Special Hearings — Political Party Recalls — UNKNOWN

UNKNOWN: With your permission Chairperson let me attempt a scrambled egg dance. The very short history about this which would explain some of the background which Mr Vally is asking about, we discussed this question of self-defence units with the then government when we were negotiating what in the end became the D F Malan Accord I think it was called. And the issue that we were raising was that the police and the security forces were not protecting people in the light of all of that violence, that is was necessary that something be done. And we were of the view that self-defence units should be established to carry out this work as authorised, authorised organisations mandated by whatever was needed to mandate them in terms of the law. It was a long discussion. In the end General Magnus Malan who was at the time Minister of Defence, said why don't we then establish self-protection units. He said the word "defence" gave a rather wrong impression. Why don't we establish self-protection units and we all agreed.
He went on to say that what would then happen from their point of view would be that because there was agreement at that stage already about what to do with the arms caches that we had in the country, that we could then take some of those weapons and get them licensed and so you would establish self-protection units which would carry licensed firearms. And therefore, it was important that those self-protection units should not be party political instruments, but should, as we say, should be based on communities and be representative of communities.
You would therefore have a situation in which the people who carried the weapons would have been identified as specific weapons licensed to specific persons, so that if anything went wrong you would know what happened. So we agreed to that. And therefore the conceptualisation of the self-protection units was that they would indeed be community-based within the ANC.
We started discussing linking up with the IFP in areas where you both had the ANC and the IFP to discuss this matter so that when these units are established they would indeed, they would come under the general supervision of all of these forces that would be relevant in any particular area. That was the conceptualisation.
So they would not be controlled by particular parties because then they would become party-political partisan, whereas you wanted them to protect the community against anybody who was attacking the community whether it was ANC people or IFP people. Of course a number of things went wrong after that. One of them was that in fact the process of the licensing of weapons for such units did not take place. In the meantime the violence continued, the consequence of which was what we are describing in the document. So we then responded in a particular way.
There was a basic assumption, which again may also have been wrong, there was a basic assumption to the approach which was that there would be in these communities local political structures, local structures of civil society strong enough to be able to constitute these committees that would then take charge of the self-protection units. I'm saying that was an assumption. But certainly once the matter was then dealt with by the ANC on its own via the supply of weapons, not licensed necessarily, some of them would have been licensed, of course it changed the character of what had been discussed, originally.
You will remember Chairperson that there was also provision in the National Peace Accord for self-protection units. It was arising from that discussion and agreement that we'd had at the airport here in Cape Town for the establishment of such and the control was always visualised as non-partisan, vested in communities on the assumption which may have been wrong, that there would be sufficiently strong structures within those communities to be able to handle these units.
I think it's clear that when the thing changed in character because some of the steps that were necessary like the official licensing of firearms to particular persons within such units, when that didn't happen and we moved in a different direction, it's clear that we should perhaps have reviewed the matter of that control but we continued to proceed as though you could as ANC armed the units and surrender them to these local civil and political structures to control. So that's the background to it.
But in the end as Ronnie Kasrils was saying they developed in various parts of the country. An attempt was made to keep an eye on them. I am talking now from the national leadership, from headquarters, and there are instances where we had to intervene when there were all sorts of crazy things that were planned.
But as you are saying Chairperson, it may very well be that we should recognise that the situation having changed from the original conception we needed to have taken steps in terms of a control and so on which would be consistent with the changed circumstances, but there was a carry through of a particular concept of self-protection units which was perhaps then not founded on reality with regard to the control and so on within those communities. Thanks Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Dr Boraine.

DR BORAINE: Chairperson I want to take this just a little further, slightly different emphasis though and I want to do it against the background of the Commission's fundamental commitment to reconciliation on which there is no difference at all between us.
One of the grave disappointments that many of us acknowledge is the on-going violence, and in particular crime, criminal acts which seemed to defeat the very best interests of well-intentioned ministers, officials, police, everybody. None of us can say we've got the answers to it, it's an overwhelming problem. In discussing this with a number of people who have come to the Commission who today are in security, one of the factors which is always mentioned is the free supply of guns, of arms, not from one quarter or another but just from everybody, from every side. They are very cheap, they are very available and they are very destructive. And it was suggested to us on one occasion that one of the major problems is that a lot of young people in the townships who were part of the struggle, to use that phrase, are now almost on the margin because we have a democracy, we have elections, we have nominations, we have local government structures, provincial structures and national structures and there's not the same impetus to participate against something which united them.
I'm just wondering if the ANC has any view on this. Certainly we view it as a matter of enormous concern as to how we can help in any way from the Commission in terms of its recommendations, in terms of its activities, its exposure to harness the raw energy of commitment which is there, which has, I think without any doubt in my own mind at least, is in danger of becoming destructive rather than building up and reconciling. It stems from a time I think when people were in opposition, they had access to arms and a lot of that is still the same but the pattern of struggle has changed completely and I just wondered if you had any comment on that.