Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 2000-03-15

UNKNOWN: Just about the previous indemnity applications, the first one was done in terms of the Indemnity Act 35/90 and there was further Indemnity Act 151/92.  I just want to make the position also clear as far as my clients are concerned, that all rights are reserved as far as those two Acts are concerned so I just want to make that very - put that very clearly on record, but that also our position is that we do not think that this should be dealt with by this Committee at all but it must be ...(intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: This Committee certainly can't attack or impinge upon those indemnities, we can't lessen them or greaten them we can only deal in terms of the Act here and we don't have power to affect those at all but ...(intervention)

UNKNOWN: In any event I just wanted to reserve the position, I do not have any objection should the documentation be available, that it be dealt with here.

CHAIRPERSON: So I'm just saying that in many, many applications we have that sort of documentation, almost as a question of procedure that it's before us.

UNKNOWN: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr H du Plessis?

UNKNOWN: Thank you Chairperson, I will not take very long.
	Mr Verster, you were the Managing Director of the CCB and am I correct when I then ask you that in terms of your position in the CCB you were authorised to make certain decisions on your level, on your own and if I'm talking about certain decisions I'm talking about decisions in general, I'm not referring to something specifically?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: Yes on my level I could make general decisions.

UNKNOWN: If it was the case that it was just a gathering of information or a project for gathering information could you authorise such a decision yourself?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: No more than a pre-emptive study and that was in any case part of a procedure that would then beforehand be approved by the Chairperson, Mr Chairperson.

UNKNOWN: But I'm speaking about gathering information, operations for this.  You call this a pre-emptive study, could you yourself give approval for this?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: I could approve a pre-emptive study but this was part of a process that had already been approved.

UNKNOWN: You yesterday testified, you testified Mr Verster that when questions were asked to you by Brigadier Mostert of the Police that you were assisted by Advocate Burger, is that correct?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: That is correct, Mr Chairperson.

UNKNOWN: You further gave evidence that you gave certain answers on the question and that you were under pressure from Advocate Burger, is that correct?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: That is correct, Mr Chairperson.

UNKNOWN: And after this you made a further statement during the Harms Commission, is this correct?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: This is correct.

UNKNOWN: During these proceedings you had a different legal team from the one that you had during the answering of the questions from Brigadier Mostert, is that correct?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: That is correct.

UNKNOWN: And this legal team, did they exercise any pressure on you, Mr Verster?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: No, there was no pressure put on me.

UNKNOWN: Can I then accept that the questions or the statement that you had made with the help of that legal team gave the correct position?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: That is correct.

UNKNOWN: Let's go and look at the answers that you gave under pressure from Advocate Burger on the questions of Brigadier Mostert.  If you can just give me a couple of seconds, Mr Chairperson?

MS COLERIDGE: It's bundle B, page 61.

CHAIRPERSON: It's bundle B, page 61.

UNKNOWN: I refer to bundle B specifically page 75.  Question 36, it was specifically asked of you
"Did the CCB monitor the following persons and amongst others the names of Frank Chikane, Bruce White, Gavin Evans, Dullah Omar?"
etc. etc, appears there and your answer was the person number two, that is Bruce White, three Gavin Evans, four Dullah Omar and seven Daniel Tongareru was monitored.  Is that correct?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: That is correct, yes.

UNKNOWN: So at that stage you pretended that it was only a monitoring action, is that correct?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: That is correct.

UNKNOWN: After that while you were not under pressure you made the further statement in front of the Harms Commission under the leadership of another legal team and I'm referring now to a document that I got this morning and in time I will make it available to the Committee and to other people and I'm referring here specifically to your evidence, Mr Verster and then we can go further with your further statement that you, with the help of your current legal team, made for this Commission and this is Exhibit C, 33.  Can you please read this and then you start reading it, me the undersigned Pieter Johann Verster, declares under oath as follows and I will now leave a part of this out and I will specifically get to this specific part and this is what you are saying at the moment
"In this declaration I handled with the incident in Gen Badenhorst's statement which is applicable to the Commission's investigation.
	(a) Chikane, the CCB did not give any instructions that
	the movements of Chikane had to be determined.
(b) Bruce White, Gavin Evans, Dullah Omar.  The abovementioned persons were monitored by members of the CCB as a part of the CCB's normal working procedure in order to get information.
Is this correct?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: Once again, this was done, Mr Chairperson, under the circumstances where other documentation where I said that the Harms Commissions was part of the process to blame to CCB and while I was not under pressure from my legal team the same pressure did apply and for this I made another statement where I asked for privilege for this specific incident.

UNKNOWN: Mr Verster, it is not about the pressure or not, it is about the fact do you agree with me that you consciously mislead the Harms Commission.  Firstly for Brigadier Mostert you mislead him by saying that Omar and Evans were only an information action by the CCB and secondly that you mislead the Harms Commission blatantly by pretending that Evans and Omar was only an information action?  That is the question.

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: Mr Chairperson, this whole statement, this whole document and what was said was part of a survival fight in the Harms Commission where my protection could be found within the privilege that I had asked for and this was done where the top structure of the Defence Force was working together with the Police.  They had combined plans.  Gen Witkop Badenhorst, they had Gen Webb and specifically Gen Webb distanced himself from the CCB.  If I phoned him at night and I ask him what are you going to do as my commanding officer and he would tell me "you are on your own" and he caucused together with Gen Geldenhuys, I was totally isolated and at that stage I made these statements to the best of my ability but I wrote it in specifically my application for indemnity that we spoke about just now, I said that I do not want to apply, I was forced to do it and I do not agree with what happened in the Harms Commission and I asked for privilege and I distanced myself from everything that happened there because what I did on day one is that I formulated a document where every project of the CCB was given to the advocate of the Minister of Defence and that document was taken by the Minister of Defence and the questions that I discussed with him there came from the Police two days later and that is when the footwork and the orchestration of all this activity started and all these facts are presented like that and they decided to make it a ball to play with and then it was an open fight where we consciously opposed everything of the previous structure.