time.

MR BOOYENS: I'm not suggesting I'm speaking out of personal knowledge at all. Do you know about what was apparently referred to here as the Nkinikini, and I hope that's the correct pronunciation, murders. Apparently that was an incident where there was stabbing and burning of the bodies and so on?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes there was a big ... (intervention)

MR BOOYENS: I understand there was a big case about that here?

PROF SWARTZ: That's right yes.

MR BOOYENS: Perhaps to join onto the questions the commissioners have asked you about this, which I don't think you've answered fully especially the Chairman's question. Whether they were perceived or whether they were in fact committed by other people, but a vigilante type murder was that usually or in some instances a case of a person being stabbed or beaten over the head and the body then burnt in those days?

PROF SWARTZ: In general yes.

MR BOOYENS: In general, okay. Just a few more things Professor, you talked about that you knew about the Pebco murders that, but wasn't the situation by the time Mr Goniwe vanished, that there were in fact still applications being brought because it's been said that people had been seen, some of the Pebco men had been seen in police custody and so on. Where they in fact to have been murdered at that stage?

PROF SWARTZ: Not publicly but in UDF circles we believed at the time that it was setting a trend. At the time there were a number of other abductions, disappearances so to speak elsewhere in the country of individuals and that is when we introduced the concept, you may well know that here, of death squads going around in the country and we were concerned that a new trend was setting into the political mould, so it - not based on any evidence, of course not, but we strongly suspected that the Pebco three may not be alive at the time.

MR BOOYENS: I see. 

PROF SWARTZ: And even if it wasn't the case, I may add, the very fact that they disappeared so to speak, into thin air would have been sufficient worry for us to ask Matthew and the others to take great caution in making their plans to return to Cradock.

MR BOOYENS: You people obviously knew that the perception that was attempted to be created, that they'd joined the ANC was absolute nonsense?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: Were you in contact with the ANC. How did you know it?

PROF SWARTZ: Personally or the UDF?

MR BOOYENS: The UDF.

PROF SWARTZ: No at that stage, not at that stage. I think the UDF discussions with the ANC came in the wake of the trek to Lusaka, as you may well and the talks in the Senegal in Dakar then there was a high level of contact maintained between UDF and the ANC as well as the ANC and a number of internal organisations so as far as my knowledge and at a formal political level, there were no discussions, simply by virtue of the fact that this would have been highly ill advised on our part to meet with the ANC as a public political structure.

MR BOOYENS: No, you're missing the point. I asked you, you obviously knew - at the time the Pebco three vanished the story was given out by the police that they've skipped the country, they've gone over to the ANC and I asked you and you thought that was nonsense, you said yes and I asked you how did you know it, did you have contact with the ANC or how did you know that they did not go over to the ANC. In other words that this story of the police was nonsense, that's all I asked you.

PROF SWARTZ: Probably simply on the basis of your knowledge of the people, you don't need to have verification from the ANC it seems to me to arrive at that answer.

MR BOOYENS: Okay. Just one more thing, during the school boycotts and also the consumer boycotts, one frequently, and there's allegations in these documents that it actually happened, that people who wouldn't make common cause with the school boycott for example, you know seven hundred kids boycott, three hundred goes to school, that a group would then go in and chase them out and so on. In other words these things did happen, not so?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes, there were some cases where it happened.

MR BOOYENS: Did you ever adopt an official standpoint about something like that, either approving or disapproving?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes we did. Basically the notion was that you simply could not coerce people and then expecting them to accept it in the long run. There will be always people dissenting but as far as the UDF was concerned the idea was to make sure that the attempt to persuade people to boycott in cases where this was pursued as a strategy to perhaps a particular school institution or so. Now there may have been instances where there was a degree of coercion of minority groups who may not have wanted to be part of a particular majority action, but then again it's a case to case example and it no way reflects, as far as I remember, a policy of the organisation, we were quite explicit that we have to maintain that particular boundary.

MR BOOYENS: I see. In some of the police documents we've got here, inter alia at Exhibit K, that very passage that I showed you earlier on and also in Exhibit A I'm just going to show you the one Exhibit K on page 4 and there are other occasions as well where it's alleged, that it said that Mr Goniwe would address meetings and at these meetings he would talk about the origins of the ANC, are you aware of that and was it in fact done and can you comment on that?

PROF SWARTZ: Oh yes I find nothing particularly questionable about that, I mean if you give an account of the history of oppression and the history of resistance in South Africa, surely an account must include the role of the main progenitor or one of the major progenitors in that struggle, the ANC so naturally if you give a histo-geography of struggle in South Africa on public platforms, I did it as well so that was reasonable.

MR BOOYENS: I see. I just wanted to know and where did you live, in which town or township or area did you live at the time?

PROF SWARTZ: Me?

MR BOOYENS: Yes.

PROF SWARTZ: I lived in Hillside in Port Elizabeth.

MR BOOYENS: Where's Galvindale?

PROF SWARTZ: It's, as I said to Adv Bizos, there's about six to eight kilometres from Hillside.

MR BOOYENS: Now I just want to get clarity about this, after the meeting at Mr Coetzee's place, did they go anywhere else as far as you know or did they leave immediately for Cradock?

PROF SWARTZ: As far as I know I thought that they were leaving for Cradock. That was my understanding with them so I didn't, at the time they didn't indicate having to go elsewhere.

MR BOOYENS: Galvindale is where Mr Coetzee lived.

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: Okay. Now just one more aspect. The police tried to create this impression of a so-called vigilante well more specifically an AZAPO vigilante murder as far as these four were concerned, but you're saying nobody was fooled?

PROF SWARTZ: I'm not saying nobody was fooled, I'm saying we weren't fooled.

MR BOOYENS: Yes and in fact I think there's another document here which I can't remember now, apparently the people in Cradock were also no fooled because it was announced at a disco in Cradock that night and it was shortly after the incident and it was said there that the police were responsible as well. Did you hear about that?

PROF SWARTZ: I'm afraid not.

MR BOOYENS: You've got no knowledge of that. Very well. Would you say that the murder of Mr Goniwe to some extent inhibited you people, did it scare you? I'm talking in general, not you personally. In other words the leadership.

PROF SWARTZ: Yes. It certainly - I'm not sure about the word scaring, but certainly we knew that we're up against a very formidable opponent, often willing to go out of boundaries with it's own normative and legal remits as well, but it certainly heightened the level of awareness about the gravity of our own existence so there was very much a concern from the national leadership of the UDF of which I was one, that we needed to make sure and this was particularly after the abduction of the Pebco three, to make sure that we are very careful in the way that we are operating. Our assumption, which turned out to be a logical one, was that we were now going to be much more closely monitored and put under surveillance and that the State, in getting more desperate, would probably want to often make people not function in a way that they would normally do so we were, it did have the element of creating strain and tension at the time but we knew what our mission was and most of us were resolved that we cannot turn back, we have to go on.

MR BOOYENS: Just one more aspect. You were very worried about the police planting their bugs in your house, in the UDF offices and so on. You obviously didn't want them to hear what you were discussing. Is that correct?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: Why not?

PROF SWARTZ: Well I mean if I'm going to arrange a meeting with a group of high profile leaders of the UDF and I know that the State's objective is to make sure that they disrupt that meeting, surely it would be quite stupid of us to arrange a meeting in a way that would basically allow the police to find out about it. So there's nothing sinister about that.

MR BOOYENS: No, so basically you were making your plans and you didn't want the, an I'm using it in quotation marks, the "enemy" forces to find out what you planning and doing. Is that in essence what you are saying?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: I'm indebted to the commission Mr Chairman.

NO FURTHER QUESTIONS BY MR BOOYENS

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Bizos?

RE-EXAMINATION BY MR BIZOS: Thank you Mr Chairman. Mr Swartz you distinguished between terrorists and activists. You certainly made it quite clear that you didn't think that the label of terrorist would fit Mr Goniwe or any of the other deceased or you yourself or the people in the UDF. Would you go along with that?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes.

MR BIZOS: Your cross examination was premised on the basis that the State had a view and did not make a distinction between activists and terrorists. It was also premised on the basis that because of that perception among the State, by clear implication in the cross examination, the death of these four people on their premises were justified. Is that how you understood your cross examination?

PROF SWARTZ: I think so.

MR BIZOS: Now were there voices in 1985 telling everybody in South Africa and all those that might listen that making no distinction between terrorism and legitimate lawful activism was a folly?

PROF SWARTZ: Within the State or in general?

MR BIZOS: Well were there people in general, newspapers, opinion makers, debates, public statements drawing attention to this folly of co-joining these two murders?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes there was a lot of, outside of the UDF and the State apparatuses, there were a lot of organisations at the time, Urban Foundation for example, the Centre for Policy Studies in Gauteng now, university researchers, academics, people that were not necessarily affiliated to or necessarily sympathetic to the UDF alluding to the fact that it was quite a simplistic set of oppositions 

that they tended to operate in relation to, but we also through our own sources at the time knew or had the hunch that there were many people inside the State, maybe not many but there were some people high up in the State in the Department of Constitutional Development for example and even members of the intelligence services, that were of the opinion that the "kragdadige" approach was not necessarily the most sustainable, workable approach in the long run. So there was a perception on the side of many people, publicly outside of these two camps that were saying that it was a bit more complex than portrayed to be in the newspapers by the government at the time.

MR BIZOS: Well let us take one of the facts established in this hearing. Mr Sam De Beer who was the Deputy Minister of Education considered Mr Goniwe not a terrorist to be put to death, but a good teacher to be reappointed to a school. The Commissioner of Police in Exhibit K that you were referred to, having the information, a portion of which that was read to you, didn't suggest that Mr Goniwe should die, but that he should be reappointed with restrictions so that he kept to his school desk in Cradock. The other basis upon which the cross examination proceeded was that the applicants had a subjective opinion, they had a subjective opinion now I don't want to argue the law with you but merely to draw your attention that the Act requires reasonable and bona fide beliefs. In the climate that there was at that time, in 1985, the divisions in the government circles, the editorials, the opinions of Mr De Beer and the Commissioner of Police and others - you were asked to express opinion, I'm going to ask you to express an opinion. Would you have considered the opinion of these applicants as being acting in good faith and in a reasonable manner in those circumstances to ... (intervention)

MR BOOYENS: Mr Chairman I'm afraid I must object to this question. In the first place I don't see how it arises from cross examination, even if does which I dispute, the witness is really being asked now something that you Mr Chairman and the members of the committee - were they acting in good faith or not.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Booyens as I recall you asked the question of this witness regarding the minds and what they thought and what there perceptions were at the time of the killing, that is the applicants. Not so?

MR BOOYENS: No Mr Chairman what I asked is with specific reference to the passage that I quoted from Mr Oscar Mpeta and with the passage that I quoted and said would it be that the perception would be that these people are in fact dangerous.

CHAIRPERSON: No, (indistinct) but please correct me if I'm wrong. What you actually asked the witness to give an opinion on is that would it be feasible for the applicants to have read what Mr Oscar Mpeta's alleged to have said ... (intervention)

MR BOOYENS: And interpreted.

CHAIRPERSON: And come to the conclusion that they needed to do what they did, or that they could perceive Mr Goniwe as falling into a particular category which put him onto a target list. Did I understand your ... (intervention)

MR BOOYENS: I think I didn't go so far as to say to put him on a target list, just that they believed that he might be a threat.

CHAIRPERSON: Fine. The point of the matter is that you asked the witness for an opinion regarding the minds and what the applicants thought at the time. Not so?

MR BOOYENS: No we were talking about the two different poles at that stage Mr Chairman, I was talking about two different poles, I wasn't referring to specific applicants. I specifically, in fact if I recall correctly I sat like this with my two hands and I said there are obviously room for a subjective view on this side and subjective view on that side.

CHAIRPERSON: And words to the effect that were the applicants entitled to draw certain conclusions having read what Mr Oscar Mpeta was alleged to have said.

MR BOOYENS: I don't think I used the word applicants but ... (intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: Police.

MR BOOYENS: I could have used police, yes. Very well Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: Proceed.

MR BIZOS: In fact my learned friend asked the witness to make an assumption that the subjective opinion of his clients was of a particular nature which would have justified the act. That was the (indistinct) of the cross examination, not only in relation to the Mpeta passage. Now having disposed of the objection if we could return to the question Professor. Would you consider that in that climate any senior police officer with the rank of Colonel or Major or Captain could in good faith and reasonably believe that there was no distinction between an activist and a terrorist and that if Mr Goniwe and the others are adjudged to be activists, do you consider in that climate in which you lived and the circumstances that you, their conduct to have been in good faith and/or reasonable?

PROF SWARTZ: My response to that would be, Your Honour, an affirmative, no. I strongly believe that there were other options open to - even in the perceptions of the individual if one has to use that as a basis of looking at the scenario, that they didn't kill all the other activists that must have given them problems in the past, they detained them for long long periods and there was a bulk of legislation, a whole (indistinct) of security laws to put away people for perpetual periods so you could remove somebody from society without killing them during that time. Now if these were policemen that were veteran officers in the police force for many many years, they were obviously familiar about these sorts of options so I would then therefore say on the grounds of that set of options being available, it could not be reasonably assumed that the only option available to them was to basically murder or kill the people in question. And also for a second reason that there were different opinions you know in the country as a whole and surely they would not have been oblivious to what was happening in the broader public polemics and the debate and the editorials and so on about basically how to resolve the crisis. If one can go back to some of the editorials of the Evening Post and the Eastern Province Herald of the time, they were talking about cutting a middle path through the crisis and that there has to be a point of negotiation and so in other words what I'm suggesting is that there was the possibility of other alternatives with the subjectivity that the applicants say that they or that the Advocate was saying the applicants were functioning on the basis of. So my own opinion is that I sincerely do not believe that they were driven and they prisoners of their own subjective consciousness in this case, that there were other options available and there was a legacy of utilisation of those other options within 

the boundaries of their own law at the time that they could have made available in order so to speak, to eliminate or remove from society the murdered victims in this case.

MR BIZOS: Thank you Mr Chairman, I have no further questions.

NO FURTHER QUESTIONS BY MR BIZOS

ADV BOSMAN: Professor do you remember whether there was any reference to Mr - I have difficulty in pronouncing the name correctly, Mr Mhlauli the evening when they came to the house of Mr Coetzee?

PROF SWARTZ: Not in my company, I'm afraid not.

ADV BOSMAN: And just to follow up on the last question which was put to you by Mr Bizos. Am I correct in saying that you indicated that at the time when these murders took place, that there were two schools of thought within the government of the time and you distinguished them as the Doves and the Hawks if I remember correctly. Am I correct in saying that you said the scales were tipped in favour of the Hawks at the time, that that was the more or less predominant opinion that prevailed?

PROF SWARTZ: Given the sort of response that they began to meet out, the new trends of the militarisation of political space, the privatisation of terror in townships and so on we were seeing that the pendulum was, at least this was our reading, was beginning to swing in favour of the, if you like Hawks in this case, but looking back at it now, the pendulum didn't completely swing that way. By the end of the '80s there was a powerful groundswell lobby within the government suggesting that a negotiated settlement might be the most appropriate means to resolve the crisis.

ADV BOSMAN: We are now dealing with the application of people who were not in government but people who were really the instruments of certain organs of government and more particularly the instruments of the security police or the police generally. Would you say that that may have had - I'm asking for an opinion again - that the fact that they were instruments in the hands of the securocrats, possibly the Hawks, I infer from what we've heard here this afternoon, that they might have been more sort of influenced by this let's call it hawkish climate?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes I think that you can reasonably assume that there would have been a measure of influence. Whether that influence amount to an unquestionable loyalty and crossing the boundaries of the very norms and laws that they were assigned to protect and to conduct relations into, I think that is another question. I believe that, and particularly at that period and since the 1970s there's a bulk of historical evidence to suggest fusion of what you can call the executive apparatuses of the State and the administrative apparatuses of the State, your word that you use is the instruments so to speak, so a lot of the top offices in the administration, the executing branches of the State were often involved and drawn into elaborate policy making structures such as for example the JMCs that were set up so there was a high degree, notwithstanding what the constitution said, in our opinion there was a high degree of fusion between these, so in other words my hypothetical reading from that would be to suggest that they were also involved in policy discussion and they were not simply the doers, blunt instruments used to basically exercise terror on subjected populations as well.

ADV BOSMAN: Why I'm asking you this question is to try and get more clarity on how one should determine the subjective views of those people who actually killed the deceased and some of them were lower down the ranks and this is why I'm asking you whether you think that the fact that they were part of the securocrats, let's assume from the rank of maybe Major or Captain downwards. These people were not involved in the decision making, but were simply operators. Would you accept that they were probably subjectively in a different frame of mind from those higher up who realised that there were these two sort of schools of thought in government?

PROF SWARTZ: I think you could probably argue a case like that you know, that lower down in the administration you could go to that the level of understanding and intelligence would probably recede, but again they would all be functioning within the boundaries as what they accepted as legal norms and conventions and if they had utilised other options to deal with social policy or political policy problems, my question would be why did they have to resolve to murder to resolve that. If the legal apparatuses enabled them to solve the problem by detaining and arresting people on security legislation, why did they not make use of that instead of basically committing a murder.

ADV BOSMAN: My question really relates to the subjective views. If a person was given an order or perceived it to be an order, his subjective views would to a large extent determine whether he's going to carry out the order or not. I am specifically referring to the people lower down in the ranks - well this is an order and this seems to be, of all the possibilities, this seems to be the only possibility that's really going to work so I can associate myself with this order. This is what I'm trying to determine.

PROF SWARTZ: Now I mean I'm thinking about other possibilities. Assume for example that the order was to kill his wife or a subjective order even handed down from a General or to violate a person that is no connected to it. Would he have referred to the bounds of legality or would he in that case have said well I'm just carrying out an order so it seems to me that even if that person is subjectively persuaded about the need to do that, that person would still think the question whether this is lawful.

ADV BOSMAN: Just to phrase it in another way, I don't want to get into a personal debate with you and I'm not debating it, I'm trying to get some clarity. Would you say that you would accept that persons lower down the ranks had committed these murders because they pursued a political objective, it was politically motivated and not personally motivated.

PROF SWARTZ: You see the boundary between - this is a very difficult question probably for the committee to decide on. As far as my own opinion is concerned, the boundaries between the political and the personal is a nebulous one. Often in the name of politics personal grudges and vindictive acts of barbarism and sadism have been acted out. Many of the killings I believe that were committed in the name of the State on behalf of an ostensible political cause often was just basically the result of individual misdemeanours, sadism and often miscalculating basically the boundaries within which they were acting and they made mistakes. Often people were there, were killed in a situation, not because they happened to form part of a grand strategy that was worked out from A-Z but they simply happened to be there and the police acted on impulse and perhaps a combination of political and personal prejudice about the situation so I'm probably more cautious about whether I would simply want to ascribe or attribute you know the justification for someone's actions simply because he or she happens to be at the lower echelons of the State to a political mandate handed down. I believe there are also elements of personality as well coming into many of those situations as well.

ADV BOSMAN: Last question. Do you know of any concrete incidents or information that point at possible malice or ill will on the part of the applicants involved in this matter?

PROF SWARTZ: That's a very difficult question for me to pose because I would have to in a sense, know the personality and I only could reasonably make assumptions from the testimony that they were giving the last few days to the commission here. My own, and again this is a subjective opinion since you're asking me for that, is that they made mistakes, it wasn't simply you know something handed down from Pretoria that they had no way to go around. They could have refused as far as I was concerned, they could have looked at other options in doing it, but I believe that there was a measure of personal culpability involved in carrying out what they now seem to be portraying as a political act. So I do believe that there is an element of personal responsibility as well in addition to the political climate that seemed to have conditioned people to function in this particular way. That's probably the closest I can come to expressing my own personal opinion about the case here involved.

MS PATEL: You have mentioned that the UDF was a non-violent organisation. We have evidence before us that Mr Goniwe was responsible for taking people and sending them out of the country to join the MK. Do you perhaps know if that is true or if that happened or if that is within your knowledge?

PROF SWARTZ: I am afraid I have no personal (inaudible - end/beginning of tape) to UDF politics so in that (indistinct) excluded you know issues of military politics and so on so I'm afraid I can't verify or otherwise.

MS PATEL: You have no personal knowledge of it?

PROF SWARTZ: No.

CHAIRPERSON: Professor do you know whether in Cradock at that time, whether any non-parliamentary political parties or organisations were operating in that area, save for the UDF?

PROF SWARTZ: Extra parliamentary you mean?

CHAIRPERSON: Ja.

PROF SWARTZ: Parties and organisations?

CHAIRPERSON: Ja.

PROF SWARTZ: I think Cradora and Cradoya they were amongst the organisations that were there. 

CHAIRPERSON: Any others?

PROF SWARTZ: I can't remember all the names now, but I'm sure there were many other smaller organisations as well. Cosas was at that time banned or restricted anyway but it still operated in many ways in most of the townships.

CHAIRPERSON: Let me put it this way, any organisations however small that would not have affiliated to the UDF?

PROF SWARTZ: Well I think in the extraordinary example of Cradock, probably a very minuscule part of that community would have been part of another non-UDF affiliated organisation. There may of course have been one or two individuals, but as far as I can remember and again I may not have all the detailed knowledge of the area, I don't think there was a substantial significant other in political terms in the township.

CHAIRPERSON: Would I be right, not sufficient to create a facade that there was a political murder if it at all occurred in Cradock?

PROF SWARTZ: No, I mean my - in a sense there is a romanticisation of the legend of political unity at any place at any one time but for as long as I remember, and looking at many other examples of townships where there was an extraordinary level of mobilisation and unity, Cradock by far represented a kind of a communitarian condition where there was almost total unanimity on the major political issues facing the nation at that time and I'm not saying there weren't individuals who differed with it, but certainly Cradock was an unusual example of political unity.

CHAIRPERSON: Now you were the relationship with Mr Goniwe and the other three unfortunate, or two of the other unfortunate victims since 1983 when UDF was formed. It may have been before then also in preparation to establish UDF. From that time till the deaths, do you know whether any of them were detained, threatened with arrest or did anybody seek to prosecute them for any of their activities?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes, certainly in the case of Matthew and to some extent also I recollect discussion with Ford about this but in Matthew's case certainly, he was as far as I can recall from my discussion with him, in the former Transkei, incarcerated for a number of years.

CHAIRPERSON: That would have been in the 1970s?

PROF SWARTZ: That's correct yes.

CHAIRPERSON: I'm talking of 1983 when the UDF was formed.

PROF SWARTZ: 1983, yes. Not incarcerated but rather threatened, at least he told me on two occasions about a security policeman, notorious character the name of which escapes me I'm afraid now, that threatened to shoot him in Cradock at the time and we were quite worried, not as much as Matthew was worried about his personal safety ...(intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: Ja well that goes down to assassination again, I'm talking about incarcerating him or them by way of the rules relating to the emergency or ordinary prosecution and charge in a court of law. Were there any such attempts made?

PROF SWARTZ: Yes, I think the 1985, I may be not completely correct here, I can't remember who all were arrested, during the 1985 state of emergencies were there not a number of detentions made of individuals there?

CHAIRPERSON: No I'm talking about Mr Goniwe.

PROF SWARTZ: Mr Goniwe himself now?

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.

PROF SWARTZ: I'm not sure about other incidents of having been detained.

CHAIRPERSON: Would you not have known if he was detained or charged?

PROF SWARTZ: There were so many events taking place there at the time, I'm afraid I cannot for certain say that he was detained but there was certainly a trend of harassment taking place there during that time.

CHAIRPERSON: Now the words vigilante and I think unfortunately the name of AZAPO has been bandied about here almost as if we're talking about the same thing. Is AZAPO and the concept of vigilante separate or not?

PROF SWARTZ: No, AZAPO as far as I'm concerned is a legitimate Black political organisation formed at the end of the SASO period, the Black Consciousness period with a specific aim to continue with Black Consciousness ideology and propagation in this country. Vigilante action became associated with them by the State in many ways and there was also a case of a group within AZAPO that led a campaign of what I could call probably destabilisation in many of the townships in Port Elizabeth, ostensibly in the name of AZAPO but they were then subsequently disassociated from, I probably would not want to mention the names at this stage but I remember quite well there was a high profiled series of incidents leading up to the expulsion of a group with AZAPO that had been accused of carrying out almost vigilante type of activities against UDF targets here.

CHAIRPERSON: And where would such a group gain sustenance or how?

PROF SWARTZ: I think there was a climate of mistrust during that period created. Often in our view many security branch elements managed to plant, through disinformation, innuendo of people being informers or being political opponents and then basically that would then, in a climate of fear, would often assume a sense of reality and in many cases they managed to exploit political tensions between these organisations. There were differences between these organisations on strategy, but they were firm right from the beginning that they can maintain those differences without physically fighting. The idea of Black political unity was a consensus for a long time around us until the early 1980s where seemingly organisations started fighting against each other as a result, as I say, of probably also State engineered dissension in the ranks.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Bizos have you got any questions as a result of this?

MR BIZOS: No, thank you Mr Chairman.

NO QUESTIONS BY MR BIZOS

MR BOOYENS: No thank you Mr Chairman.

NO QUESTIONS BY MR BOOYENS

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Bizos I see it quarter past four already, I don't think it will be appropriate to start another witness today, unless you insist?

MR BIZOS: No, we're in agreement.

CHAIRPERSON: Shall we then adjourn until half past nine tomorrow? We'll adjourn.

WITNESS EXCUSED

COMMITTEE ADJOURNS

ON RESUMPTION

MR BOOYENS: ... and my learned friend. Just before my learned friend starts, the Committee will recall that Mr van Zyl testified that he and Erasmus weren't here anymore during March of 1984. I've now come into possession of records, it's a computer print-out that was faxed to me from personnel, the personnel section of the South African Police relating to the personnel records of both Mr G N Erasmus and Mr J M van Zyl, which indicates that Mr Erasmus in fact came to Louis le Grange Square on the 3rd of December 1979 and assumed duties on the 8th of January 1984 at Johannesburg Central in the CIS, which I understand is the Crime Investigating Section which used to be the Security Police and that Mr van Zyl's career at Louis le Grange Square started on the 22nd of December 1983.

&#9;I would submit that this is evidence which is relevant to the Committee in the light of the fact that there is a dispute in this regard and if the Committee is satisfied to accept this, I would submit that it is relevant and links onto the evidence of van Zyl and I would like, then I would ask that copies be made and that it be placed before the Committee. It's only to show the dates, that is really the only reason.

CHAIRPERSON: ...[indistinct] do you intend to submit this as proof that on those particular dates whoever's names appears on that document assumed duties at the place stated in that document?

MR BOOYENS: It just corroborates van Zyl's evidence, that Erasmus wasn't OC at Louis le Grange anymore when he was here in '84.

CHAIRPERSON: Have the other parties seen this document?

MR BOOYENS: Not yet Mr Chairman, subject ...[inaudible] 

PROBLEMS WITH MICROPHONES

MR BOOYENS: That is why that - no, Mr Chairman, not yet but I will make it available subject to the Committee's attitude. 

CHAIRPERSON: Other parties have to say.

ADV BOSMAN: Mr Booyens, you are not submitting that this is conclusive proof?

MR BOOYENS: Sorry Commissioner, I didn't hear you.

ADV BOSMAN: You are not submitting that the document is conclusive proof of the fact that they were not here in Port Elizabeth?

MR BOOYENS: No, in fact the document proves that van Zyl was in Port Elizabeth at the time. All the documents prove that Erasmus was transferred to Johannesburg in January, to Johannesburg Central. The document certainly does not go so far to indicate that it was a physical impossibility for Erasmus to be here on the 21st. It only shows that he was not the Commanding Officer here anymore and one would of course have to have a look at the probabilities that he would then ...[intervention]

ADV BOSMAN: I just wanted clarity on your submission, thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Bizos, what have you got to say about this?

MR BIZOS: Mr Chairman, I would like to look at the document. May I suggest that, we have a witness ready whom we hope will be able to get transport back to Queenstown as soon as possible. We thought that we might finish him earlier this morning. Could we have a look at that and make a submission later on the matter. I have a problem about a print-out from a computer, I suppose you can get a computer to write anything. I don't know who did this, I ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: Look at it and ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: How it came to be made ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Bizos, I would suggest that you look at it and make all those submissions.

MR BIZOS: Yes, Mr Chairman. My learned friend, Mr Tswalana will lead the next witness.

CHAIRPERSON: Is this your last witness?

MR BIZOS: No, Mr Chairman, second last.

CHAIRPERSON: I was really hoping to finish by noon today.

MR BIZOS: Well, we have two witnesses and we have no reason to believe that any of them will be long, certainly not in answer to the questions that we have to ask. It would depend to a very large extent on what our learned friends have to ask them Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: Okay.

MR TSWALANA: Thank you Mr Chairman. Mr Chairman, I would like to call Mr Koni as our next witness.

CHAIRPERSON: Is he going to speak English or Afrikaans?

MR TSWALANA: He speaks Xhosa.

MR KONI: (sworn states)

EXAMINATION BY MR TSWALANA: Mr Koni, in 1985 you were a Sergeant attached to the Cradock branch of the Security Police, is that correct?

MR KONI: That is correct.

MR TSWALANA: You Commanding Officer in 1985 was Lieutenant Fouchè, is that correct?

MR KONI: That is correct.

MR TSWALANA: In the course of the year he was followed by Major Winter, is that correct?

MR KONI: That is correct.

MR TSWALANA: The Cradock branch of the Security Police was under the Eastern Province Command of the Security Police?

MR KONI: That is correct Mr Chairperson.

MR TSWALANA: Do you know any of the applicants, unfortunately they are not here so I will call their names and you must tell me if you know any one of them. On of them is Gerhard Lotz, do you know Gerhard Lotz?

MR KONI: No, I don't know him Mr Chairperson.

MR TSWALANA: Do you know Taylor?

MR KONI: I do remember the name Taylor but I don't remember his face.

MR TSWALANA: Van Zyl, do you know van Zyl?

MR KONI: No, I don't know him.

MR TSWALANA: Van Rensburg?

MR KONI: I do remember van Rensburg who was second in command in Port Elizabeth. I do remember him but I wouldn't recognise him now.

MR TSWALANA: A du Plessis, Herman du Plessis?

MR KONI: I do remember du Plessis and I could recognise him now because I was working with him.

MR TSWALANA: Harold Snyman?

MR KONI: I do remember Harold Snyman, he was a buffelvoeter of the Eastern Province.

MR TSWALANA: Did any one of these people used to visit Cradock when you were working at Cradock?

MR KONI: Yes, Mr Chairperson.

MR TSWALANA: Which one can you remember who used to visit Cradock?

MR KONI: Major du Plessis, he was the head of the Investigative Unit. He would come to my office in Cradock.

MR TSWALANA: One of the applicants described Mr du Plessis as a field worker, the one who was more in contact with the operatives, is that your experience as well?

MR KONI: That is correct Mr Chairperson, he was the head of the field workers because he was the leader of the Investigators.

MR TSWALANA: Do you know the four deceased in this matter?

MR KONI: Yes, I do know them.

MR TSWALANA: I will also deal with them one by one. I will start with Mr Mhlauli, do you Mr Mhlauli or how do you know Mr Mhlauli?

MR KONI: I do know Mr Mhlauli because from where I was staying in Cradock his home was in the third street. We were also attending the same church.

MR TSWALANA: As a security policeman, do you know him in that regard? Did he for example have any file in Cradock, as far as you can remember?

MR KONI: According to my knowledge he did not have a file in Cradock.

MR TSWALANA: Didn't he have an index file?

MR KONI: No, not in Cradock Mr Chairperson.

MR TSWALANA: Do you know anything about the use of index files by the security police and if you do can you please explain to the Committee how these index files worked?

MR BOOYENS: Mr Chairman, my learned friend I think misunderstood the evidence, there were files and index cards the way I understand it, not index files. It's not an animal that I've heard of, perhaps just to assist my learned friend, that is the way I understood it.

MR TSWALANA: I'm indebted to my learned friend.

&#9;Mr Koni, did you say there were no index files or index cards?

MR KONI: Mr Mhlauli did not have an index card in Cradock.

MR TSWALANA: Now, I asked you if you could explain to the Committee the index cards, how they worked and how they were used as far as you know, at least as far as your area was concerned.

MR KONI: Mr Chairperson, a person who would have an index card would be a person who was in contact for the first time with an activist and because he did not do anything, he just contacted that person there would be an index card for that particular person. An index card would be opened for a person from that particular area.

MR TSWALANA: How long - when does a person have a, or when is this index card upgraded into a file?

MR KONI: It would be upgraded when that particular person did something else or if that person would give a speech in a meeting or if he becomes more active in the struggle, the index card would then be upgraded to a file.

MR TSWALANA: Were there any grades of the files, were the files graded into, were there any grades of files?

MR KONI: Yes, Mr Chairperson there were grades.

MR TSWALANA: Can you tell what type of grades you know of?

MR KONI: There was a C grade and a B grade and an A grade, the top one.

MR TSWALANA: Now if a person has an index card and at a certain moment a file is opened, which file would be opened on that person, in the normal course?

MR KONI: Mr Chairperson, we would start with category C and when a person becomes more involved he would be transferred to a B category and then an A file after that.

CHAIRPERSON: Who would make those decisions?

MR KONI: Those decision would be made by the handler. A handler is a field worker and his informers. When they combine their reports the commanding officer would write a letter to the Eastern Province office together with a memorandum of that particular person.

CHAIRPERSON: In the case of Mhlauli, who would have been the field worker to determine whether he must be a card or a file or what degree his file would be?

MR KONI: As Mr Mhlauli was staying in the South Western District, it was supposed to be the South Western District who would decide that, not the Eastern Province.

CHAIRPERSON: So would the Eastern Province not have a card or a file relating to Mr Mhlauli?

MR KONI: I wouldn't know Mr Chairperson, maybe the Eastern Province would have a file if it was sent by the South Western District.

CHAIRPERSON: Carry on.

MR TSWALANA: Thank you Mr Chairman.

&#9;Now just to continue where the Chairman has stopped. If, let's take a person like Mr Goniwe, was found or meeting somebody who came from outside your District outside your region, what would be the procedure, would you open an index file about that person or what would you do?

MR KONI: Mr Chairperson, we wouldn't open an index file ourselves but what would happen, we would phone the District from where the person is coming from, maybe that person would have a file in that particular District.

MR TSWALANA: And what happened if he doesn't have a file in that District?

MR KONI: We would send a report to that District and in that report we would write down that he was seen in contact with that particular activist but we would not open anything under that person's name.

MR TSWALANA: Let us continue ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: Who would make that phone call?

MR KONI: I would be the head of the branch.

CHAIRPERSON: And in 1985, who would that have been in the Eastern Province?

MR KONI: Mr Chairperson here we are referring to the head of the branch, not the Eastern Province as a whole.

CHAIRPERSON: Well who would that person have been to make that phone call then?

MR KONI: It would be Mr Venter in Cradock.

CHAIRPERSON: Do you know if any such phone call was made?

MR KONI: Please repeat your question Sir.

CHAIRPERSON: In respect of Mr Mhlauli, around 1985 or maybe '84, was such a phone call made to South Western Districts or such a report sent to them about Mr Mhlauli?

MR KONI: I wouldn't know Mr Chairperson, I don't know.

ADV POTGIETER: Mr Koni, if it's not apparent from which, it's not apparent that the person is from any other area, any other District, would you then open an index card initially?

MR KONI: Mr Chairperson, we wouldn't open an index card, we would have to phone or to call the place where the person is coming from. Sometimes what would happen is that maybe this person would have a file where he is coming from and if we call this area we would then be assured or be told if he has a file or not.

ADV POTGIETER: Now assume that it comes to your attention for the first time that a particular person has been in contact with one of the activists on your list in your area, what would do, would you first investigate to ascertain whether the person is from a particular place? Would that be your first step?

MR KONI: Yes, Mr Chairperson, we would investigate and find out where this person is coming from.

ADV POTGIETER: And once you have ascertained where the person is from you would then follow the procedure that you have explained to us, you would contact the particular region and find out and so on?

MR KONI: That's correct.

ADV POTGIETER: And if it's not immediately clear where this person is from, what would you do? Would you open an index card then or what would you do?

MR KONI: What we would do, that person, maybe the activist has a file, we would put the person's name in a memorandum of this particular activist and the report of the activist would be together with the name of this person. Pretoria would then circulate the memorandum in the whole country with this person's name.

ADV POTGIETER: Okay. But now, assuming there is no indication and it becomes clear that this person is, this stranger is fairly active in your area, would you keep on filing the reports in respect of that person in the file of the activist that he might be in contact with in your area?

MR KONI: As I've already said Mr Chairperson, we would phone the area where this person is coming from. If there is a file in that area we would be sent a reference number and we would keep the reference number in our offices. If he becomes active in our area we would have a sub-file for him.

ADV POTGIETER: So do I understand you correctly that you wouldn't open an index file in, say the Eastern Province for somebody who is for example from the South Western Districts?

MR KONI: I don't know whether I understand you correctly, index file or index card?

ADV POTGIETER: No, I'm sorry, I'm also getting confused with the security lexicon. No, no, it's a card, a card yes.

MR KONI: According to my knowledge we don't open a card Mr Chairperson.

ADV POTGIETER: For somebody who is not from your particular region?

MR KONI: That is correct Chairperson.

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you very much.

MR TSWALANA: Thank you Mr Chairman.

&#9;The other three deceased in this matter, do you know if they had any files in Cradock?

MR KONI: Yes, Chairperson, they did have files in Cradock.

MR TSWALANA: What grades of files did they have, do you know?

MR KONI: Three of them had A files Mr Chairperson.

MR TSWALANA: Mr Koni, I want to give you a document which I would like you to look at.

&#9;With your permission, may I hand in this document which I'm going to ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: Before you carry on with that. 

&#9;Mr Koni, I'm sure that you would agree that the security police of those days didn't only work with files and cards etc., but a fair mental knowledge of the activists in a particular area, not so?

MR KONI: That is correct Chairperson. 

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Mhlauli in the Cradock area, did he stand out as being one of these big activists?

MR KONI: Chairperson, Mr Mhlauli as I've already said, he would be in the company of the activists but because he was staying in Oudtshoorn he was not active in our area.

CHAIRPERSON: So the best security police knew in the Eastern Cape at least about Mr Mhlauli, that he was in the company of people who had A grade files in the security police?

MR KONI: Correct Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: And is that all the Cradock police knew of Mr Mhlauli?

MR KONI: Chairperson, I wouldn't say that was all the police knew about him, I'm talking about what I knew.

CHAIRPERSON: Weren't you a member of the security police in Cradock?

MR KONI: Please repeat your question Sir.

CHAIRPERSON: Were you not a member of the security police in Cradock?

MR KONI: I did not get your question Sir.

CHAIRPERSON: Were you not a member of the security police in Cradock during 1985?

MR KONI: You mean a police who was working that area?

CHAIRPERSON: Security policeman.

MR KONI: I do remember the police who were working in the security branch.

INTERPRETER: The question is, were you a member of the security police in Cradock?

MR KONI: Yes, I was a member Chairperson.

PROBLEMS WITH MICROPHONE OF WITNESS

MR KONI: I'm listening Mr Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: You were a member of the security police in Cradock in 1985?

MR KONI: That is correct.

CHAIRPERSON: You used to work with Mr du Plessis?

MR KONI: That is so Mr Chairperson because he used to come from Port Elizabeth to Cradock as an investigator.

CHAIRPERSON: Now he told us he was head of the section of the people previously classified black in this country, do you recall that?

MR KONI: Who was the head Mr Chairperson?

CHAIRPERSON: Mr du Plessis said he was the head in the Eastern Province.

MR KONI: I don't him as the head of that department Mr Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: But you say you worked with him?

MR KONI: Yes, I used to work with him when he was coming from, he was from Port Elizabeth to Cradock. All I know he was the head of investigators.

CHAIRPERSON: So when he worked with you in relation to matters or people who were stationed in Cradock, you would have a fair knowledge of the activists in Cradock, not so, that he was interested in?

MR KONI: That is correct Mr Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: Can you remember if Mr Mhlauli featured in any way during that time when he was investigating matters there?

MR KONI: Mr Mhlauli as I've already told you, I remember he used to be seen among the activists in Cradock but there's nothing concrete that we can say he did in Cradock because he was not a resident in that area.

CHAIRPERSON: So as far as Cradock was concerned he was not a danger?

MR KONI: If he is being seen among the people who were said to be dangerous he could dangerous but I think there was no clear indication to that effect.

MR TSWALANA: Mr Chairman, I was asking for permission to show the witness a document which I wanted ...[indistinct] Mr Chairman, I want to hand in this document as an Exhibit and I understand that the next Exhibit is RR. Mr Chairman, just to save time I just want to say that for the purpose of the record, that that is a circular sent from Pretoria by Major General Schutte on the 1st of March, the Memorandum itself was written on the 25th of March(?) and basically if you look at the first page of the document it says very briefly:

&#9;&#9;"Please"

and it's addressed to all the security branches of the country:

&#9;&#9;"submit lists of people who could contributing to the climate of violence"

That's one, secondly:

&#9;&#9;"Of that list, identify people who you think are candidates for: "Aanhouding ingevolge Artikel 28 van 47 van 1982". Tweedens: Inperking involge Artikel 19(?) van Wet 47 1983"

That is all I wanted to draw the Committee's attention to for the record for the purposes of the next document I want to submit Mr Chairman. And with your permission Mr Chairman, may I hand in the next document.

CHAIRPERSON: Before you carry on, you said this document was dated the 25th of the 3rd?

MR TSWALANA: 25.02.1985. Two. I can't see the stamp Mr Chairman, but at the top there I see 1.3.85.

MR BOOYENS: Mr Chairman, I wonder if my learned friend hasn't got a better copy available. I'm not so sure that that date on top of this Exhibit, that 25.02.85 does not refer to the date of another document because there's something here, a number and then "Majoor Schutte gedateer". I'm not so sure whether this document, that that doesn't refer, that 25.02.85 date does not refer to the document in which reaction this is but I must say my copy is so bad that I can't really see what it is.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Booyens, maybe we can leave that and if the date becomes really material we can go into it.

MR TSWALANA: I agree with you Mr Chairman, but as far as, for my purposes I think it is important to note the date 1.3.85 which is on the second line of that, and further that that line which begins with:

&#9;&#9;"This document from head office should reach head office no later than 1st of May 1985(?) and should enjoy immediate attention"

For my purposes that is the important thing, that sentence which says these facts must come to HQ on or before the 5th of March, for the purposes of this witness and for the purposes of the second document I want to just draw the Committee's attention to the fact that that document which has just been submitted which I would like to submit as SS, that document is clearly a reply to the document I submitted first, by the Eastern Province. 

&#9;And what I want to ask from the witness is that he must turn to page 6 - and another detail Mr Chairman is that the document SS is written on the 5th or sent on the 5th of March, the date on which it had to be sent, and I want this witness to turn to page 6 of that document and look at the list that the Eastern Province submitted in reply to compiling a list. 

&#9;Do you see the list of people listed in page 6 under Cradock?

MR KONI: Yes, I can see that Mr Chairperson.

MR TSWALANA: Do you see that the first part of the list of people who ad to be, of people who were contributing is:

&#9;&#9;"Matthew Goniwe, Mlulelo Goniwe, Ford Calata, Gladwell Makahula, Andile Joseph Sundi"

who apparently comes from Somerset East. Is this list according to your knowledge, does it correspond to the activists of the time, according to your knowledge?

MR KONI: According to my knowledge that is correct.

MR TSWALANA: Do you see in 5.2 that the list goes on to make the recommendations for people who were due for, not for death but for "inperking", for restriction.

MR KONI: That is correct Mr Chairperson.

MR TSWALANA: Do you see that there were the names of Mr Calata and Mr Mhlauli and Mr Mkhonto are not on the list, on both lists, the names of Mr Mhlauli and Mr Mkhonto? 

MR KONI: Yes, they are not included in the list.

MR TSWALANA: Is that also according to your experience at the time?

MR KONI: As far as I am concerned, Mr Mhlauli's name wouldn't be included there because he was falling under the South Western District.

MR TSWALANA: But do you see that the name of Mr Mkhonto is also not there?

MR KONI: Yes, it is excluded Mr Chairperson.

MR TSWALANA: But you said that he had an A file.

MR KONI: Yes, he had an A file because he was the Chairperson of the Cradock Residents Association but he was not as active, there was a difference between his activities as compared to Ford Calata and Matthew Goniwe and the other two who are mentioned here in this list.

MR TSWALANA: I want to proceed. At the Cradock office, what other duties were you doing or what duties were you doing?

MR KONI: I was doing filing, filing correspondence from Port Elizabeth and Pretoria sometimes and listening to telephone conversations that were taking place amongst the activists and their companions. My other duty was to read correspondence to and from the activists.

CHAIRPERSON: That were addressed to the security police?

MR TSWALANA: That's correct Mr Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: Before we carry on, you've seen this list from Cradock, not so?

MR KONI: Yes, it might happen that I saw the list but that was long ago.

CHAIRPERSON: No, I'm saying, now you've seen it?

MR KONI: I do have the list in front of me.

CHAIRPERSON: Would you have been party to drafting the list in respect of Cradock?

MR KONI: It's only the field workers who were responsible for this type of a job. They would recommend, with the head of the department they would draft this type of a list.

CHAIRPERSON: Are you saying you would not have had any part of this?

MR KONI: No, Mr Chairperson.

MR TSWALANA: Thank you Mr Chair.

&#9;You said that you were also doing filing and just at that moment I would like to ask you something in another document. 

&#9;A document which I beg leave to hand in Mr Chairman as TT.

&#9;Do you see that document TT? It is a document in which Lieutenant Colonel Snyman reports to Pretoria about a meeting that had taken place in Cradock, the letter comes from Port Elizabeth therefore. What I would like you to talk about is, can you read those handwritten notes on the lefthand side of the document?

MR KONI: Mr Chairperson, it is not clear but I will try to read. The first one on top on the lefthand side, it says: 

&#9;&#9;"Liaseer"

And then in paragraph 2, sub-paragraph 2,3,4 and 5:

&#9;&#9;"Gou asseblief, asb asseblief"

And then on top of paragraph 3:

&#9;&#9;"EW, Maj."

Where they say:

&#9;&#9;"Liaseer asseblief"

it's written there:

&#9;&#9;"E Winter Major"

MR TSWALANA: Yes. Now can you explain who would have written that:

&#9;&#9;"Liaseer EW Major"

MR KONI: Major Eric Winter.

MR VAN DER MERWE: Sorry Mr Chairman, if I can just intervene. It seems as if we have got the wrong document because I cannot follow the witness on the paper that has been placed at my disposal.

CHAIRPERSON: ...[inaudible]

&#9;&#9;"Liaseer asseblief"!

MR VAN DER MERWE: I'm indebted.

CHAIRPERSON: ...[inaudible]

INTERPRETER: The speaker's mike.

CHAIRPERSON: ...[inaudible] that of Winter.

MR VAN DER MERWE: Thank you, I'm indebted to you Mr Chairman.

MR TSWALANA: That handwritten note, to whom would it have been directed?

MR KONI: It was directed to myself as a person who was doing the filing.

MR TSWALANA: You're saying that a document like this, although it came from Port Elizabeth it probably would have been in the file of Mr Goniwe in Cradock?

MR KONI: That's correct Mr Chairperson.

MR TSWALANA: Would other heads of departments other than Mr Winter, know about this document?

MR KONI: If you look at the bottom part on the lefthand side right at the corner there is a number 1, it says BO. Just underneath there's 2, there's a B and then ...

END OF TAPE, POSSIBLE WORDS LOST

MR KONI: On the top left there's another signature and a date underneath the signature. All these people saw this document and they signed.

MR TSWALANA: Before it was sent, before or after?

MR KONI: It looks like they signed after it was typed by Lieutenant Colonel, it also means that they do have the copies.

MR TSWALANA: Okay. Now you told the Committee that you were doing monitoring of telephones, reading of letters and transcriptions, is that correct? Transcribing some of the telephone conversations, is that correct?

MR KONI: That's correct Mr Chairperson.

MR TSWALANA: I have here in front of me a transcript which I would like you to look at.

&#9;Mr Chairman, can I hand in the last document? Mr Chairman, this Exhibit is already in but for the purposes of this witness, it's in as L but for the purposes of this witness I just want to ask him questions and maybe you will use it for looking.

&#9;Do you see that document in front of you?

MR KONI: Yes, Mr Chairperson.

MR TSWALANA: Is it one of the documents you transcribed?

MR KONI: Mr Chairperson, the first one dated the 24th of June I wrote that one. The following one dated 25th June it was written by Mr Msoki. There's another one dated the 27th June, it's written by Mr Msoki.

MR TSWALANA: Yes.

MR KONI: That's all Mr Chairperson.

MR TSWALANA: Now the both of the 24th and the one of the 27th are a conversation between Mr Goniwe and Mr Swartz, you say you only wrote the one of the 24th, did you see the one of the 27th? You've never seen that one have you?

MR KONI: I saw it Mr Chairperson.

MR TSWALANA: Can you tell the Committee how you saw it?

MR KONI: Will you please repeat your question?

MR TSWALANA: Can you explain to the Committee when you saw it and how you saw it?

MR KONI: In the office it is a normal procedure that all the telephone conversations, I used to listen to all the telephone conversations, that was my duty. Mr Msoki would also do the same but because of language efficiency he wouldn't submit them. I used to the check them, proof-read them before submission. If I approve that it's the right thing I would take them straight to Mr Venter that is why I'm saying I was familiar with all these documents.

INTERPRETER: Can the speaker please give a chance between the witness and his questions.

MR BIZOS: Hold it, you must give her a chance to translate.

INTERPRETER: Could the speaker please repeat the question?

MR TSWALANA: I'm saying that you were saying that these transcripts would be made and then be passed over to the head of the branch, Mr Winter?

MR KONI: That's correct Mr Chairperson.

MR TSWALANA: If I understood you well you say the second one of the 27th was made by Mr Msoki but you checked it and you are the one who submitted it to Mr Winter?

MR KONI: That's correct Mr Chairperson.

MR TSWALANA: Can you still remember what happened after you gave this transcript to Mr Winter?

MR KONI: Are you referring to the one dated the 27th?

MR TSWALANA: Yes.

MR KONI: After I had submitted it to Mr Venter I left for the tea-room as usual. The tea-room was not far from his office, it was about plus minus 10 paces. His office door was open and as well as the door for the tea-room, they were just opposite each other.

&#9;I heard him talking. What I noticed in what he was saying, he said: "at 10 o'clock", "om tienuur", that was said in Afrikaans.

MR TSWALANA: With whom was he speaking?

MR KONI: I don't know but I only heard him saying: "Om tienuur". To me that was not important at the time. I was in the tea-room sitting there, I had my tea and when I was finished I went back to my office. Mr Winter left his office. 

&#9;It used to be a normal procedure for him to tell me whenever he was leaving his office. Sometimes he would give me the telephone where I should contact him but on this particular day he didn't say a thing, he didn't give me the telephone number. I noticed that there were three of them leaving. It was Mr Venter, Mr Labauschagne and Mr Hoch.

&#9;They never came back that day. We closed the offices. I saw him the following morning in the office. When I came he was already in the office. I went to open the darkroom as usual. A darkroom is a place where we keep the telephone tappings.

MR TSWALANA: What time was it when you came into the office?

MR KONI: It was 7 o'clock in the morning.

MR TSWALANA: Yes. And then you say you went to the darkroom?

MR KONI: That's correct Mr Chairperson.

MR TSWALANA: And you were describing what a darkroom was, what is a darkroom?

MR KONI: A darkroom is a place where we keep the telephones and the bugs and where open the correspondence and read the correspondence.

MR TSWALANA: Continue.

MR KONI: I started there as usual. I realised that Mr Makuala phoned, he had called Mrs Sinjamega Goniwe asking her if Mr Matthew and the others were not yet back from Port Elizabeth. The other one responded and said they were not yet back. I took it straight to Mr Venter, that transcript. He took, Mr Venter took the transcript, he went to his office. 

&#9;I went back to the darkroom. I again found that Warrant Officer Els phoned from Port Elizabeth. I answered the call as I was in the office. Mr Els asked me who was the owner of a Honda in Cradock. I said the only person that I know as the owner of a Honda is Mr Matthew Goniwe. He said to me the Honda was found burnt but there were no occupants inside.

&#9;I told Mr Venter about this. Mr Venter was in his office but I don't know what it is that he was doing. After an hour, I think it was almost an hour after I had told him about that he came back and he uttered something to me in Afrikaans, he said: "AZAPO het hulle gekry".

MR TSWALANA: Yes?

MR KONI: He phoned, Mr Els phoned again, he phoned Mrs Goniwe telling her about this. I wrote that down and I took it to Mr Venter.

MR TSWALANA: Yes. And later on, some days later that Mr Goniwe was in fact was himself, not only his car but he himself was burnt to death?

MR KONI: That's correct Mr Chairperson.

MR TSWALANA: Had you before heard of any plans to kill Mr Goniwe or had you been party to any discussions of that nature?

MR KONI: Mr Chairperson, all I can remember, there was a time where the people who were working with Mr du Plessis in Port Elizabeth, I can say among there was Faku, Ngoduga, I can't remember the others. I remember Faku was the one who was actually talking. If I can remember his exact words, he said: "This thing is easy, people like Matthew Goniwe they are supposed to be killed, they are to be killed, they should be removed". That is what I can remember Mr Chairperson.

MR TSWALANA: Mr Chairperson, no further questions of the witness.

NO FURTHER QUESTIONS BY MR TSWALANA

CHAIRPERSON: Miss Patel, have you got any questions?

MISS PATEL: No, thank you Honourable Chairperson.

NO QUESTIONS BY MISS PATEL

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Booyens, have you got any questions?

CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR BOOYENS: Yes, Mr Chairman.

&#9;Mr Koni, you were not a field worker, you were an office worker?

INTERPRETER: The speaker's mike is not on.

MR KONI: That's correct Mr Chairperson.

MR BOOYENS: Even in that position you knew that Mr Mhlauli was regularly in the company of the three activists, Mr Goniwe, Mr Calata and Mr Mkhonto?

MR KONI: Chairperson, when you say: "regularly", I don't see it that way because he was not staying in Cradock. He was not a resident in Cradock.

MR BOOYENS: Let me just qualify my "regularly" then. He was seen on several occasions, presumably during school holidays in their company?

MR KONI: That's correct Mr Chairperson, he used to be with them during the school holidays. What I can clearly remember it was during June holidays.

MR BOOYENS: June?

MR KONI: That's correct Chairperson.

MR BOOYENS: June holidays of which year?

MR KONI: It was in 1985 Chairperson.

MR BOOYENS: Do I understand you correctly, that the most important and active activists would have A files?

MR KONI: Correct Mr Chairperson.

MR BOOYENS: Now, you said you had contact with Major du Plessis because he was an investigator, did he ever speak to you personally or did you just get to know him as the head of investigations?

MR KONI: I communicated with Major du Plessis personally many times.

MR BOOYENS: About various cases?

MR KONI: That's correct Chairperson.

MR BOOYENS: Was there an index card system in Cradock?

MR KONI: That is so.

MR BOOYENS: The index cards, were you the only person who worked with them?

MR KONI: No, Chairperson, I was not the only person who was working with the index cards, the index card would come with the field workers. If they happened to find that particular person in the company of the activists they would open an index card and during that process the index card would be converted to a C file if the person is still going on with those activities.

MR BOOYENS: Would you not then have expected, in light of what you said earlier, Mr Mhlauli to at least have an index card in Cradock?

MR KONI: Chairperson, according to my knowledge Mr Mhlauli belongs to the South Western District, he wouldn't have an index card in the Eastern Province because it would happen that in his area he was categorised under the A file and that would cause a duplication. He would be in another file in the South Western District and something else somewhere else, so according to my knowledge he wouldn't have an index file in Cradock.

CHAIRPERSON: How would you be able to monitor what he is doing in the Cradock area and what he is capable of doing between Oudtshoorn and Cradock if you did not have at least a card?

MR KONI: Chairperson I said, initially what used to happen, the office would send a report to Pretoria with his name, Pretoria would circulate the report in the country and that would be known because of that circular that was coming from Pretoria.

&#9;Secondly, in our area we used to phone a place, for example we would phone the Oudtshoorn office about Mr Mhlauli and they would tell us that they know him.

CHAIRPERSON: Now where would you record what you were told by the Oudtshoorn office?

MR KONI: They used to record it in the files of those people that he used to be seen amongst, for example he would be in Matthew Goniwe's file. If Matthew Goniwe has got a file he would be included in his memorandum. Another example: if he had attended a meeting in Cradora that information would be recorded in those documents of Cradora.

MR BOOYENS: Can you remember whether reports relating to Mr Mhlauli were sent to head office or to your P.E. branch?

MR KONI: I can't remember, I can't think of any reports that were sent but all I can remember is that he was seen in the company of Matthew Goniwe and the others. I can't think clearly what was happening because it's quite a long time ago.

MR BOOYENS: So do I understand your evidence correctly that you are saying: "Reports might have been sent, I can't remember"?

MR KONI: That is a possibility but I can't remember.

MR BOOYENS: Is it correct that sometimes people would be categorised as activists and not even have files?

MR KONI: Chairperson, as I have already told you, the files were ranging from the index cards about a person who was just seen amongst the activists. It's obvious that a person won't be an activist without a file because if a person is seen amongst the activists a card would be opened on that person.

MR BOOYENS: Am I correct that you didn't go specifically to look whether Mr Mhlauli had an index card in Cradock, you're just assuming he wouldn't have one?

MR KONI: I want agree Mr Chairperson, because I know the procedure is that no card would be opened for him in Cradock because he was coming from Oudtshoorn. There is a difference between Oudtshoorn and Cradock because the other one is falling under the Eastern Province and the other one is falling under the South Western District.

MR BOOYENS: Well there was evidence that because of his activities in the Eastern Cape there was a card for him in Port Elizabeth, are you in a position to deny that?

MR KONI: Chairperson, Port Elizabeth used to be our head office, I won't dispute that but as far as I know they were supposed to have his file from the South Western District, not the index card but I can't dispute that because Port Elizabeth used to be our head office.

MR BOOYENS: Would you just look at Exhibit SS please? Exhibit SS is a list, contains lists of what it's called here, a list of activists involved in creating a climate of resistance and insurrection. If you turn to the second page thereof under these names, number 26 and 27 you see there two activists are listed, Luce and Dubase and we have been told that the G/L means: "geen leêr, in other words "no file", is that correct?

MR KONI: Chairperson, that is true, there's is no file but it might happen that there is an index card. If there is no file it might happen that there were index cards for those people.

MR BOOYENS: Yes. In fact the same is true for number 29, number 31 and at page 4, number 6, 7, 11, ...[intervention]

MR KONI: That's correct Mr Chairperson. What is happening there is that if they say: "no file" they don't have the A, B, C, file but they do have the index card.

MR BOOYENS: So just to complete this exercise, at page 5 in fact ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: Well Mr Booyens, we also know now, we didn't know then, that some of these people who were detained were detained for mischievous reasons at that time, so maybe, I'm just suggesting, the names were inserted here because of mischievous motives. 

MR BOOYENS: Mr Chairman, may I just refer you to page 3, paragraph 1.2:

&#9;&#9;"There could be enough evidence"

...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: Page 3 you say?

MR BOOYENS: Page 3, paragraph 1.2.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: In fact where they state that there could be enough evidence to take steps against them. Mr Chairman, of course if the Committee thinks it is irrelevant then we will leave that.

&#9;Now is it correct that during '84 and '85 there was a lot of unrest in Cradock?

MR KONI: That is correct Chairperson.

MR BOOYENS: And included in this there was a lot of intimidation, a lot of violence, is that correct?

MR KONI: Chairperson, when you speak about intimidation I don't understand what you mean, can you please explain that to me?

MR BOOYENS: Well they say - let me perhaps not enter where angels fear to tread, let's just talk about violence, places being arson'd, people being killed, stone throwing attacks on the police?

MR KONI: I think towards the end of 1985 things like this happened, a lot of places were burnt down towards the end of 1985 and the police were also attacked.

CHAIRPERSON: What about the beginning and the first half of 1985?

MR KONI: At the beginning of 1985 I don't remember any police in Cradock being attacked. If I'm not mistaken, it was in April or May but I'm not sure, where Mr Bomali was attacked.

MR BOOYENS: In fact, according to Exhibit U, Bomali was killed on the 3rd of February 1985, so that is towards the beginning of '85 and not towards the end of '85. Would you accept that?

MR KONI: I would accept because this happened a long time ago but I do remember it was in 1985.

MR BOOYENS: I'm not going to burden you by asking you about all these incidents but we've got a summary of incidents between the beginning of '85 till February, sorry, August '83 till February '85, and I just want to put to you that there were a lot of incidents of violence, stone throwing, arson and similar activities, do you dispute that?

MR KONI: No, I cannot dispute that Chairperson.

MR BOOYENS: Thank you Mr Chairperson.

NO FURTHER QUESTIONS BY MR BOOYENS

CHAIRPERSON: Mr van der Merwe?

CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR VAN DER MERWE: Thank you Mr Chairperson.

&#9;Mr Koni, you became involved in the investigation into the death of the Cradock 4 at a very late stage, is that correct?

MR KONI: I don't understand when you say: "involved in the investigation", I don't understand that.

MR VAN DER MERWE: Let me rephrase my question, did you make an affidavit immediately Mr Goniwe was killed, about the information that you possessed in 1985?

MR KONI: Yes, Chairperson, in the last inquest but I don't remember the dates of the inquest.

MR VAN DER MERWE: That was the first time that you became involved in the investigation?

MR KONI: That is correct Chairperson.

MR VAN DER MERWE: Is there a reason why you waited for a period of eight years before you decided to impart with your knowledge to the rest of the investigation team?

MR KONI: First of all Chairperson, I waited for an opportunity when I was on pension, when I retired, to do that so that I can protect myself because I couldn't say or divulge this information while I was still working, that was not safe for me. 

&#9;Secondly, I did this because the then Commissioner of Police, Mr van der Merwe said that everyone who had information about this must come forward and tell them this information, so that soon I decided to come forward and tell them what I knew.

MR VAN DER MERWE: As you said during cross-examination from my learned colleague, this is a long time ago and you can't actually remember very well what happened during that time, is that correct?

MR KONI: That is correct Chairperson.

MR VAN DER MERWE: Now when you made your statement in 1993, did you have any documentation to your disposal to help you refresh your memory at that stage?

MR KONI: No, I had no documents Chairperson.

MR VAN DER MERWE: Did you have insight into any documents that were shown to you or not?

MR KONI: Chairperson, what I wrote in the statement is what I knew and what I did in the office and what I saw happening in the office. There was no need for me to check the documents, I needed to remember of recall what happened.

MR VAN DER MERWE: And what you recorded in the statement then as being as a result of your excellent memory and the factual statements that you made therein was correct?

MR KONI: That is correct Chairperson. What I wrote in that statement is what I remembered and is what happened at that time.

MR VAN DER MERWE: And that statement I believe has then formed part of the record of the inquest proceedings before Justice Zietsman, is that correct?

MR KONI: That is correct Mr Chairperson.

MR VAN DER MERWE: I will come back to that now Mr Koni. Just a few aspects on the morning that you informed Mr Winter on the 27th day of June 1985, that Matthew Goniwe and others would go to Port Elizabeth on that day. You said to the Commission that you gave him the transcription of the conversation, is that correct?

MR KONI: That is correct Mr Chairperson.

MR VAN DER MERWE: You thereafter left your office, his office, is that correct?

MR KONI: I said I gave him - he went into his office and I went to the tea-room, I said I heard him saying: "om tienuur" but I don't remember who he was talking to because he did not mention any names.

MR VAN DER MERWE: Was the mentioning: "om tienuur" part of a conversation which you did not hear in full or was that the only words that were uttered by Mr Winter?

MR KONI: I remember the words: "om tienuur" and I remembered those words the next day when I heard that Matthew Goniwe and others disappeared. I then asked myself, why were they saying: "om tienuur", that is when I remembered those words.

MR VAN DER MERWE: You don't know whom he called, is that correct?

MR KONI: That is correct, I do not know Mr Chairperson.

MR VAN DER MERWE: And the words: "om tienuur" could have had reference to any aspect whatsoever and not necessarily be connected to the death of the Cradock 4, is that correct?

MR KONI: It might be so Chairperson but I just thought that there is a connection somewhere because the previous day he said: "om tienuur" and that day I heard that Matthew Goniwe passed away.

CHAIRPERSON: Okay.

MR VAN DER MERWE: I will leave it at that Mr Koni. Now the following day - let me go back onto the 27th, you said that you went to your office and a stage during that day Mr Winter and two of your colleagues left the office, do I recall your evidence correctly?

MR KONI: That is correct Chairperson, they left the office.

MR VAN DER MERWE: Was there something unusual about the fact that Winter left with these two gentlemen?

MR KONI: Yes, there was something unusual Chairperson. The normal way and the procedure was that when Mr Winter was leaving he would tell me, he would either give me a telephone number where I was supposed to contact him when he was needed or he would give me an address, a place where he was going, especially after the time when he gave us an order to always listen to the conversations in Matthew Goniwe's telephone. It was funny or unusual for him not to tell me.

MR VAN DER MERWE: Let me just ask my question again. Was there anything unusual about the fact that he left with these two gentlemen?

MR KONI: What was unusual was that he did not tell me where he was going. It was usual for him to go with these gentlemen but what was unusual was that he didn't tell me where he was going.

MR VAN DER MERWE: Did he always tell you where he was going?

MR KONI: Yes, Mr Chairperson. As a person in the office he would tell me where he was going or he would give me a contact number where I can contact him.

MR VAN DER MERWE: ...[inaudible] that could have been a mere oversight on his side, will you agree with me?

MR KONI: Maybe it might be so but it was very important, as a head it was very important for him to tell us. He would not forget such things because he was a person who knew his job very well.

MR VAN DER MERWE: Now on the day of the 28th of June, you said that when you arrived at the office Mr Winter was there already, you opened what you call the darkroom and you made a transcription of a conversation where somebody enquired whether Mr Goniwe has arrived home, that you then took this transcription to Major Winter, whereafter you went to your office. As I understood your evidence you said: "I then found out that Warrant Officer Els phoned", is that correct?

MR KONI: That is correct Chairperson. Warrant Officer Els called the offices of the security branch. He wanted to know whether there was a person who was the owner of a Honda in Cradock. I was the one who answered that call, I said: "Yes, Mr Matthew Goniwe was the owner of the Honda", he then said that the car was found burnt down and there were no occupants in the car.

MR VAN DER MERWE: Just correct me if I'm wrong, as I understood your evidence this happened immediately after you came from then Major Winter's office, is that correct?

MR KONI: Chairperson, I would not say that it happened immediately but it happened the same day. The first call was Mr Makaula's call, he was asking Mrs Neamega Goniwe whether these people had arrived home. Mr Goniwe then answered saying that: "No, they were not there yet". After that call - I'm not sure whether my call was the next or Mrs Neamega Goniwe's call was the next, but what I know is that he phoned Mrs Neamega Goniwe asking about this Honda and he also phoned me asking about this Honda. I'm not sure which came first, whether it was my call or Mrs Goniwe's call but this all happened in one day.

MR VAN DER MERWE: Can you remember at what part of the day it was, was it during the morning, was in the afternoon or in the evening?

MR KONI: Mr Makaula's call I don't know when it happened because in the darkroom, when you get there in the morning you just listen, the time is not recorded you just hear what they were saying.

&#9;When I was in the office Mr Els phoned and he phoned while I was in the office, it was in the morning. I don't remember when exactly in the morning because this happened, it's after 14 years now.

MR VAN DER MERWE: But you can recall that it was during the morning?

MR KONI: Yes, I do remember that it was in the morning when Mr Els phoned.

MR VAN DER MERWE: Now as a result of the fact that Mr Goniwe and the others did not return to Cradock, was there any meeting or subsequent gathering of people in the township to discuss this?

MR KONI: Chairperson, there was a meeting, a disco meeting, I don't remember well but I think it was a soccer meeting in the hall, in the community hall where Mr Makaula said that Mr Matthew Goniwe's car was found and it was burnt down and if I remember well he said that two people were found dead and the other two were not found yet. He made a remark, Mr Makuala, if I remember well, that it was not AZAPO who did this.

MR VAN DER MERWE: You've made mention earlier that Mr Winter, when he came out of his office after you've told him about the telephone call about Mr Els, came out and said: "AZAPO het hulle gekry", did you tell anyone about this, did you inform any person about what was said to you in the office?

MR KONI: Chairperson, I don't remember telling someone this because I was in the office and we were not supposed to divulge or say what was happening or tell people what was happening in the offices.

MR VAN DER MERWE: So the probabilities will then be that you did not tell anybody about what Mr Winter told you?

MR KONI: That is correct Chairperson.

MR VAN DER MERWE: The meeting that you referred to as the disco or the community hall, do you know at what time of day this took place?

MR KONI: It was in the evening Chairperson, usually it was around eight or nine in the evening. It was in the evening.

MR VAN DER MERWE: And at that stage the only information available was then that two bodies had been found and a burnt out motor vehicle, is that correct?

MR KONI: Correct Chairperson, that was the only information then.

MR VAN DER MERWE: And on that information the speaker at this meeting made an inference to say: "We know it's not AZAPO, it's them"?

MR KONI: That is correct Chairperson.

MR VAN DER MERWE: So one can safely assume that it was a reasonable inference that the method used by the perpetrators was then to create an image that this was done by AZAPO, is that correct?

MR KONI: I wouldn't know Chairperson, because I didn't know people who did this.

MR VAN DER MERWE: Let me rephrase then. The inference drawn by the speaker at this meeting was the same as what Major Winter inferred from the information available, do you agree with me?

MR KONI: I do not know which information ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Winter is alleged to have said that it was AZAPO, whereas the inference you talk about the speaker, the inference was that it wasn't AZAPO, same conclusion.

ADV POTGIETER: But besides, wasn't the legend that the police released that AZAPO was responsible, wasn't that the idea in any case?

MR VAN DER MERWE: Well Mr Chairman, as I understood the evidence there was a plan that was to be created and the image was that it must look like AZAPO but it was never legend to say: "We will say it is AZAPO".

CHAIRPERSON: Mr van der Merwe, don't we know now that even the newspapers had that story at the time?

MR VAN DER MERWE: Well, we do not know whether the police gave that story to the newspaper or whether they were inferences.

CHAIRPERSON: But that was the general, who the source or how it came to be is another matter.

MR VAN DER MERWE: That is indeed so Mr Chairman. Mr Chairman, I would just then beg leave to hand up the next Exhibit, it ...[indistinct] to use. That is the affidavit of the ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: ...[inaudible]

MR VAN DER MERWE: I think it's to - Mr Koni, if you can just look at the document. This is the document or the affidavit that you made during the second inquest, is that correct?

MR KONI: That is correct Chairperson.

MR VAN DER MERWE: And I see that the document is in English, were you conversant in English at that stage?

MR KONI: Yes, Chairperson, I can speak English but there is nothing stopping me in speaking Xhosa.

MR VAN DER MERWE: I do not want to waste much of your time Mr Koni but can you turn to page 11 and paragraph 35 thereon or rather go back one paragraph to paragraph 34. Can you just read paragraphs 34 and 35 out to the Commission please?

MR KONI: 

&#9;&#9;"I cannot say with any accuracy what time Derek Swartz called Goniwe. I came on duty at seven and the call had been taped. It was the first tape I listened as I was in charge of listening to Goniwe's telephone and it was usual for me to listen to these conversations, first because of his importance. There was no formal instruction on this regard"

Paragraph 35:

&#9;&#9;"There were other conversations on the tape as far as I can recall but they were not important. I transcribed the conversation with Swartz. It did not take long as it was a short conversation. I recall that a woman answered the telephone and called: Goniwe. I did not transcribe this as it was not important. I had transcribed the conversations by about seven fifteen. I took the transcript to Winter's office, then went to the tea-room. This was my normal routine, that is, I checked the tapes, transcribed what was important, reported on this and then had tea"

MR VAN DER MERWE: Now just two aspects arising from this Mr Koni. You gave evidence to this Commission that you did not listen to this telephone conversation but it was done and transcribed by Msomi, is that correct?

MR KONI: That is correct, Msomi is the one who transcribed them but I said here that before they get to Mr Winter I would check them. When you check this you would listen to the conversation and compare it to the transcript. I checked them that way.

CHAIRPERSON: And therefore it becomes your transcript?

MR KONI: That is correct Chairperson.

MR VAN DER MERWE: And you could so clearly remember this telephone conversation and where it originated from that you could even remember that a female person called Mr Goniwe to the phone when Mr Swartz phoned, after eight years, is that correct?

MR KONI: Yes, I did recall this because the way this happened I remembered everything. I even remembered: "om tienuur" because of what happened afterwards.

MR VAN DER MERWE: Yes. Well if I put it to you Sir, that your factual recollection of this is incorrect and that evidence was led before this Commission by the witness who gave evidence just before you, that it was indeed Mr Goniwe who phoned him, what would your reaction to that be?

MR KONI: If you notice there is something that was handed over as an evidence about a conversation between Matthew Goniwe and Derek Swartz and there is a transcription by Msoki where Derek Swartz is talking to Matthew Goniwe. On the 24th Matthew Goniwe phone Derek Swartz saying that he must give him a speech, he must give him the minutes of the meeting of the 26th.

MR VAN DER MERWE: Thank you Mr Chairman, I have no further questions.

NO FURTHER QUESTIONS BY MR VAN DER MERWE

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Bizos, have you got any re-examination? Mr Tswalana?

RE-EXAMINATION BY MR TSWALANA: Mr Koni, could you look at SS please? At page 2 of SS, do you have the page in front of you?

MR KONI: Yes, Chairperson.

MR TSWALANA: You were shown number 26 and 27 where there is written: G/L, do you see that?

MR KONI: Yes, Chairperson.

MR TSWALANA: Would those people who are appearing in that list, according to your knowledge, have been people who were staying in the Transvaal or in the Eastern Cape?

MR KONI: Chairperson, if you look at page 1, page 1.1 downwards, those are the people from Port Elizabeth. It is written there, they are from Port Elizabeth, from Eastern Cape, until page 3, sub-paragraph 34(?). After that it's people from Utenhage, page 4. All those are from Utenhage up until sub-paragraph 12. Page 5, it's Fort Beaufort. Page 5 again it's Grahamstown. Page 6 Cradock, that is Eastern Cape in these papers. There is no other division, it's on the Eastern Cape.

MR TSWALANA: So that even if those people don't have files they are nevertheless people who stayed in the Eastern Cape and probably people who had index cards in the various districts where they stayed? Are you able to comment on that?

MR KONI: Chairperson, it is written here that there are no files but it might happen that they had index cards. An index card doesn't have a reference number, that is why it is written here: "no files", because an index card is not a file.

MR TSWALANA: You were asked whether or not it was possible that some reports could have been sent about Mr Mhlauli, do you remember that? You were asked whether some index card could have been present in Cradock about Mr Mhlauli of which you don't know, do you remember that questions?

MR KONI: Yes, I do remember Mr Chairperson.

MR TSWALANA: If there was an index card, who would have known - let me put it this way, if there was an index on Mr Mhlauli in Cradock, would Mr Winter have known about it?

MR KONI: Yes, Chairperson, Mr Winter would have known, I would also have known because I was filing.

MR TSWALANA: So that if Mr Winter - if a document from Mr Winter in which he says he does not know Mr Mhlauli, he knew nothing about him, would that be an indication that there was no index card present of him in Cradock?

MR KONI: That is correct Chairperson.

MR TSWALANA: If reports were sent to the South Western District about Mr Mhlauli, who would have sent this?

MR KONI: As I've already said, a report would be written down and be sent to Pretoria in head office, Pretoria would circulate it to all the districts of South Africa. He was only, he had a right to call that district and tell them about that particular person. If he called, if there is a file in that district he would be given a reference number the district.

MR TSWALANA: Who would have phoned or sent a report about Mr Mhlauli if Mr Mhlauli was known to the Cradock Security Police? If he had been found doing something of security interest, who would have sent a report to Pretoria or to South Western District?

MR KONI: A report would be sent by a head, in other words Major Winter would be the one who would send this report. He would also call South Western District, he would call the head in that region and tell them about this person so that he can get a reference number of his file.

MR TSWALANA: No further questions Mr Chairman.

NO FURTHER QUESTIONS BY MR TSWALANA

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Bizos?

MR BIZOS: Mr Chairman, we ask for leave to call the next witness, Mr Reginald Oliphant.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Oliphant, do you prefer to speak English or Afrikaans or whatever other language you choose?

MR OLIPHANT: It all depends what the circumstances would be Mr Chairperson. I am able to speak English but I can also speak Afrikaans very well.

CHAIRPERSON: What's your choice?

MR OLIPHANT: I'll answer questions, I will speak in English as a presentation but if I'm posed questions in Afrikaans it wouldn't be a difficulty.

REGINALD OLIPHANT: (sworn states)

EXAMINATION BY MR BIZOS: Mr Oliphant, are you a member of the National Assembly in Cape Town?

MR OLIPHANT: I am indeed Mr Chairperson.

MR BIZOS: Well let's go further back, what was your chosen profession?

MR OLIPHANT: I qualified myself as a teacher in 1968.

MR BIZOS: And for how long were you a teacher?

MR OLIPHANT: I enjoyed this job for 13 years and was kicked out without any reason by the previous apartheid regime.

MR BIZOS: And what did you do after you were no longer a teacher?

MR OLIPHANT: I beg your pardon Sir?

MR BIZOS: What did you do after they kicked you out?

MR OLIPHANT: I went to work as - somebody was willing to provide me with a job as a book seller, those were the organised, like Juta and Company, the book selling companies and I just started working there when a new system of entering school premises was introduced namely that one should have a permit to sell books at schools, so I had to apply for a permit and in many cases they were refused.

MR BIZOS: So you couldn't be a book seller?

MR OLIPHANT: Absolutely.

MR BIZOS: And then what did you try to do?

MR OLIPHANT: What did I?

MR BIZOS: What did you try to do after that?

MR OLIPHANT: I sold books Mr Chairperson, under very difficult conditions because in the process of performing my task I was always either detained and kept for a while and as a result, during those years it was difficult for schools to really do business with me because I would be representing something which is not conducive ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: Well Mr Oliphant, after trying to sell books, did you do anything else?

MR OLIPHANT: I was restricted to my home and couldn't go out as well as I would want to in 1988. I didn't do anything else until I was unbanned in 1990, I went back to teaching.

MR BIZOS: Did you become involved in any community organisation affiliated to the United Democratic Front?

MR OLIPHANT: In fact Mr Chairperson, I was the Chairperson or the President of the South Western Districts United Democratic Front. I was also the Chairperson of the, while I was a teacher, the School Sports Board. I was the Chairperson of the Civic Association within those areas. In fact I enjoyed quite a prominent position in respect of community bodies.

MR BIZOS: We know that the United Democratic Front was formed on the 20th of August 1983, did you become an office bearer of the United Democratic Front?

MR OLIPHANT: Yes, as I said Mr Chairperson I was, within the context of the Western Cape I was the President of the South Western District South Cape areas.

MR BIZOS: Did you have anything to do with Oudtshoorn?

MR OLIPHANT: Absolutely. Oudtshoorn fell within that environment. I was Oudtshoorn, Mossel Bay, George, it covered quite a huge area Mr Chairperson.

MR BIZOS: Who were the other members on the executive?

MR OLIPHANT: I beg your pardon?

MR BIZOS: Who were the other members of the executive of the United Democratic Front that you chaired?

MR OLIPHANT: People came from different towns. I cannot exactly now recall but there would be people from, we made it our duty to see that the executive was representative of all the different towns. 

&#9;From my own town, myself I was Chairperson and there was also Mbulelo Grootboom commonly known as Spie was also on the executive and another fellow, Humphrey Joseph who was our Media Officer. He was also on the executive.

MR BIZOS: When did you first meet Mr Mhlauli?

MR OLIPHANT: Mr Mhlauli came to Oudtshoorn in 1981. At that time I still enjoyed being a teacher, but he came late in '81. At the end of '81 I was kicked out of teaching as I said earlier. I saw Mr Mhlauli again at a funeral in 1982 which I attended of the Reverend Calata, 33, 32/33. I met, I saw Matthew Goniwe at the funeral and later that day I also saw Mhlauli for a second time, not for a second time in the sense that I saw him at another place again.

MR BIZOS: And you say that he was there, did he stay there for long or did he move elsewhere?

MR OLIPHANT: Who was that now?

MR BIZOS: Mr Mhlauli.

MR OLIPHANT: Mr Mhlauli was in Oudtshoorn and I think he was there till the end of '82 and then he left and he went to another town but he came back to Oudtshoorn at the beginning of '84. I speak under correction.

MR BIZOS: In what capacity did he come back in '84.

MR OLIPHANT: He came back as the principal of the school. He was initially, when he came the first time he was the principal of the school and when he returned he came back as the principal of the school.

MR BIZOS: Did you get to know him as the principal of the school?

MR OLIPHANT: Initially in that capacity Mr Chairperson but we later became personal friends and my wife and his wife were friends and myself, we like family, friends, personal friends.

MR BIZOS: What reputation did he enjoy in the community?

MR OLIPHANT: What?

MR BIZOS: What reputation did he enjoy in the community?

MR OLIPHANT: Mr Mhlauli was an adorable respected exemplary teacher and community leader in his community in Bongolethu. He enjoyed saying - that image he displayed all over and people really appreciated the presence of Mr Mhlauli in our area. He was a valuable asset to our town.

MR BIZOS: Was he involved in the church at all?

MR OLIPHANT: Very much so. He was a christian. He brought his family up, we were close friends, he brought his family up against these, within the christian principles, his children in particular.

MR BIZOS: Now you were very active in the UDF, did he take part in any structure of the UDF at Oudtshoorn?

MR OLIPHANT: Not in any structure as such Mr Chairperson, not in any formal structure but of course as the UDF was a broad based organisation including people from all sectors of society Mr Mhlauli was supportive of the ideals and aspirations of the UDF.

MR BIZOS: Did he campaign for the UDF in any way?

MR OLIPHANT: I would have loved him to but he did not. He was a respected person in the sense that he, and at the same time being friends with me, also places suspicion around his neck, around his head and I wouldn't want him to go the same course as I did as a teacher, so Mr Mhlauli was a very humble non-prominent community leader.

MR BIZOS: How well was the UDF organised in Oudtshoorn?

MR OLIPHANT: Excellent.

MR BIZOS: What form did the organisation take in Oudtshoorn?

MR OLIPHANT: After the formal formation, the launching on the 20th of August in 1983, the structures in Oudtshoorn, I personally was approached by the people who ran a community newspaper in Cape Town called: "Grass Roots" and they spoke to me about the formation of a similar newspaper in Afrikaans. 

&#9;A newspaper was formed at the end of '83 beginning '84 called: "Saamstaan" and the central role of that paper which expressed the feelings, the propagated, the ideals of our people, that drew people together and we built the UDF, a strong UDF force within the South Western Districts through a central, centrally through Saamstaan in particular. The churches were involved, the schools were involved, young people, everybody was involved Mr Chairperson.

MR BIZOS: Now what about organisationally, were there any street committees established?

MR OLIPHANT: Yes, great street committees we had, excellent well oiled, disciplined. And we had street committees, we had PTSA's, it was particularly ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: What were the PTSA's?

MR OLIPHANT: Parents Teachers Students Associations. Already the culture of democracy, we were trying to introduce that into the minds of our young people and our elderly.

MR BIZOS: Did Mr Goniwe come over to Oudtshoorn at any time?

MR OLIPHANT: Matthew and I because of our similarity in our beliefs and the kind of activity that we shared, we knew each other and we invited, and also Matthew led, we were always battling with the Teacher's Organisation and Matthew was instrumental in the formation of, I think the organisation was called NEUSA, the National Education Union of South Africa and we invited Matthew as a guest speaker to Oudtshoorn on the launching of the UDF in Oudtshoorn.

MR BIZOS: Was Mr Goniwe ever invited over to introduce what the security police call the: "G Plan" into Oudtshoorn?

MR OLIPHANT: No, Mr Chairperson, no he was not invited.

MR BIZOS: Were you lacking in organisational ideas or capacity that it was necessary for Mr Goniwe to come to you in '84 to '85 to organise you in terms of the: "G Plan" or the: "M Plan" or any other kind of an initial in front of it?

MR OLIPHANT: Mr Chairperson with due respect, and really with due respect to the late comrade Matthew, he was not invited, in fact the structures of Oudtshoorn as I'd earlier said, were well oiled, stable, strong consolidated structures and we could share telephonically, myself and Matthew, on certain issue but as for coming to Oudtshoorn to introduce the M Plan, we would not have invited Matthew and we did not invite him.

MR BIZOS: Do you know whether Mr Mhlauli would have wanted any information about the Goniwe plan or the M plan for the purposes of introducing it into Oudtshoorn in June 1985?

MR OLIPHANT: By the time that Mr Mhlauli came to Oudtshoorn structures were either already in place or in the process of developing but I mean, he came to Oudtshoorn and found certain structures already existing in many cases.

MR BIZOS: Had they progressed to an even higher organisational state by June 1985?

MR OLIPHANT: Absolutely, the had indeed developed, well we were seen as a red spot in the country.

MR BIZOS: You were seen as a red spot?

MR OLIPHANT: Ja.

MR BIZOS: Now would you have described Mr Mhlauli as an activist in the manner in which the word was used at the time, both by - although they may have meant different things to them, both by the security police and the community, would you describe him as an activist?

MR OLIPHANT: Not at all.

MR BIZOS: You heard of his being murdered on the 28th of June 1985.

MR OLIPHANT: I did. I was in detention when my, there was someone else, Mzuki Siskosana, he was in the cell next to me and his mother came to pay him a visit and after his mother's departure he burst out crying and I asked him what it was and these were his exact words: "Comrade Reggi, comrade Sicelo is of late". 

&#9;Later that day my wife came to say that Mrs Mhlauli had phoned to find out if Sicelo was not with us and it was a tremendous shock for our community in particular, unacceptable.

MR BIZOS: We now know that the security police killed him and you may have had good reason to believe that is was done then but let's leave that aside for a moment. You were his friend, was he ever visited by the security police, told that he was under suspicion, warned in any way to cease any of his activities, detained in any way, was he identified by the security police as one of the people that was being looked at for action against him by the security police?

MR OLIPHANT: We know today how provocative was this particular group of people who you are referring to as the security police, how they fabricated stuff against people. As for Mr Mhlauli, even if they did try it would have been unsuccessful because Mr Mhlauli was the teacher figure of the community, respected, he was not an activist. 

&#9;He once said to me that he was approached by I think one of the African security policemen to say that he should disassociate himself from myself because I am a danger. He was trying to be defiant about it and I said: "Look, these people are going to treat you in the same way, you are not in your home town, you are here in Oudtshoorn, you actually come from another place with this woman and your children, I would not let our, I would not be part of the process of having you getting the same route, take the same route as what had happened to me". 

&#9;So anybody that would today come and claim that Mr Mhlauli was an activist, that he was in any way responsible for inflaming, instigating communities, that would be a blatant lie, it is not true. He never had such an image and we respected him for what he was and he respected us for what we were. He supported our organisations, he was never part of our structures in a formal way.

MR BIZOS: Thank you Mr Chairman.

NO FURTHER QUESTIONS BY MR BIZOS

CHAIRPERSON: Miss Patel, have you got any questions?

MS PATEL: No, thank you Honourable Chairperson.

NO QUESTIONS BY MISS PATEL

CHAIRPERSON: Have you got any questions Mr van der Merwe?

MR VAN DER MERWE: No, thank you Mr Chairman.

NO QUESTIONS BY MR VAN DER MERWE

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Booyens, are you going to be long?

MR BOOYENS: Unfortunately one can never tell, it depends on what answers you get Mr Chairman. It's like asking me how long is a streak, I can't tell you. I've got no intention of being long but unfortunately I can't tell you, I can't give you any guarantees Mr 

Chairman, I'm sorry.

CHAIRPERSON: Then we will break for lunch.

COMMITTEE ADJOURNS

ON RESUMPTION

REGINALD OLIPHANT: (s.u.o.)

MR BOOYENS: My learned friend and I have been able to reach an agreement on the following, that it appears from the police records that Mr van Zyl the applicant, was transferred to Louis le Grange Square, Port Elizabeth on the 22nd of December 1983 and that General Erasmus ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: What is that date Mr Booyens?

MR BOOYENS: I beg your pardon, 22.12.83.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.

CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR BOOYENS: And Mr Erasmus was transferred to Security Branch, Johannesburg Central on the 8th of January 1984. The qualification added hereto is that this document affords no proof that Mr Erasmus could not have been in Port Elizabeth on the 21st of March in '84.

&#9;Mr Oliphant, you have made the statement that Mr Mhlauli was a community leader, can you qualify that please?

MR OLIPHANT: He was a leader in that community in the sense that at the time everybody that was able to stand and rally people around him, around common things, would be regarded in the context of a community leader and he was one of them and he was the principal of the school as well.

MR BOOYENS: Rally people around him on common things, would that basically involved common things in resistance of aspects of the apartheid ideology?

MR OLIPHANT: Well you can construe it as such but what it means to us is to encourage children to attend school regularly, to see to people that they live honest and decent lives, for men not abuse women, not to lie. Those are the kind of things that made him a very ...[intervention]

MR BOOYENS: Social, in other words social aspects, is that correct?

MR OLIPHANT: You can put it that way, ja.

MR BOOYENS: Okay. Would you say he did anything for the struggle?

MR OLIPHANT: Pardon?

MR BOOYENS: Would you say he did anything for the struggle?

MR OLIPHANT: Of course.

MR BOOYENS: What?

MR OLIPHANT: The positive things that I mentioned now which attributed, contributed to us strengthening our people, the realising psychologically that they need not have to be sub-ordinates to the white people who were doing whatever they wanted to. He was able to teach the people that kind of value within, make them to understand that.

MR BOOYENS: Would you say he conscientised people of their political rights which they didn't have at that stage?

MR OLIPHANT: I think it would be regarded as irresponsible of a person like Mr Mhlauli at the time as the school principal, not to speak to children about the fact that they are the ...[indistinct] people of the country, firstly. Secondly, we were forcibly removed from our places where we grew up. We had the Separate Amenities Act. Those were the things, that if a person did not do that he could not have recognition within our societies.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Oliphant that is not the questions, the question is: "Did he do it"? Do you know that he did it?

MR OLIPHANT: We expected of him to do that. The fact that we admired I propose he possibly did that.

MR BOOYENS: Who are the: "we" that expected him to do that?

MR OLIPHANT: We as the community organisations.

MR BOOYENS: Did you discuss it with him that it was his duty or did you expect him to do that or did he tell you that he was doing it?

MR OLIPHANT: No, I don't think we discussed it nor would I tell him to do that but in fact he ...

END OF TAPE, POSSIBLE WORDS LOST

MR OLIPHANT: ...[inaudible] nonsense in this country not the ...[indistinct]

MR BOOYENS: Would you say he was involved in politics?

MR OLIPHANT: No, definitely not, I was involved in politics but I wouldn't say he was involved in politics in the sense of organising people for a political objective.

MR BOOYENS: You see, then perhaps you can explain the following to me, I've got in front of me a copy, a record of the evidence given in East London before a hearing of the Human Rights Violations Commission of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission by his wife. It was given in East London on the 16th of April 1996. A certain Mr Smith asked her the following question:

&#9;&#9;"Before we get to that, did your husband become involved in politics when he was at Oudtshoorn"

That's the question. The answer:

&#9;&#9;"Yes, he was involved in politics, there was a youth organisation and he also took part in the community based newspaper"

MR BOOYENS: How would you reconcile that, that his wife said that and one would expect who certainly knew the man quite well, with what you have just said?

MR OLIPHANT: No, I understand that, that's an interpretation. You see people interpret things the way they want to interpret things. At the time to her perhaps the fact that he was able to speak to children and people listened to him when he encouraged them to go to school, when he said to them to live a decent life, it could be understood by certain people to mean he was mobilising them politically but in our context as the, like the UDF itself, we wouldn't say he was an activist or nor that he politically mobilised or organised them.

MR BOOYENS: You see, would it be correct if I make the statement that the or it's affiliated organisations were involved in organising resistance against the then government?

MR OLIPHANT: Organising resistance against what the previous government stood for, you are absolutely correct.

MR BOOYENS: Were there school boycotts in Oudtshoorn?

MR OLIPHANT: Yes, it was all over the country.

MR BOOYENS: Well, let's talk about Oudtshoorn. Is the answer, yes there were? Also at the school where he taught? Obviously not so?

MR OLIPHANT: I beg your pardon?

MR BOOYENS: Also at the school where Mr Mhlauli was employed, there were also school boycotts there?

MR OLIPHANT: There were school boycotts at all the schools except for the white schools in Oudtshoorn.

MR BOOYENS: Yes. I want to quote you another passage from Mrs Mhlauli is quoted as having been said. Smith asks her:

&#9;&#9;"Now your husband also went to attend the launch of the UDF that was in 1982"

The answer is - if I go too fast for you just stop me please, it's a fairly long one.

&#9;&#9;"Yes, it is so. At this time when we were at Oudtshoorn, there was the launch of the UDF. We went with some of the people from the nearby places and we wanted to observe and be part of it, so we were happily attending. In fact when we went there we hid ourselves because we didn't want to publicise the fact that we were going, for fear of the police. When we came back it was learnt that a black police person came and said that we are public servants and are not supposed to be taking part in politics. This they said in a very polite manner trying to influence not to participate in political issues. They all tried their best to make it better for him to understand the trouble that he was courting but he ignored them and continued with his participation and dealing with political issues"

&#9;So it does seem that at least from the other side there was certainly a perception that he was dealing and involved in political issues and his wife also thought so, would you agree with me?

MR OLIPHANT: When you speak of the other side, are you talking about the security police?

MR BOOYENS: Ja.

MR OLIPHANT: But you see the security police were looking for anyone who would just make, say a certain word and it might not fall in with their vocabulary and so it might be they would start chasing you. And in everything that you have said now it boils down, when you said: "political issues", it's like this first question you asked, that's an interpretation by Mrs Mhlauli because of the activities that he supported.

MR BOOYENS: 

&#9;&#9;"Participation and dealing in political issues" 

is in fact the quote. 

MR OLIPHANT: That's an interpretation then.

MR BOOYENS: Now I heard you say that at the time when you heard of his death you were incarcerated and in fact I didn't get it quite clearly but somebody I think got a message to you that his wife wanted to know whether he was with you, did I hear that more or less correctly?

MR OLIPHANT: No, my wife came later in the - I said in my evidence in chief that my nextdoor neighbour, prison neighbour was Mr Mzuki Siskosana and his mother came to tell him that and he told me later. He burst out crying, said to me: "Mhlauli was of late".

MR BOOYENS: In fact he said: "comrade".

MR OLIPHANT: That's right, ja. Later in the day my wife came and said that Madam Mhlauli had phoned, Bue had phoned to ask whether, that's now Mrs Mhlauli.

MR BOOYENS: Mm.

MR OLIPHANT: Had phoned my wife to find out if he was not possibly with me.

MR BOOYENS: With you in custody in other words or?

MR OLIPHANT: No, it's then that my wife told her that I was in custody. You see the security police made a mock of this whole thing, a farce. They would put you in jail for 14 days and release you and after, so people wouldn't always know where you are.

MR BOOYENS: That's the bit I didn't understand.

MR OLIPHANT: So Mr Oliphant, I think we have touched on this already but it seems to me that the situation practically on the ground was really the following: Seen from your perception, from your point of view, Mr Mhlauli in your terminology would not be called an activist but seeing that the other side, and I'm referring to the security community, apparently had a different definition of what they regarded as an activist and people that were basically opposing, and I'm not suggesting opposing by way armed struggle but even with politicising or conscienticising, were activists as far as they were concerned? Would you agree that - I mean you are aware of people that they would refer to as activists which in your view were not activists, is that correct?

MR OLIPHANT: That's right.

MR BOOYENS: Now were you aware of his past history, that he was also, I think one can sum it up if I get it correctly from his wife's evidence, that when they were in the Ciskei they also had problems with the political police if one can call it that? Were you aware of that?

MR OLIPHANT: No, I was not.

MR BOOYENS: Now just for clarity's sake, this youth organisation that his wife referred to in her evidence, what youth organisation was there?

MR OLIPHANT: Well I was not there that day to read her mind but ...[intervention]

MR BOOYENS: No, you can tell me what youth organisations there were in Oudtshoorn.

MR OLIPHANT: There was the Brixton Youth Organisation, there was the Bongolethu Youth Organisation, then there was the overall Oudtshoorn Youth Movement, then there was the Church Youth Organisation. There were different components of youth organisations so I cannot say to which one she was referring.

MR BOOYENS: I see. And this community based newspaper, what was that?

MR OLIPHANT: Saamstaan.

MR BOOYENS: Was that the Afrikaans paper.

MR OLIPHANT: Saamstaan.

MR BOOYENS: I see. And she he was involved in that. Now you were obviously also involved in that ...[intervention]

MR OLIPHANT: I was the Chairperson for 10 years.

MR BOOYENS: Well, then you should be able to tell me.

MR OLIPHANT: Absolutely.

MR BOOYENS: How was he involved in that Mr Oliphant?

MR OLIPHANT: It's a pity. You see what happened during that time with the formation of the UDF it was important for us to speak to everybody of the deprived communities, the enfranchised millions, to explain to them what this rude system was busy with.

&#9;The community newspaper, Saamstaan, was particularly formed for people to voice their disenchantment, to voice as to how they feel exactly, propagate what we stand for, what we want to see happening and it was my task in Oudtshoorn for example, to go to all the sectors of the society, to the teachers, to the students, to the parents and Mr Mhlauli as a teacher in Bongolethu, he was part of that community of the Bongolethu teacher community or the Parent Teacher Association.

&#9;When I would ask him what it is that the people think is important that we should write down in the papers. So in that context he was involved in the community newspaper.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Oliphant, why couldn't that be written in the conventional newspapers?

MR OLIPHANT: Pardon?

CHAIRPERSON: Why couldn't that be written in the conventional newspapers?

MR OLIPHANT: Mr Chairperson, the conventional newspapers were not interested in what we were doing, the conventional newspapers are owned today still by the conglomerates. For example you see political parties, there's one political party in this country called the Democratic Party and their story is always in the newspaper, it's because particularly they have been formed by those big conglomerates, they're funded by them. So if you at that time were against the system of the day, your story would not appear in the ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: And therefore the community there found it necessary to establish it's own newspaper?

MR OLIPHANT: Non-profit making community based organisation, run and controlled by the community themselves.

MR BOOYENS: And obviously under your chairmanship basically propagating I assume - you must tell me if I'm wrong, basically propagating resistance politics, is that correct?

MR OLIPHANT: Well I don't know what you mean by resistance politics.

MR BOOYENS: I'm talking '85 words, I'm talking about 1985.

MR OLIPHANT: We preached basically unity. We wrote, it can be construed, the kind of thing we wrote could be construed as resistance politics because we were highlighting the fact that people were without houses, the children were without text books and without schools. Those were the kind of things that appeared in the community newspaper, those things that dealt directly with the quality of life of the people in the township. 

MR BOOYENS: Please, we are not arguing the political issues of that, we are looking through the glass of, I'm looking at it through the glasses of 1985 and seen from the perception of the people that I represent, the security branch. That is why I am asking you these questions. 

&#9;Let's not argue about the justified and unjustified but the whole point is that that was, you were talking about the national conglomerates and so on, that was what you were writing about. 

&#9;You were writing about what the government was doing wrong, how the government was oppressing the people, they were disenfranchised and that in fact the people, we've heard of the term people's power for example, that that must be mobilised against that. Would that in essence be correct?

MR OLIPHANT: Ja, you see Sir, I don't have a fight with you either but I'm talking as the chairperson and the vocal person for the newspaper. I had to go around and seek funds for the newspaper and that is why I exactly know what we stood for. 

&#9;The security police had an agenda to kill and maim and brutally destroy everybody who spoke out against the inhumane treatment of our South African people.

MR BOOYENS: Yes, and that is what your newspaper did, it spoke out ...[intervention]

MR OLIPHANT: That was the fundamental role ...[intervention]

MR BOOYENS: It spoke out against the inhumane treatment of the people.

MR OLIPHANT: And also, no not, that could sound as if it is like a negative approach that we had, in fact we encouraged people to unite, to stand together, not to be dishonest because we were, you know, if we look at how our taxes were used to kill us and we were trying to teach our people not to become part of that abhorrent system of the past.

MR BOOYENS: Ja. And in fact it would also be correct then to say it was not only negative but it was also telling them positive in the sense of the word, that in order to resist this evil system you must stand together, you must be honest, you must be prepared to get involved and so on I take it.

MR OLIPHANT: Yes, yes, that is so, ja.

MR BOOYENS: I see. And just to get back to the situation on the ground, I still don't quite understand why Mrs Mhlauli says that he took the community newspaper, to quote her exact words as it's recorded here. Did you contribute articles, did he write things, did he speak to reporters, that's what I'm trying to find out.

MR OLIPHANT: You see you're arguing from the perspective of a conventional newspaper. The journalists might easily be the children at the school who write an article of what they're busy with there to keep them busy. At the church there would be the church people who would write and it would be put together by a group of people not trained formally with bachelor degrees in journalism, it's people's writers and they would write. So Mr Mhlauli's involvement was as a result of him being the principal of the school, a respected leader in the community, so he couldn't write articles in the paper you see. He couldn't write articles in the paper, we wrote the articles. The children wrote the articles, the Teacher's Organisation would submit an article but it was never like you would hear a PW Botha say this or someone say that, it was basically how we could get our people to get rid of what we were brought up with in this country, rid ourselves of this obnoxious ...[intervention]

MR BOOYENS: Well, you were referring to PW Botha, in other words what you would like is, not about what PW said but how to get rid of him?

MR OLIPHANT: Pardon?

MR BOOYENS: Not about what PW said but how to get rid of him basically?

MR OLIPHANT: No, getting rid of PW was no problem ...[intervention]

MR BOOYENS: His government then.

MR OLIPHANT: We never considered getting rid of PW Botha, why for what purpose, he was making noises unnecessarily?

MR BOOYENS: I think let's rather stay out of that, we may get bitten.

MR OLIPHANT: Ja, you started.

ADV BOSMAN: Excuse Mr Booyens, can I just come in here. &#9;

&#9;Mr Oliphant would you say that Mr Mhlauli was part of the process of generating material for the newspaper, would that be the correct way to put it?

MR OLIPHANT: It can be seen in that perspective but not on a regular basis, like for example the newspaper people wouldn't go on a weekly basis and ask him what his opinion is. He would, once his school would feature or his name would feature in an article or he would assist with, at his school he would, we would bring the papers to the school and it would be given to the principal of the school and the children would be distributing the newspapers because it was their newspaper, the community's newspaper. 

CHAIRPERSON: If I misunderstand you correct me Mr Oliphant, I'm trying to understand what you are saying. Mr Mhlauli as I understand you was a progressive principal that allowed his children, students to participate in a paper like Saamstaan, is that what you are saying?

MR OLIPHANT: Yes, I can also add, I also said in my evidence in chief that the whole area, our whole, we can actually say Mr Chairperson, that at that time there were two distinct grouping actually in Oudtshoorn, there was the white conservatives and there were the other side, the black people who organised themselves into community organisations and Mr Mhlauli, when he arrived in Oudtshoorn, he became part of that whole process.

DR TSOTSI: Mr Oliphant, Mr Mhlauli was a teacher?

MR OLIPHANT: Yes.

DR TSOTSI: Employed by the government. Would he have been free to write in the newspapers criticising the government?

MR OLIPHANT: Well, I can only tell you what happened to me for criticising the government and I think I raised that earlier. I criticised the government on sporting things and I lost my job so I don't think Mr Mhlauli would in any way be vocal on criticising the government as a teacher or as an individual and we never, we didn't have, because he was not in the category of the Executive Committee. 

&#9;He was a good key principal, he was leadership figure in the community, they respected him, because leadership to us is different as to what leadership meant to other people. To us it means those people that adopted moral, who had moral values in life, people who were not involved in for example the corruption of what is coming out today, we would not encourage fights among the people and those were the people who would stand out as leadership figures in our communities. Mr Mhlauli fell in that category.

MR BOOYENS: What would you describe as a member of the UDF? If I asked you today, what is a member of the UDF?

MR OLIPHANT: I think everybody who felt at that time that the current system was not appropriate to see to the needs or improving the quality of life, of bringing about a democratic system, would be a member of the UDF.

MR BOOYENS: Well, that may be a broad philosophical statement. Wasn't the - I'm talking about on the ground situation, the members of the UDF were different organisations not so?

MR OLIPHANT: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: And the people serving on the UDF would be office bearers of different organisations, not so?

MR OLIPHANT: Right.

MR BOOYENS: So before you can really call somebody a member of the UDF, wouldn't he as of necessity have to be an office bearer and a representative on a UDF body?

MR OLIPHANT: He would have to be part of an organisation, whether it be a rugby club, a church organisation, a civic body ...[intervention]

MR BOOYENS: Whatever, no, never mind. Now, Mr Mhlauli of course as a result of the fact that he was a teacher, was forced of manoeuvred into a situation because of the way the government behaved towards its servants being involved in politics, that if he, insofar as he wanted to be involved in politics he would have had to be extremely cautious about it, not so?

MR OLIPHANT: If he would have to have been involved in politics he would have to be cautious?

MR BOOYENS: Mm. Well, otherwise it could happen what happened to you.

MR OLIPHANT: Absolutely. I think that Mr Mhlauli, as I said all the time, that he was an admirable community leader but he never propagated political ideals in the community.

MR BOOYENS: Or if he propagated them he certainly did so in such a way that they couldn't be tagged onto him. In other words he wouldn't get onto a public stage and make a political speech or write some political article under his own name in the community newspaper, that would have been extremely, well that would have been suicidal as far as his professional life was concerned in any case, not so?

MR OLIPHANT: Ja, I think so, one can think like that, ja.

ADV POTGIETER: So Mr Oliphant, in other words if somebody were looking in from the outside, if the security police were looking in and looking at what Mr Mhlauli was up to, they wouldn't have formed the idea that he was an activist, that he was one of the dangerous threats to the State at that stage?

MR OLIPHANT: No, they would definitely not. You see I can justify that even further by saying that young children who distributed the newspaper openly at times were at times picked up by the security police and Mr Mhlauli according to my knowledge was never detained because they'd never draw a line, or they're going to detain this man because he's the leader of, they detained at random and they never detained Mr Mhlauli. What does that say to me? That says to me that he was never regarded to them as a political threat.

ADV POTGIETER: And I mean, even looking at his activities there wouldn't have been any reason to form that sort of idea?

MR OLIPHANT: Absolutely not, that is so.

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you.

MR BOOYENS: You see Mrs Mhlauli gave the following evidence, now admittedly this was at an earlier stage just appropos your answer:

&#9;&#9;"one day they"

and that includes Mr Mhlauli.

&#9;&#9;"were in Tarkastad at a youth meeting. When they came back from the meeting they were arrested by the police, white police but they were separated so nobody knew what was happening"

But you say as far as you know in Oudtshoorn he was never detained?

MR OLIPHANT: Yes, that's ...[intervention]

MR BOOYENS: We're not talking about his past ...[intervention]

MR OLIPHANT: I cannot recall that he was ever detained for a period like 14 days, a month or so, I never had any knowledge about that.

MR BOOYENS: Well, have you got any knowledge whether he was ever picked up by the police and questioned and so on?

MR OLIPHANT: Well no, I don't think I knew of anything but it might have been possible you know because as I said they made a mockery of justice.

MR BOOYENS: Mm. And just one more thing in this regard, the relationship between Mr Mhlauli and Mr Goniwe, did you have knowledge of that or are you unaware of any relationship between them?

MR OLIPHANT: I think they knew each other, they came from the same place and that's as far as ...[intervention]

MR BOOYENS: And that's as far as your knowledge goes?

MR OLIPHANT: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: Because you heard the evidence just before you, that when he was in Cradock he was frequently seen in the company of let's call them A file activists.

MR OLIPHANT: Yes.

MR BOOYENS: But you cannot really comment on that, correct?

MR OLIPHANT: No, I can only say that I don't know what file person I was but he was in my company many a time.

MR BOOYENS: Well if I listen to the previous witness you would have made an A, I've got no doubt about that.

CHAIRPERSON: All you needed was, according to the last witness Mr Oliphant, was to address a meeting then you would qualify for an A grade file.

MR OLIPHANT: Then I was A, I was in the top class then.

MR BOOYENS: Thank you Mr Chairman.

NO FURTHER QUESTIONS BY MR BOOYENS

CHAIRPERSON: Re-examination?

MR BIZOS: No re-examination thank you Mr Chairman.

NO RE-EXAMINATION BY MR BIZOS

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Oliphant, just one question from me just to put the matter in its proper perspective. If Mr Mhlauli was involved in politics in Oudtshoorn clandestinely, surely you would have known about it?

MR OLIPHANT: Absolutely.

CHAIRPERSON: And you say that he was not?

MR OLIPHANT: Never. Am I excused?

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.

ADV BOSMAN: Just one point Mr Chairperson. 

&#9;Mr Oliphant I'm not quite clear on the issue of the so-called "G Plan", was this G Plan actually implemented in Oudtshoorn or did you implement the M plan or no plan? I'm not quite clear on that.

MR OLIPHANT: Well what we had in our community, the element of accountability weighed very strongly as part of our organising the community, order within the streets and that is why we had street committees. We wanted to under our banner, wanted to make people as I said earlier, to understand that they should not accept the subservience of this abhorrent regime which we were under and we should try to take control of our own lives, that is why we had the newspaper, and the newspaper slogan was: "We speak for ourselves no-one can speak on our behalf, we speak for ourselves".

ADV BOSMAN: The essence of the G plan ...[intervention]

MR OLIPHANT: That was the essence of our community organisation.

ADV BOSMAN: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, you are now excused.

MR OLIPHANT: Thank you very much.

WITNESS EXCUSED

CHAIRPERSON: Is that all Mr Bizos?

MR BIZOS: Mr Chairman, we have no further evidence to call but my learned friend Mr Tswalana will hand a bundle of documents which he will explain and which we will want to refer to in argument that primarily ...[indistinct]

MR TSWALANA: Mr Chairman, my learned friend Mr Bizos indicated earlier that we have a bundle and I beg leave to hand in this bundle. My learned friends across already have copies and these copies are copies for the Committee.

&#9;Now apart from the ...

MACHINE SWITCHED OFF

&#9;We have also paginated the bundle from page 1 to 111 and the matters of which we may in our heads of argument refer to some of those pages of the bundle and I therefore hand it in as VV, Exhibit VV. Mr Chairman, these are extracts of pages from the inquest record. Yes, it's from the inquest record 1994, it's another van Rensburg.

MR BIZOS: No, General.

MR TSWALANA: It is General van Rensburg of the Aksie Komitee of the SWR.

CHAIRPERSON: ...[inaudible]

MR TSWALANA: Yes.

MACHINE SWITCHED OFF

MR BOOYENS: Mr Chairman, just one aspect. I refer to what is basically a TRC document of the hearing. I do not - I presume that document in any event is available to members of the Committee.

CHAIRPERSON: Now that we are here we will appreciate a copy, at least one copy. We can make copies of it for ourselves.

MR BOOYENS: Mr Chairman, I've unfortunately only got one copy. My I suggest that I request my attorney to make a copy and to forward it to you?

CHAIRPERSON: Can you forward it with your heads?

MR BOOYENS: The heads will be coming from Pietermaritzburg and - we will sort it our Mr Chairman. I presume my learned friend has got a copy of this.

MR BIZOS: We do not have a copy but if you could let us have a copy we would appreciate it.

CHAIRPERSON: Is that all?

MR BOOYENS: Yes, Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: It looks like we've come to the end of the hearing, that counsel prefer to submit written heads in respect of this hearing and I understand that Mr Booyens has undertaken to submit his heads of argument two Fridays from tomorrow?

MR BOOYENS: I think it's about the 19th Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: And thereafter Mr Bizos around the 7th of July, did we agree on that?

MR BIZOS: Within at least a week of the record becoming available Mr Chairman because we want to refer you in our argument to specific pages of the record which will be I think of greater assistance.

CHAIRPERSON: Well I'd leave the question of obtaining the record to you gentlemen. Let us stick to the arrangement as we planned to do and if there is a problem will you people come back to me?

MR BOOYENS: Mr Chairman, I think it's unrealistic to expect that we will have the record by the 19th. I think in fact what we suggested in chambers is that I will do my heads as far as I can get with them and then once we obtain the last part of the record I will file supplementary heads and make that available to my learned friends. If I've got to work, I'm sorry for my learned friend, then he can do it as well.

CHAIRPERSON: Well the other representatives may or may not want to submit heads. Their heads in my view is going to be that of volumous and you people can submit at any time before the 7th of June, July sorry. Is that acceptable?

MR VAN DER MERWE: That's fine, thank you Mr Chairman.

MS PATEL: I think if we can get an indication from the representatives of Mr de Kock who is in fact an applicant, that their heads be filed by the same time that Advocate Booyens' heads are filed in order to grant Mr Bizos an opportunity to respond to that.

CHAIRPERSON: I think that's fair comment.

LEGAL REPRESENTATIVE: I'll tell that to Mr Hugo.

CHAIRPERSON: There are a few issues I would like the parties to deal with in their heads. The following issue relates to the question of full disclosure. &#9;Firstly, we should deal with the credibility of each applicant over and above that the credibility of each applicant, in particular the issue of Mr Mhlauli. &#9;Thirdly, in regard to full disclosure, who if anyone gave the instructions relating to the death or deaths of these four people and furthermore whether the plan to kill at least Mr Goniwe, was hatched three weeks before the death or in fact a year before the death. &#9;Those are four aspects over and above what will appear in your heads. Under Law, we would like you to deal with the definition of full disclosure with particular reference to the word: "relevant" in the Act. The question of political motivation, proportionality and reasonability in the circumstances as envisaged by the Act.

MR BOOYENS: Can you just repeat that last one please Mr Chairman, you were going too fast.

CHAIRPERSON: Political motivation, proportionality and whether the killings were reasonable in the circumstances as envisaged by the Act.

&#9;Furthermore, how does the failure to fully disclose on one aspect, for example, and we're not restricting in it to the example only but for example the position of Mr Mhlauli, how does that impact on the whole application in respect of full disclosure.

&#9;The impact of the failure of Mr Snyman to testify on the whole application, in particular with special reference to the question of the order, if at all an order was given.

&#9;Next, what is Mr Snyman's position in this application? 

&#9;Furthermore, if we find that the killing was contrary to the decision of a higher authority, can any of the applicants rely on the Act?

&#9;We would like you to deal further with the question of whether it can be said that there was malice involved in the modus operandi in the execution of the killing and if so, to what degree does malice impact on our decision?

&#9;Further, whether the impressions the applicants may have had of one or more of the victims should have been objective or subjective.

&#9;In view of certain questions asked of Mr van Jaarsveld, whether we should regard him as an expert. We draw your attention to the fact that he himself did not regard himself as an expert.

&#9;Further, we'd like you to deal with the question of whether the applicants acted on their own political motivation or strictly on an order. It follows also, we want you to deal with whether an applicant can rely on the Act when a political decision is made by another and he merely implemented it by way of an order.

&#9;And lastly, whether the victims were properly identified before they were killed, in particular Mr Mhlauli.

&#9;Any questions for clarification?

MR BIZOS: ...[inaudible] list of issues that we have to address and we will try our best to address them.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Booyens?

MR BOOYENS: No, Mr Chairman. 

CHAIRPERSON: Well, that brings us to the end of this hearing. I wish to thank all those who participated in this hearing and helped as best they could do gather the evidence, in particular my thanks goes to the Interpreters who do a thankless job and lastly to the people who attended these hearings over the three weeks, for their interest in the matter. We adjourn.

HEARING ADJOURNS

