Amnesty Hearings — Pretoria — UNKNOWN

UNKNOWN: Well, name one or two individuals of "we" on the right.  Name one or two of the "we" on the right when you wrote the word "we" there.

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Mr Robert van Tonder of the Boerestaat Party, Mr Eugene Terreblanche of the Afrikaner Weerstand Beweeging.  It was general consensus in the Conservative Party as well, Mr Chairman, that attitude.

UNKNOWN: No, no, you mentioned two individuals outside the Conservative Party.  Would you please favour us with a couple names from the Conservative Party that you referred to as "we"?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Mr Chairman, it will be clear from the congress records which I submitted in terms of the mobilisation application, that it was patently obvious that there were three options open to us.  The one was elections, which had already been stopped, the other was negotiations and that was the time of CODESA, which we refused to participate in and the third one was passive or active resistance.  So, that ...

MOKOTEDI MPSHE: Mr Derby-Lewis, they are asking you for the names of people from the right, from the Conservative Party, just the names of individuals.

MR DERBY-LEWIS: My colleagues in the caucus, Mr Chairman,

MOKOTEDI MPSHE: They have got names, do they not?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Mr Schalk Pienaar, the former MP for Potgietersrus, Mr Heug Prinsloo, the former MP for Roodepoort, my colleagues on the caucus, Mr Chairman.

MOKOTEDI MPSHE: Yes.

UNKNOWN: Why did the AWB and Mr van Tonder come in, come to your mind and why did we have difficulty and to have to have judicial intervention before you could mention any name of a person in the Conservative Party?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Mr Chairman, I thought that by broadly referring to the Conservative Party it was clear who it was and as far as van Tonder and Terreblanche are concerned, I have attended meetings of theirs where these sentiments had been expressed.

UNKNOWN: Yes.  Let us, I think we have made that point.  Thank you Mr Derby-Lewis.  Let us turn to the next one.  The final paragraph on the right-hand column,
"The reason for the silencer was allowed me to practice with it at home without disturbing the neighbours.".
There is no similar paragraph in the old.  Do you agree with that?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

UNKNOWN: Now, is this true, Mr Derby-Lewis, in your second application, is it true?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: That is true, Mr Chairman, and it came out ...

UNKNOWN: Now, ...

MR DERBY-LEWIS: ... during consultations with my legal representatives and they advised me to include it.

UNKNOWN: I see, but now, is it true, as a matter of fact, that you, a person with military training, licensed firearm holder for many years, needed training with the stolen gun that you had obtained?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

UNKNOWN: Now, the silencer is a special bit of equipment to be used particularly by assassins.

MR DERBY-LEWIS: It has been used by assassins, yes, Mr Chairman.

UNKNOWN: Particularly by assassins.

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Yes, Mr Chairman.

UNKNOWN: For anyone to pertain that a silencer was obtained for the purposes of taking your, protecting yourself from any attackers is hardly believable, is it?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Mr Chairman, it is quite clear that in the event of a night time attack, for example, the presence of a silencer at the end of the barrel would conceal the flashes and would then make it very difficult for anyone attacking to identify where I was returning fire from.

UNKNOWN: Oh I see.

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Very clear.

UNKNOWN: But I thought that you were concerned about the neighbours.  You did not want any noise to be made for the benefit of the neighbours?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Mr Chairman, I ...

JUDGE WILSON: Is that fair, Mr Bizos, on what is written there?  Are there not two reasons given?

UNKNOWN: Allow him to practise with it ...

JUDGE WILSON: Allow him to practise without disturbing the neighbours and also to supply me with some element of surprise in the event of an attack from ...

UNKNOWN: Yes, I am sorry, I only read the precis on the, yes.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.

UNKNOWN: Some element of surprise.  Now, surely, attackers do not, well let me put it this way.  Have you or have you ever heard anybody having a silencer for the purposes of using it for better self-defence?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Mr Chairman, I was not interested in anybody, I was interested in my own circumstances and in view of the fact that there had been attempts on my life in the past and that I had been officially notified by both the ANC and APLA that I was on their death list, I think it would be reasonable to expect something like that and to take the necessary precautions to protect my family and myself.

UNKNOWN: Let us go on to page three.  You describe Mr Hani in the first application, the first version of the application as a,
"... former MK commander.

MR DERBY-LEWIS: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

UNKNOWN: And that is amended to,
" ... was a senior commander of MK.".

MR DERBY-LEWIS: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

UNKNOWN: Why did you decide to change that?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Because, once again, during consultation, Mr Chairman, my legal advisers believed that it was not correct to say that and they advised me to amend it.

UNKNOWN: But surely your legal advisers were there not, were not there to advise you to "change former MK commander" to "the senior commander of MK" if those were not the facts as you knew them when you first made, you made the first application?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Mr Chairman, when we consulted it actually came out that I was not referring to the late Chris Hani as a former commander, I was referring to him as the commander of MK and my legal team then advised me to change it.

UNKNOWN: But you described him as the "former commander".  What information did your legal representatives give you that made you change the allegation of fact, from a "former commander" as the, "was the senior commander of MK", why was that change made?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: I have explained that, Mr Chairman.

UNKNOWN: You have, you think you have.  Very well.  Now, there was no allegation in the original application,
"... a prime military target.".

MR DERBY-LEWIS: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

UNKNOWN: Now, by the time this change was made did you know that in numerous applications for amnesty before the Committee, members of the security forces identified the people that they killed as military targets?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: I did not know that, Mr Chairman.  As far as my memory serves me, there was no mention of that in any of the communications or the publications to which I had access in prison and I was not present at the hearings of the Committee.

UNKNOWN: I see.  Were not the decisions of the Committee in the possession of your attorneys or your wife or your both?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Certainly not, Mr Chairman, in the possession of my wife and, to the best of my knowledge, not in the possession of my attorneys, because this was only requested very recently.

UNKNOWN: On the bottom of page three,
"Mr Hani said that he would regard White MP's of the ruling National Party and the far right Conservative Party as legitimate targets for attack".
That is not repeated in the application.

MR DERBY-LEWIS: That was, once again, on the advice of my legal representatives, Mr Chairman, and I think that I clarified that during evidence to the Committee last week.

UNKNOWN: Why was that allegation left out of the application in its final form?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: It was left out on the advise of my legal people, Mr Chairman.  You must ask them that question.

UNKNOWN: I see.  Well, did you not ask them whether they considered it irrelevant or is it, perhaps, because you had no evidence of Mr Hani saying that?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Mr Chairman, I may be a strange person, but I take the advice of my legal representatives without querying.  I place ...(intervention)

UNKNOWN: What ...

MR DERBY-LEWIS: ... absolute confidence in them.