Amnesty Hearings — Boksburg — 1998-03-18

BERNARD MAKGABO NGOEPE: And them being separate points, why would 
they - if requirements are met, if prescribed requirements for 
amnesty are met, why should we refuse the applicants amnesty 
simply because at that stage, simply because the offence was 
committed at the time when the country was at a sensitive stage?

GEORGE BIZOS: That is why I say it's not a separate ground, it's 
ground supporting the proportionality argument.

BERNARD MAKGABO NGOEPE: Thank you that's understandable, yes.

GEORGE BIZOS: Probably if it had been more fully drafted it would 
have been more - it's more appropriate to the proportionality 
argument.
	And in 5.2 according to the applicants, the struggle 
continues and it cannot be discounted that they remain committed 
to the objective of creating large scale chaos which will create 
conditions for a coup d'etat and this is what it was Mr Chairman, 
this was an attempt on their own version, and attempt at coup 
d'etat and may I add here that nobody articulated more practically 
than Mr Clarke that we had here yesterday.  
	Perhaps if the Committee would allow me a personal 
observation, the applicants and their counsel thought the world of 
Mr Clarke as a witness, we submit that he is so besotted by 
hatred purporting to be a fundamentalist Christian, so besotted 
with hatred and admiration for the two murderers applying for 
amnesty that I would suggest that there is very ....(tape ends)
.. it doesn't appear in the heads of argument elsewhere,  I might 
as well deal with it at this stage Mr Chairman even though I'm on 
an overview.
	Counsel for the applicants dismiss the evidence of Mr 
Visser as fanciful and self-serving.  Yes it may well be but there 
are two inherent improbabilities in Mr Clarke's evidence who 
denies that anything like that happened. 
	Firstly why should Mr Visser have gone to Mr Clarke and 
asked Mr Clarke and Mr Roodt to apply for amnesty?  
	Secondly, if Mr Clarke is telling the truth that Mr Visser 
was, he's the fault ..(indistinct) and that the relationship between 
the two of them had soured by the time of the commission of the 
murder, why Mr Clarke on his own version disclosed to Mr Visser 
that there was compromising information in his computer's hard 
disks?  Since when on the general and particular probabilities 
does a witness confide that sort of information?
	 If we turn to paragraph 5 of page 3 Mr Chairman 
	"It is further submitted that the grant of amnesty to the 
applicants will be inappropriate and not in accordance with 
the objective of the Commission to promote National unity 
and reconciliation in that the offence was committed during 
the time when the country was at the most sensitive stage 
with the building of peace, reconciliation and democracy, 
the offence was of such a gravity that the chaos envisaged 
to result from the assassination would have led to the death 
of many innocent civilians.  According to the applicants the 
struggle continues and it cannot be discounted that they 
remain committed with the objective of creating large scale 
chaos which will create conditions for a coup d'etat".
	But now Mr Chairman, amnesty is provided in relation in 
relation to coup d'etat in paragraph E and by the usual argument 
of that which included excludes other possibilities.  It was only 
amnesty to be given any person in the performance of a coup 
d'etat to take over the government of any former state or any 
attempt thereto.  So this was a coup d'etat, it was not for the 
purposes of preserving law and order.
	We turn in paragraph 6 to  6.1  The failure to make full 
disclosures.  We submit that Mr Derby-Lewis has lied about the 
involvement of Mrs Derby-Lewis in the compilation of the hit list 
and the reasons therefor.  
	Derby-Lewis testified that he first saw the list of the nine 
names in Cape Town when Mrs Derby-Lewis showed it to him as 
part of the gravy train story which was to be used by Dr 
Hartzenberg in Parliament. We submit that that's false Mr 
Chairman. This could not be true because in January 1993 when 
Mrs Derby-Lewis telephoned Arthur Kemp and sent him a list of 
90 names it was after she and Derby-Lewis had discussed it and 
decided that unless something dramatic was done the country 
would be controlled by a communist.  
"Clive and I therefore highlighted the names of 
people whom we believed to be the enemies of South 
Africa".  
	This comes in R4.251, paragraph 43.1, we are going to 
argue Mr Chairman in due course that their statements are 
admissible as the ruling of the Committee indicated and that 
weight should be attached to it.  We will refer you, not to 
generalities or the cross-examination put to Mr De Waal, but to 
her own statements that she is unable to deny that this is what she 
said and that she made that freely and voluntarily despite certain 
discomforts that she says she suffered under. If that statement of 
Mrs Derby-Lewis is admitted and what we say is that we must 
take it together with the probabilities; the probabilities of this 
close union between these two persons and having regard to the 
character of Mrs Derby-Lewis, we are not dealing here with a 
compliant housewife, we are dealing with a high profile 
propagandist in the Patriot who in her exaggerations and fanatical 
statements probably has no equal and who has a mind of her own. 
 No serious step in relation to the preparation of this list would 
have been without her consent, and what we say at the bottom of 
page 4, 'on 29 April 1993 whilst in detention, Mrs Derby-Lewis 
was shown three pages compiled as the hit list and recognised 
them as the list of names and addresses that she had given to her 
husband.  This is evidence that Mrs Derby-Lewis knew of what 
purpose Mr Derby-Lewis needed the list.  
	Of course Mr Chairman, I'll remind you at this stage that 
she denied flatly before the Judge President of the Transvaal as it 
was then known, that she had given the list to anyone, she made 
up a fabric of lies about it being left on her coffee table with 
copies of the Patriot which Mr Walus may have mistakenly taken.
	When Mrs Derby-Lewis compiled the original list of 19 
names, she knew that the people whom she and Derby-Lewis 
considered to be enemies of South Africa were to be murdered, 
that after she had received the list of 9 names, Chris Hani was 
targeted for elimination, that the houses of the people identified 
for elimination would be reconnoitred and that Walus the one who 
was going to assassinate Chris Hani and we give you the passages 
in R4 Mr Chairman.  When cross-examined on why she needed 
addresses of certain people that she could either telephone or 
visit their offices, Mrs Derby-Lewis gave some preposterous 
answers.  Although she didn't think Hani would give her a private 
interview in his home, she still wanted the address so that she 
could see the way he lived.  The answer is absurd, if she was not 
going to be allowed into the house in the first place.  
	Mrs Derby-Lewis gave totally unsatisfactory and evasive 
answers to members of the Committee Mr Chairman about why 
she would have wanted to interview certain people who appear on 
the list and as to why she didn't visit certain journalists or 
telephoned them at their homes instead of seeking their addresses 
through Mr Kemp.  
	We give you the references; it was a long exchange Mr 
Chairman and we submit that it bristles with improbabilities.  It is 
submitted that the reason she has for compiling the list be 
rejected and that it be found that the list was compiled as a hit 
list.

CHAIRPERSON: The one thing that sometimes worries me 
about this is, why if people are busy carefully planning the 
assassination of others, why would they make a list and in fact 
bandy it around.