Amnesty Hearings — Pretoria — UNKNOWN

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Can I ask Mr Chairman, to what bundle Mr Bizos is referring?

GEORGE BIZOS: R2, we are still on this bundle until I give you notice of a change.  In 3.3.1 you say that during February 1993 the witness Venter contacted you when he came to Krugersdorp.

MR DERBY-LEWIS: I am sorry Mr Chairman, it is not my 111.

GEORGE BIZOS: 112.

MR DERBY-LEWIS: It is not my 111.

GEORGE BIZOS: 112, paragraph 3.3.1.  You say there that Venter came to Krugersdorp and you tried to establish some political contact.

MR DERBY-LEWIS: He tried to establish contact Mr Chairman, correct.

GEORGE BIZOS: He tried, yes.
"On this occasion when the said Venter visited me I jokingly asked him if he could get or if he could organise how I could get a firearm".
is that correct?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: That is correct Mr Chairman.

GEORGE BIZOS: Please explain the joke Mr Derby-Lewis.

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Mr Chairman, I was not certain of Mr Venter's loyalties and therefore to test him, jokingly requested whether he knew of anything to see what his reaction was.

GEORGE BIZOS: Did you laugh when you made this joke?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: I did Mr Chairman.

GEORGE BIZOS: You did?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: That is correct Mr Chairman.

GEORGE BIZOS: And did he laugh?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: No Mr Chairman, he immediately answered that he could find one for me.

GEORGE BIZOS: Precisely.  So not only were you going to tell the court that this is correct, but you are trying now to say to the Committee that this whole affair started as a joke?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: I am not saying that for one minute Mr Chairman.

GEORGE BIZOS: Now, you were holding out at your trial and when you made this application, and the good people of the Conservative Party were collecting money for you, that you were innocent and that you were being framed up by the pariah FW de Klerk's government into being implicated in this case, have I summarised the position correctly?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: What source is Mr Bizos quoting here Mr Chairman, because when I was in prison I wasn't allowed to say anything in public.

GEORGE BIZOS: No, was it not held out on your behalf that the places where money was being collected for your defence, that one of our innocent members is being wrongly accused of the murder of Hani?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: I don't know what happened at those fundraising functions Mr Chairman, I was not present.

GEORGE BIZOS: I see.  You have also told us that your wife was received as an idol when she was acquitted at a Conservative Party meeting.  Were you contending at that time by making this application to set your conviction and sentence aside, that you were innocent?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Mr Chairman, that reference that I made was to indicate the support of the Conservative Party.

GEORGE BIZOS: Yes. I want to cut this short Mr Derby-Lewis.  What support did you think that the honourable people in the Conservative Party would have given you if they knew that you were in fact guilty at the time when you were contending you were not guilty, that you had committed perjury and that you were attempting to defeat the ends of justice?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Mr Chairman, my impression of the support I obtained was that my supporters believed that the end, the cause deserved the end used.

GEORGE BIZOS: You claim throughout your evidence at a number of occasions that you are a religious man Mr Derby-Lewis.

MR DERBY-LEWIS: That is correct Mr Chairman.

GEORGE BIZOS: And that you punctuated your evidence from time to time that some of the things that happened, appeared to you to be the Will of the Almighty?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: That is correct Mr Chairman.

GEORGE BIZOS: You also went so far as to suggest that the late Dr Treurnicht's religious background influenced you in some way.  Are you going to tell the Committee that your religion and your depth of belief in the Almighty, gives you the right to commit perjury and to attempt to defeat the ends of justice?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Mr Chairman, in an armed struggle, all tactics are fair and I have already expressed my regret over certain actions which I had to take.  Nobody comfortably, willingly contravenes the law, no matter whose law it is.

GEORGE BIZOS: Yes.  You were going to be the leader of a glorious counter-revolution if I can summarise your evidence correctly?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: That is not correct Mr Chairman.

GEORGE BIZOS: Well, we will come to that.  We will come to that a little later, but isn't it correct that those who act out of their depth of feeling and who commit wrongs acknowledge what they have done and try to justify their legally wrongful act on moral grounds?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: No, that is not correct Mr Chairman.

GEORGE BIZOS: That is not correct according to you.  And that people who really want to perform unlawful acts for a noble cause, don't lie under oath and do not commit perjury nor do they try to defeat the ends of justice, you disagree of course?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: I disagree with that Mr Chairman, yes.

GEORGE BIZOS: Yes.  Now, Mr Derby-Lewis, let's see this letter of the 16th of May 1993 which you wrote to Dear Colonel.
	Let us for the time being pending further instructions that we accept your evidence that it was to Colonel Roos.  It is Exhibit E3 Mr Chairman.  Now Mr Roos, or Colonel Roos you told us was the person in charge of the Benoni police station where you were held.

MR DERBY-LEWIS: He was the Station Commander.

GEORGE BIZOS: Station Commander.

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Correct Mr Chairman.

GEORGE BIZOS: And he had an excellent team that you congratulated in your letter?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: That is correct Mr Chairman.

GEORGE BIZOS: Was it that team that prevented you from sleeping by putting you in a cell next to a group of APLA people that kept you awake the whole night?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: No, it wasn't Mr Chairman.

GEORGE BIZOS: Well, wasn't  he in charge of his police station?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Mr Chairman, I don't believe that he had any say over where I had to be placed because it was obviously a tactic to intimidate me under a circumstance like that.

GEORGE BIZOS: Was he not the Head of the police station where you say you were given a wet mat to sleep on?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: He was the Station Commander under instructions obviously of his superior who was the Commander of the East Rand Murder and Robbery Squad and I assume he was carrying out the instructions as to how somebody that they want to interrogate had to be intimidated.

GEORGE BIZOS: How have you come to congratulate a Colonel who hasn't got the backbone to run his own police station?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Mr Chairman, I don't believe he willingly submitted me to that treatment.

GEORGE BIZOS: But if he didn't, the people that you praise as an excellent team, isn't this another example of fabrication on your part?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: No it is not Mr Chairman, because the people that I referred to as an excellent team were the people who were caring for me, they were not the people who were interrogating me and subjecting me to all forms of mental torture, that was the Security Branch people, the Security Police.

GEORGE BIZOS: They were the people who allowed you to be interfered with for gangster like looking policemen to come and wake you up.  Isn't this yet another example in which you might possibly be lying in furtherance of the struggle?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: No it is not Mr Chairman, and it can be verified by a report which appeared in a newspaper in which the reason for my being eventually transferred to the maximum prison before I was found guilty, was for my own personal safety because of these incidents which had taken place and in fact as a result of those incidents, I had very quick action from the Uniformed people to try and investigate what was going on.