Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 2000-09-28

FERDINAND BARNARD: Mr Chairperson, just before I get there, there was a situation that arose at a certain stage where the whole information or intelligence system on which we worked, the whole monster machinery that I built up, and at various times people told me that we were the top performers in the country, we were very effective, and that now they were going to cut certain fundings, there were problems, there were two schools of thought in the higher levels of the hierarchy.
	There were problems now.  The MK, ANC, was in the country and the targets changed, we have to focus on the SACP, then we have to focus on MK, then we are not allowed to go close to them, then we have to focus on APLA. There was also a problem with funding, we could not get hold of the funds that we were used to.
	Then Righ Verster addressed me at a certain stage where he told me that we have to try and get hold of our own funds to keep up the system, because we do not have the support from the top any more.
	Then we made a decision and he brought me under the impression that it was also authorised from higher up that we must now generate money, but by means of taking on the criminals and must not rob a bank or rob somebody on the street, but I should focus on drug dealers.  I created a team with Eugene Riley, myself, Mark Francis and another coloured person.
	They were the main characters, and one of the first robberies that we did, was 12 000 mandrax tables, I sold it five or six times.  Every time I sell it through a specific person, Marak Francis who was an underworld figure that I recruited, he would act as the seller.  People from Newcastle would come to buy the tablets, he would give them a good price, they buy it, and as they drive away with the tablets, we will have a police vehicle, pull them off the road and take it back.  I did it and sold it at various opportunities and various times.
	We would keep a third of the money for ourselves, a third would be given to the person who did the front-line work, and a third would then be used in the system.  But it rotted at the end, the whole process that we were busy with.
	I robbed the Nigerians in Johannesburg, I robbed them of all their drugs, and if I was convicted of that, I would have done 500 more years of prison service.  Things got out of hand.
	One of the robberies that we committed was in Lusasaneng in Bophuthatswana.  Things went wrong, there was a lot of shooting.   Eugene Riley was wounded in the face and in the body.  He was not arrested at the scene, but after they chased him, he was arrested.  I got away and another person got away.  Eugene Riley and Mark Francis were arrested.
	To give you some background on Mark Francis, he was a very prominent member in the Johannesburg underworld, who also served a sentence for a bank robbery.  I also knew him from when I was a Detective at the SANAP Branch.    I then made him an informer.  I knew him from the prison and I pulled him into the system.
	At a later stage he received a salary and he organised for certain access.  He knew about the system, especially about the unit that I ran in Hillbrow and in Johannesburg Central.  Things went wrong at the Lusasaneng.  This robbery that went wrong, it was a bona fide robbery.  They had R600 000 that they robbed from somebody else, they were switching diamonds and this money was at a specific premises.  We hit the target at about four o'clock in the morning, myself, Riley and another person who drove the vehicle.
	We had balaclavas on, we penetrated the house and then when the shooting took place, Riley fell, other people were wounded as well.  We got away, myself and another person, but Riley and Francis were arrested at a later stage.
	I was found guilty of the robbery and what happened then was, when we arrived back in Johannesburg, Mr Francis, while he was arrested, he admitted that, or he implicated me in front of a Magistrate, he said that we gave him Uzzis.  I was a member of the CCB.  Amongst others, the investigative team who detained me concerning the Webster murder, went to Bophuthatswana to go and see him there, he made a report to them.  On the grounds of his allegation they came back to me, but I denied everything.
	I got Francis and Riley out on bail.  I got them out.  When they arrived back in Johannesburg, I took Mr Francis to an Attorney and he made a statement to counter his previous statement, because I knew they were going to use the first statement in order to deliver me out, but he had already made a statement after he was released, that he only implicated me because he saw that this was what the people wanted and he thought it was hit-squad activities, and he used that, but that indeed it was not true, I did not accompany and he was putting it in a different way, now that there was no pressure on him.  He was very scared of me, because I knew this person created a lot of problems for me, but the statement cleared the way for me, that they cannot deliver me out to Bophuthatswana, and there were no way in which they could get to me.  I was not charged.  Eugene Riley and Francis were both charged.
	Then I received information from  a prostitute that Francis said that before he went to jail in Bophuthatswana, before he is going to jail in Bophuthatswana, he will expose all my activities in my unit.  Apparently he made contact with members in Brixton and at the same stage Eugene Riley received the same information from a different source, a police source.
	Myself and Eugene Riley then realised that this is a really big problem and I had no other choice, but to report this to Righ Verster because my bosses Gerrie Bornman and Righ Verster, they all had meetings with Mr Francis, where they questioned him.   Carol-Ann Burt and Christopher Human, they all knew.
	I handed over this information to him, what this man was planning to do and within a day, Verster came back to me and he told me that the instruction was "this person must immediately be killed."  I said "this is not a problem, I will shoot him".  He said "he must not be shot, it must seem, it must look as if it is a gang related attack", the same way as Dr Webster was killed.   We had to use a different method.
	I then thought about it, I thought about using a knife, or to hit him until he died.  Mr Riley had a trust between the two of them, because they acted in Lusasaneng together.  First it was just once a week, then twice a week, and later it was just once a month.
	We would go then on a specific day, to go and report and the previous evening we discussed that Eugene Riley will get Francis to go to a certain alley in Hillbrow, Berea, and I would then wait there and kill him there.  That same time, when this happened, there was also an issue with Vlakplaas, I had problem with Tokarev Bezuidenhout.  What made the whole issue more sensitive was that I already tasked Francis to work on Bezuidenhout in Berea, who lived in some Mansions, I cannot recall.  It was very close to the hotel that Staal Burger had at that time, in Berea.
	They used drugs together, they drank cough medicine together and we wanted to make use of him, and he knew that we were busy working on Tokarev Bezuidenhout.  Things worked in that way that I got out of the vehicle with a baseball bat, it was a Sunday evening, I walked into the alley and at the bottom of the alley, it is an alley behind a street, it is very dark.  There is an entrance that was built in, I waited there, Mr Riley walked around with Mr Francis.  He told him that he hid mandrax there and that he wanted Francis to test it for Chinese people who wanted to buy it.  It was only samples that had to be tested, and he pulled Francis into the alley.  I came from the back, with the baseball bat and I hit him.  The first blow that I dealt him, was very hard, but something happened and he ducked and I hit him on the arm or the shoulder, and he fell down.
	He is not my size, he is much smaller.  Riley jumped to the front, picked Francis up from the ground and he said "Mark, they are attacking us".  At that stage I was able to hit him against his head, I could hear his head explode.  He fell and he never got up.  I placed the baseball bat behind me and walked away, but he started shouting.  It all happened in a few seconds.  I walked up into the alley and Mr Riley followed me.	
	I left the alley, got into a vehicle that we parked there beforehand.  I placed the bat in a plastic bag and I put it in a rubbish bin.  We drove to the Westdene Dam and I threw the bat into the Westdene Dam, over the fence.  Myself and Riley drove.  We went to go and pick up petrol that we bought beforehand.  We all got into a rubbish bag and we took all our clothes off, our shoes as well, we put it in bags, we dressed in clothes that we had ready.  We took the petrol, doused the clothes and set it alight.