Special Hearings — State Security Council Hearings — UNKNOWN

MR NTSEBEZA: Thank you Chairperson.  I'm sure you have come to realize that there is a very big problem that we grapple with in trying to understand how it could have been possible for a person in a position as yours to have been unaware that these things were happening in a manner that showed a pattern and I think that's part of what the Archbishop has been saying.  And it's not as though there were no voices that were indicating the prevalence, not just instants, just the prevalence of gross violations of human rights in various forms.  We have been emphasising killing here but they took form in various shapes, torture, deaths in detention, disappearances.  Now the voices that came with these allegations, were not only the people who were making these allegations in court, they were people in the community, the ministerial fraternity, there were also lawyers who represented people at the receiving end of the legal system and the laws.  There were pronouncements, even if it were muted pronouncements by the alternative media, and in the context of particularly the things that were revealed in the Harms Commission, all of which now have been authenticated.  There were confessions under oath by people who said we did these things, Dirk Coetzee, Nofamela, Chikalanga and all those.  Now the question has been asked, should these not have been sufficient indications to you to say why is it so that year in an year out in parliament and outside parliament we continue to have these allegations.  Now I've heard all the replies you have given and in trying to understand those replies, is it not in fact the way to understand what you are saying to say, we were in a South Africa engendered by apartheid culture, locked in a situation where a minister like you was informed by this us verses them syndrome, that apartheid engendered a culture where all you were prepared to listen to was what came from people you identified as your people. And this permeated all of society.  You had a law and a legal system.  If others were saying the laws were draconian, they were the laws, they were there, you could detain people indefinitely.  You has police officers who you had to believe if they gave you a version that's the version you were prepared to accept.  You had judicial system.  If Steve Biko is alleged to have been killed in prison, unlawfully, there was a magistrate who was going to conduct an inquest.  If the Cradock Four even in the revelation that there was a signal note that was sent out, if there is a judge and there's a need for a judge to be appointed, well a judge was appointed and he came with a verdict.  If there were allegations of torture, well you had a system that says district surgeons must visit these people in prison and we are not going to believe other alternative doctors like Doctor Wendy Orr when the district surgeons by and large were saying there is no evidence of this torture.  You had your media, if the other media is saying these things are happening, you are not going to believe the Vrye Weekblad.
 Now are you trying to say this is the reality, that was your reality.  Your reality was narrowed by a system that had engendered a culture that led you to believe only that section of the South African community which you wanted to believe?

ADRIAAN VLOK: I have listened carefully to what Commissioner  Ntsebeza has said.  I must say I can only speak for myself. Those of you on the Commission who know me would know that I've listened to other people as well. I didn't only listen to what emanated from the System but we did have a system within which all the things that you've mentioned were investigated.  It wasn't just covered and put on the shelf, it was actually investigated.  Allegations for instance of torture.  He mentioned something which I didn't even think of.  District surgeons who were involved in giving evidence.  Myself as minister, when there was an investigation by a competent magistrate and there was evidence given by the police officers who had investigated the case, so all the surrounding circumstances and the evidence were submitted and a finding was made.  Then for me as minister it would have been extremely difficult to say I don't accept your findings, they were the experts. So I can deal with each and every case of death in detention etc.  We don't have to talk about it, we know what happened there.  There was evidence, the evidence which was submitted at the time now appears not to have been the truth.  So if he says that that was the system, that's true, but it's not only the system which applies in an apartheid country, that system exists in other countries as well but its the operatives within that system, if they are not honourable, they're not always honourable and act correctly in what they submit and in the information they convey to the upper hierarchy, then this kind of thing happens. Each and every case of death in detention was investigated, there were reports it was done publicly.  I want to repeat, what can a minister or the authority or the government that receives these reports, what can it do to say well somebody somewhere along the line lower has told a lie.  I concede it we could have done more.  We should have scrutinised the system perhaps. We should perhaps have put different systems in place as our current government is busy doing.  It's actually establishing different structures to look at these things.  But even in the case of the current government that has been in power for three years, we see and hear virtually daily reports of people who are abusing tax payers money and misappropriating it.  We see that on a daily basis, even with those systems in place.
 So I must say that it wasn't only in our time that things happened regarding which the government didn't know about or couldn't control, even if it had systems in place.  I think the systems we have today are the best in the world.  I've compared it to other systems in the world and yet there are still people who see certain loopholes and who misappropriate money and commit certain abuses, so whilst I'm conceding that we could have done more, you must accept that there was a system in place and it was often abused. But we also have to remember that we were engaged in war and that makes it even more difficult to really do what you ought to do.  And we tended to say, look all these voices that we're hearing and people saying things, somebody referred to the turbulent priest, those are the words that we used.  And we made a mistake, we should have listened to people like that and let's be quite honest, that is how it worked and we should have listened more to these credible an honourable people from society but we were waging a war, we had all been indoctrinated not to listen to each other.
 I told Commissioner Lax yesterday, I didn't listen to his friend down there because he was speaking from the enemy camp, so to speak and that I concede was a mistake, but it wasn't a mistake committed on one side of the spectrum only, it was a mistake made by everybody and the Commission I think is on the right road to ensure that this never happens again.