Special Hearings — State Security Council Hearings — 1997-12-04

LUCAS DANIEL BARNARD: Mr Chairman I want to ask you to give me a chance to make my arguments.
 My first point is that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is a commission which should discover the truth to facilitate reconciliation.  If the Truth and Reconciliation Commission listened to evidence which you would like to hear otherwise is that in a country where we need transparency, where we need democracy, where everybody should be able to give their input and now you won't allow me to put my points of view.  I've substantiated my points of view with a full statement.  It does not concur with what other people have said.  I think it's right of the democracy to put your point of view like you see it.  What I have said today is how I saw that state of conflict.  
 I want to refer to a specific document and you refer to certain border activities and you refer to words like neutralise, take out etc.   The document you have sent to me on the 6th October, additional documentation is provided, there's no heading no date but it should, it's the 15th April 1986 and annexure 2 is added.  The plan is called, and it's called a plan to solve problems in the counter-revolutionary warfare.  I want to read paragraph 6 of that document you provided me with.  From the way , this is paragraph 6 -  
"From the way in which the revolutionaries and their associates tried to exploit the institutions in South Africa, it becomes clear that the security situation would not be stabilised without the enforcement of the Republic's security legislation".
Then it goes on.  
"The State cannot afford declaring a State of emergency and legislation providing wider powers to the security situation is necessary to prevent the Republic from  taking more drastic steps.  An element of this legislation, a necessary element is the ability to remove revolutionary elements from the community by detention, undetermined detention where only judges, magistrates, doctors and senior police officials would have access to them".
I want to repeat -
"a very important element of this legislation is the ability to remove revolutionary elements from the community by detaining them where only lawyers, judges, doctors and senior officials have access to them".
 By  that  I wish to say,  that the point of view as I understand it and as I have expressed it to the Commission supports this, and I'm not going to expand on this matter any further.  I'll abide by that.

MARY BURTON: Mr Chairman I will try not to repeat your questions that have been made before or cover the ground, please feel free to stop me If I do.  I want to respond to Dr Barnard and say that, yes, we need to discover the truth and I would like to echo the remarks that you need to make about our task also heading towards reconciliation and doing the work that we need to do.  We see that exposure of truth as, however painful it may be, as an essential component of that reconciliation.  We are asking those questions that you are suggesting we need to ask of the liberation movements and asking for their responsibility  for the deeds that were carried out by their members and supporters.  We're asking you of course about the areas that we feel you have first hand knowledge of and we keep coming back to the same things because we are pushing ourselves against that brick wall that prevents us sometimes from finding what the truth is.  I am reminded of the remarks that you made about the psychosis of anxiety which I think we do recognise existed particularly amongst those people who were charged with the task of trying to maintain stability in a situation which was very unstable.  You referred to the task to try and win the hearts and minds of the population, what was generally known as ..(unaudible) in those days.  The "wam"(?) strategy I think was familiar to many of us, yes the building of schools, the attempts to improve the lives of people and also one has memories of troopies in the townships playing football or handing out sweets.  Was it not also the task of the State Security Council to be identifying other things which might win hearts and minds, like beginning to change the political rights of the people who were demanding them at that stage, and which was a demand which was gathering, which was informing so much of the instability in the country, would that not also been part of the Intelligence gathering work?

LUCAS DANIEL BARNARD: In the time after 1986 after the negotiations started with the Groote Schuur minute the SSC and the documents which you have provided to me discussed this for hours and hours,  what we could do on the social economic and welfare spheres.  I think it would be good and I think, won't you ask from information documents from the South African Defence Force, what they did in the late '80's early '90's, what they did to put for example taps in the townships.  What they did to put taps in the townships not the theory, what the Defence Force did in the townships to uplift the social economic lives in those townships for the perspectives, I'm referring to these taps.  I can remember how the Defence Force at that stage in the educational level, how they made teachers available.  Then they had the problem, we're goin to have you would say it's military orientation.  We were well aware that the social economic development of the country formed the basis of our development.  The South African Defence Force had the abilities and resources to do all these things on a wide level.  They were involved and the enforcement of the socio-economic lives of the people and the circumstances of that time.
 Shortly I want to state that I've tried to answer in detail that early in the 1980's it was clear that the problems could not be solved by a continual conflict.  You cannot solve or find a political negotiation in a state of anarchy.  With respect I want to allege that this above all logic there should be stability for a political negotiation or a settlement.  The NI with all its problems and they put the basis there and I think or rather the South African Defence Force formed the basis and that should be used as a point of departure.

MARY BURTON: May I follow up with a question on a differen topic. Mr MacAdam I put a question to you about the role of groups such as the Wit Doeke.  Groups who were perhaps in conflict with other sections of the disadvantaged population and therefore might be used as potential allies for the State.   I think that it is very easy to understand that the State, charged with the need to create stability, would seek such allies as more-or-less classic divide and rule strategy.  I think it is possible, really possible to understand the argument that you are making about stability having to precede the political changes and I can understand that.  But as I understand it the Intelligence gathering structures would also identify the groups or individuals who would be opposing such groups as the Wit Doeke.  And also helping to forment  or suggesting ways in which conflict between such groups could be formented.
 Now if that is so, and there may have been indications that that may have been so and I realise that Intelligence people would not carry out such actions but might be identifying the possibilities, then surely that is contributing to instability rather than to the kind of stability you are talking about. I would like your comments on whether the Intelligence work was in fact gathering that kind of information and perhaps making that kind of suggestion.

LUCAS DANIEL BARNARD: We did gather Intelligence, I've already referred to that.  We provided that to responsible departments and that kind of action could lead to instability as you've said, that is correct, your point of view is correct.  It is true, it did make a contribution in that regard.  Thank you.