Amnesty Hearings — Boksburg — 1998-06-25

MR PRIOR: Chairperson, the next applicant is number 11, Gerhardus Fourie, he is being called.

GERHARDUS D FOURIE: (sworn states)

MR PRINSLOO: Chairperson, the application of this applicant is on page 187 up to 205 and also 214 to 223.
	Thank you Chairperson.  Mr Fourie, you together with your co-applicants were prosecuted in the Supreme Court in the Witwatersrand Local Division and you were charged with murder, etc, and you were found guilty on charges of murder, attempted murder, damage of property and the possession of explosives which came about because of pipe bomb explosions in Randfontein, Westonaria and Pretoria?

GERHARDUS D FOURIE: That is correct Chairperson.

MR PRINSLOO: And you have been given a prison service of 21 years effectively and this was given to you by Judge Flemming?

GERHARDUS D FOURIE: That is correct Chairperson.

MR PRINSLOO: Mr Fourie, you were called up to Ventersdorp, can you tell the Committee what was your behaviour once you have received those call up instructions?

GERHARDUS D FOURIE: Yes, Chairperson.  We were at a meeting ...[intervention]

MR PRINSLOO: Not that part, what did you do after you received the call up instructions with regards to your family, what you took with you, etc?

GERHARDUS D FOURIE: After the meeting in February, I went back to my house and I informed my wife that we must now
go up to Ventersdorp, that we are going to a Volkstaat and we were also informed that the war would now start and the elections were going to be stopped, and we would not allow the elections to happen because the ANC who is the majority would not admit us or give us the right to have a Volkstaat if these elections carried on.
	I emptied my house, I bought a caravan as they told us to do.  I think they used the word affirmative action, and what I could put into this caravan, I did and we left.

MR PRINSLOO: Do you have children?

GERHARDUS D FOURIE: I have three sons who were at school.  I took them out of the school, because I believed as they told us that this Volkstaat would become a reality and this is what I told my family.  They trusted me.

MR PRINSLOO: And your children, would they go to school in the Volkstaat?

GERHARDUS D FOURIE: That is correct.

MR PRINSLOO: At that stage, did you have a job?

GERHARDUS D FOURIE: Yes, I worked as a barman.

MR PRINSLOO: Did you resign from that job or what happened?

GERHARDUS D FOURIE: I resigned, I worked a last shift because they told us that we already have jobs in the Volkstaat.

MR PRINSLOO: What job would you have received in the Volkstaat?

GERHARDUS D FOURIE: I would have been part of the Police in the area where I would have stayed, which was Klerksdorp.

MR PRINSLOO: Mr Fourie, the Sunday evening the 24th of April 1994 at the game farm, can you tell the Committee how was the instruction given to you and can you just elaborate on that?

GERHARDUS D FOURIE: I was doing guard duty from eight o'clock that evening until twelve midnight.  I returned and Commandant Du Plessis approached me.  He informed me that pipe bombs were demonstrated and people were tasked to go out and explode these pipe bombs.
	I received instructions from Commandant Du Plessis to accompany Steyn and with the task they were supposed to do, because he told me there is no longer time and they conveyed to me that the elections had to be stopped. 
	I just want to bring it to your attention that before we went there, they brought this impression home with us that this election should not continue, should not be held and therefore I trusted them, I trusted these leaders, I believed in them.
	It is the leaders who told us this and I knew that there was no longer time, we were going to stop the election, that was my intention and I identified myself with that, and that is how I felt, that is what we are going to do in order to enforce the Volkstaat and to stop the election.

MR PRINSLOO: Mr Fourie ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: Tell me Mr Fourie, for about 20 years the AWB existed and they did not get a Volkstaat from the Nationalists?

GERHARDUS D FOURIE: That is correct Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: Why wasn't there an attempt in the National Party's time to prevent the elections then or to interfere with them?

GERHARDUS D FOURIE: Since I've been to the Defence Force, I was 17 years old then, and that is the way we were brought up and the Army made me aware of politics.  What the ANC/SACP alliance and the PAC, they told me what they were.  That time we were taught that these people wanted to make the country ungovernable and to cause violence in this country.
	The history of our ancestry bound me to the fact that I would give my life for the security of this country and as well as all the other nations in this country, to protect them.

CHAIRPERSON: Who are they?

GERHARDUS D FOURIE: This is the Defence Force.    I believed and I was proud of the fact that I would protect the people of this country.  Then I left the Defence Force.
	I joined the HNP and then I had to deal more with politics and I knew that they broke away from the National Party because the National Party was deviating from the principles of Dr Verwoerd.
	At that time we were told that with these deviations of the National Party we would loose everything that we have inherited from our ancestry and in 1985 I joined the AWB.  I saw them as a resistance movement, people who would prevent the political party who was governing, to prevent them from giving our country to the ANC/SACP alliance.
	I supported this and I trusted in these people because they spoke as the former Defence Force spoke.   In reality we were indoctrinated, what do they call it, we were brain washed, even though I believed in this.
	Then it happened in 1990, I became a Depot Manager at Transnet.  I just want to tell you - yes, it is correct, it is all written there.

CHAIRPERSON: My question is really, you wanted to protect these nations as you said, but this struggle of which you are speaking, the reasons for the struggle came about a long time ago, not in 1990.  You wanted a Volkstaat before 1990?

GERHARDUS D FOURIE: That is correct, then they already spoke about this.

CHAIRPERSON: In 1976 you say in paragraph 5, you realised that the National Party was busy selling out the volk?

GERHARDUS D FOURIE: Yes, that is when I was part of the HNP, then I realised this.

CHAIRPERSON: At that stage, why didn't you wage a war then?

GERHARDUS D FOURIE: The AWB's principles said that there would be three phases.  First they would propagate things, then the government of the day would be undermined, and the third phase was that if he didn't get the Volkstaat, then they would make a guerilla war.

CHAIRPERSON: And the third phase started in 1994?

GERHARDUS D FOURIE: That is correct.  Before that, at all their meetings and in the media of the CP, Ferdi Hartzenberg - this is what they conveyed to us, that there would be a war.  With the referendum, they were still saying that two million people are not with the National Party and this two million people would not stand back and let the elections take place because the government is going to hand us over to the ANC/SACP alliance.
	They are the majority and when they begin to govern, there would never be a volkstaat because they do not acknowledge us and our own land.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.

ADV BOSMAN: Can you tell us a little bit more about the undermining phase?  When did this start and what was the nature of this undermining?

GERHARDUS D FOURIE: The nature of this undermining government was when these people formed an alliance, Afrikaner Volksfront, the AWB, the CP and they left CODESA together with the Inkatha Freedom Party as well as the Ciskei and the President of Bophuthatswana.
	That is where the undermining of the government started.

ADV BOSMAN: Can you just describe some of the specific actions with regards to this undermining?