Human Rights Violation Hearings — Moutse — 1996-12-04

MR MALAN: Certainly.  Possibly we will come back to you about that.  Something else which surprises me is that the two opinions are used in the same concept.  You are talking about peace and stability for independence and it does not sound as if you are speaking about peace and stability and order for the sake of peace and stability and order.  It is as if it just does not fit into the concept of security.  It is like it fits into a political context because surely the role of a security branch is to combat crime and to prosecute criminals.  Are you talking about the ordinary police service there?  But both you and Capt Hechter emphasised peace and stability for the sake of independence.  You create the impression that without that there could not be any independence.  Would you like to elaborate on that?

BRIG CRONJE: The uniform branch of the South African Police was here to ensure order.  The security branch was merely here to play a political role.  I do not know if that answers your question.

MR MALAN: That clarifies things a bit but what still makes it a bit complicated for me is that - but I don't want to comment on that.

BRIG CRONJE: Mr Chairperson perhaps I can help a bit here.  In the evidence it came out that General Van der Merwe was also the commissioner of police and also head of security  police.  The difference was you have to differentiate between the uniform branch who would do normal policing duties and the security police.  Now the security police were the political police.  They were specifically appointed to further the aims of the government of the day and as General Van der Merwe gave evidence at the amnesty if the security police were not there the National Party government
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of that day could not have remained in power for a day longer.  The role of the security police differed from the uniform police.  The uniform police were the normal police and the security police were the political side who had to further political objectives.  That is why today there is no longer that differentiation between the two.

MR MALAN: I understand that.  My perception was in a different direction.  According to what was said in the amnesty application - can I just ask you, you say the government wanted them to be independent.  The government decided to eliminate Ntuli.  The government wanted this and the government wanted that.  Could you just describe that government.

BRIG CRONJE: The National Party who was in power at the time.

MR MALAN: I am talking about the decisions.  I am not talking about the need for independence. The decision to eliminate Piet Ntuli, was it the government's decision, it was a decision which you accredited to the government.  How was the government involved in that, was it in the cabinet, in the caucus, in parliament?

BRIG CRONJE: I would like to read something to you.  I spoke about TREVITS.  It was a secret organisation called TREVITS, the Anti-Revolutionary Target Centre, which was established in 1985 firstly to identify targets in  neighbouring states and also ANC targets which later expanded to targets inland.  And it is possible that this instruction came from TREVITS that TREVITS collected information from all different regions in connection with various targets.  Meetings were held once a month where information from all sectors such as military intelligence,
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national intelligence, security branch of the South African Police and the South African Defence Force special task forces would identify targets.   At that stage the Vlakplaas Unit C2 was the interrogative unit and the C2 was TREVITS.  Each region had its own target identifying unit and the regions were West Transvaal, Northern Transvaal, the Far North, Northern Cape and Eastern Transvaal.  Colonel Tom Louw was initially in charge of TREVITS as the coordinator of information.  The Executive Chief General Buchner led them in 1978 and thereafter Beukes and then Brig Victor.  The targets were identified at TREVITS.  The representatives of military intelligence and the other units were there and they also had a permanent sitting there at the time. In each region records were kept of who the activists were, who emanated from which regions and who were the trouble-makers in such regions.  Tom Louw did the logistics of the whole thing and information was used to identify targets.  It was a secret component which was available only to people who worked with terrorists.  There was also a priority list which was kept which had to be kept updated by them, a priority list of targets.  The Council, according to me, had to have information about the existence of TREVITS because no such secret organisation could have been established without them knowing about it.

MR MALAN: So if you say TREVITS took the decisions, TREVITS obtained the information, they made the decisions and them implemented them.

BRIG CRONJE: They gave the information to the State Security Council at the time.

MR MALAN: Did the State Security Council function with them?
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BRIG CRONJE: They had to authorise it.

MR MALAN: Is it a council or a secretariat of the State Security?

BRIG CRONJE: I do not know.

MR MALAN: One more thing and then I will provisionally hand back to the Chairperson.  Later, after Piet Ntuli's death when Lerm and De Jager, they are both going to come and give evidence tomorrow, did you have contact with De Jager?

BRIG CRONJE: Yes, De Jager had to deal with the detention documents of persons who Lerm decided to detain in terms of the Detention Act.  He had to put together those documents and forward them to my office but it was done so seldom.  We had a lot of problems with him to get those documents.  Lerm would just decide that he would detain them and sometimes the princes were also detained by Lerm and thereafter they would be released.

MR MALAN: If I say to you that Lerm gave evidence to us, I am going to avail information which is probably not key information but that he did give evidence in terms of section 29 and brought us documentary proof that he received an instruction to detain people and that some of them refused and sometimes De Jager would tell them to investigate.   Would it surprise you?  In other words the information received from him was that he received these instructions to detain and also investigate and that a lot of them did not want to execute the instructions.

BRIG CRONJE: I do not know about that but what I can say to you is that if De Jager did investigate he did a very bad investigation.

MR MALAN: So there were very few detentions.

BRIG CRONJE: No, there were many detentions without any
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documentation.

MR MALAN: Yes, that is also information which we have.  But those detentions were not authorised by Lerm, they were authorised elsewhere.

BRIG CRONJE: Lerm had to make the recommendation but head office would authorise the decisions at Lerm's recommendations.

MR MALAN: Do you have any such documentation?

BRIG CRONJE: No, I do not have any records but I believe that a lot of documents were destroyed.

MR MALAN: Do you want to say anything about the relationship between Lerm and De Jager?  Did De Jager report to you?

BRIG CRONJE: No, De Jager submitted his documentation and reports to Colonel Loots who was my officer at the time who dealt with the detention documentation and processed such documentation.

MR MALAN: But he played the role of security police at the time in the region or did he play the role of uniform police?

BRIG CRONJE: I think he was with the investigative unit.

MR MALAN: Mr Chairperson I would like to say Colonel Loots is present here today.  If there are any questions which you would like to put to him perhaps we can just clear it up with him hereafter.  Thank you very much.