Amnesty Hearings — Pretoria — 1996-07-01

JEAN DU PLESSIS: (Duly sworn, states).

UNKNOWN: Mr Du Plessis,  you are the applicant in this matter, you have made a formal application in terms of the Act on National Unity and Reconciliation?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: That is correct.

UNKNOWN: The form has been given to you by an attorney from Pretoria, you have read it and you have signed it.

JEAN DU PLESSIS: That is correct.

UNKNOWN: It was properly sworn to.  Are you happy that the content is correct?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Yes, Mr Chairperson. There is just one point which isn't entirely correct.  That is where it is stated that I belonged only to the National Socialist Partisans.

UNKNOWN: We can deal with that, that is point 7(a).

JEAN DU PLESSIS: That is correct, yes.

UNKNOWN: Yes, well, I will lead you on that later.  Do you then confirm that the application is correct and you would like it to form part of the proceedings?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Yes, I do.

UNKNOWN: Thank you. Mr Du Plessis, I would like you to begin with yourself. Tell this Committee who you are, your background, and what led you to do what you did.  Begin with your parents and your younger days.

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Right.  I shall begin with my early youth, I think perhaps I should begin with the divorce of my mother and my father when I was six. That is just before I went to school.  At that time I went to live with my father.  My father had supervision over me and my mother left home.  I can remember that from that time how my father began to discuss political issues with me.

UNKNOWN: Just before you continue, could you just identify your father?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Mr Armand du Plessis.

UNKNOWN: Continue.

JEAN DU PLESSIS: I stayed with my father for about two or possibly three years. Then I went to live with my grandmother.  At the time I would spend one weekend with my father and the next with my mother.  At that time my mother became involved with another man.  And that was a fairly liberal home that my mother had.  On the other hand in my father's home, we argued about politics regularly and when I went to my mother I always had to echo my viewpoints.  When I went to my father I didn't necessarily try to convey my mother's viewpoints, but during my arguments, there were points that I couldn't - I put these arguments to my father and then he would offer a solution or an explanation, and he would solve that problem.  In this way this is how my political thinking grew.

UNKNOWN: Before you continue, tell us a little about your parents' background, the home languages, their education and so on.

JEAN DU PLESSIS: The mother was English-speaking.  She came as a small child from England.  She went to Kenya and in her early twenties she had to flee from Tanganyika as Tanzania then was, and she came to South Africa.  My father was Afrikaans-speaking and he came from a very conservative home and a very politically-oriented home.

UNKNOWN: The mother, is it ...

JEAN DU PLESSIS: That is my father's mother.

UNKNOWN: What was her name?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Voga du Plessis.

UNKNOWN: Is this the woman with the red and blue jersey?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: That is right.

UNKNOWN: Please continue.

JEAN DU PLESSIS: At that time, as I said, we began to debate on political issues. At a stage I became alienated from my friends, because I couldn't communicate with them on a youthful level.  And then in about '83, my father moved to Durban and then I went to stay with my mother for about six months.  My mother committed suicide and for a few months I then went to live with my grandmother and then I moved to join my father in Durban.

UNKNOWN: Did you move voluntarily?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: No, I didn't want to go to Durban.  I had begun to make friends and I wanted to stay with my friends here in Pretoria, but my father forced me to move to Durban.

UNKNOWN: The kind of education and upbringing you got from your grandmother, could you talk about that, please.

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Yes, Mr Chairperson. Also from my grandmother I was given a great deal of information about our history.  My grandmother also told me a great deal about what had happened in the then Rhodesia, with pamphlets, with photographs, photographs of people who had been murdered by the terrorists in Rhodesia.  These things of course had a great effect on me.  I also often discussed the situation in our country with her, the war in South West Africa and Angola. And increasingly began to feel emotional about our country and our country's security.

UNKNOWN: Is it true that your grandmother also had to leave Kenya after the country was taken over by the democratic government there?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: That is so. She also grew up in Kenya and I think it was with her sister, she had to leave the country at the take-over then.

UNKNOWN: And they had been well-off people there with large tracts of land?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Yes, I think apparently there is even a town named after her maiden name.

UNKNOWN: These stories of fleeing from Kenya and other African states, did this have an effect on you?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Yes, in fact, I was firmly convinced that the same things which had happened in Angola and in the Congo, in Mozambique, in Kenya, I was convinced that these would happen in South Africa as well. I must add that at that time I had a rather one-sided opinion.  The information that we got, of course, all told us that Africa was being taken over by the Communistic monster, and that the countries which had been taken over from Whites and put in Black control, that there had been a great slaughter of people. For example, I saw photographs "Africa for the Wolves", in which Untag under Genl Prem Chand in the Belgian Congo, had killed people, innocent people and helped in the process of giving the country to the Black people. I believed that the CIA played a great part in this process. For example, that they had murdered Tshombe, because he wasn't a communist, and I felt all the murder, the death which had happened in other African countries, was going to happen here in South Africa in precisely the same way here.

UNKNOWN: And if we continue, what was the effect of your mother's suicide on you personally?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Initially I felt that I should now take my mother's viewpoint and protect that. It is before I left for my mother.   At that stage I rebelled against my father.  Although this rebelliousness probably lasted about a year and a half, and over time I was not particularly socially acceptable at school and my schoolwork deteriorated considerably. Then when I eventually stopped this rebelliousness, I became, I actively became involved in my father's way of thinking. I also supported him in all his political activities and ideas.

UNKNOWN: Did his personality play a part in your being persuaded again to play a part in these processes?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Well, my father was a fairly determined political thinker and he believed very firmly in certain policies.  And of course, in my young days I couldn't really resist my father's dominating opinions.

UNKNOWN: What was your father's attitude towards race? In what ways in his political thinking did he convey to you in regard to people and race?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: My father believed that the White race was an exalted race on the earth. He believed that all the other races were mud races. Essentially he believed that all other races in fact were sub-races, and didn't really have a right to exist in terms of evolution.  His belief was that the fittest should survive.

UNKNOWN: Was he convincing as far as you were concerned?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: My father is probably the most logical people that I know.  When one debated with him on the level of logic, one could seldom defeat him.

UNKNOWN: When did you become actively involved in the political expression of your ideals?