Amnesty Hearings — Johannesburg — UNKNOWN

<UNKNOWN>: Brigadier you can then continue to the second-lastparagraph.
ANSWER:
  "...The period between 1985 and 1988 witnessed unprecedentedviolence overwhelmingly directed at black civilians as the regimefought to regain the strategic initiative it had lost.   It employedunbridled terrorists, violence and a range of overt and covertmeasures which are dealt with more fully elsewhere in this document.  MK attacks mounted steadily with most operations concentratedon targets as set out in ANC policy.  There was an all-round intensificationof efforts
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   to destroy all organs of the apartheid state to encourage theemergence of the people's war summed up in a 1986 slogan 'everypatriot a combatant - every combatant a patriot' and to promotethe establishment of organs of people's power.   By the end of1986 the regime had lost administrative control over large partsof the country.   It was during the mid-80's that attacks on certaintargets with no directly apparent connection to the apartheidstate took place.   In some areas these attacks resulted fromthe manner in which cadres interpreted the decision to sharplyintensify the armed struggle which would entail exercising lessrestraint and the call to take the struggle to the white areas.  Militant rhetoric in (indistinct) articles reflected the moodof the times.   The attack on South African refugees in Botswanaby the racist forces just before the conference, emphasised theneed for our movement to bleed the enemy.   Most of those cadreswho carried out bona fide operations of this nature hadreason to believe that they were operating in accordance withthe political will of the leadership of the ANC, but the apartheidregime was very quick to exploit this tactical shift with regardto its intensification of the struggle and shift and focus ofarmed operations combined with the misinterpretation of thosedecisions by some cadres, carried out a number of false flag attackson civilian targets with the sole objective of destroying theANC's claim to the moral
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highground..."

<UNKNOWN>: This is also what Mr Curran stated to you,could you continue in the next column in the middle of the pagefrom "...in August 1988"?
ANSWER:
  "In August 1988 the NEC, the National Elective(?) Councilissued statements specifically on the conduct of the armed strugglein the country.   The NEC further reaffirmed the centrality ofthe armed struggle in a national democratic revolution and theneed to further escalate armed actions and transform our offensiveinto a generalised people's war.   However, the NEC also expressedconcern at the recent spate of attacks on civilian targets, someof these attacks have been carried out by cadres of the people'sarmy Umkhonto we Sizwe inspired by anger at the regime's campaignof terror against the oppressed and democratic forces, both withinand outside South Africa.   In certain instances certain operationalcircumstances resulted in unintended casualties."

<UNKNOWN>: Brigadier now I want to ask you whether whatyou have just read from the ANC's paper, would that have confirmedyour understanding of the so-called "people's war" ofthe ANC that was being waged during the period of 1985/86/87?

ANSWER: It does so.

<UNKNOWN>: Brigadier I want to then refer you to the secretdocument of the State Security Council...

CHAIRPERSON: This will be EXHIBIT M.

MR DU PLESSIS: : Thank you Mr Chairman.
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RE-EXAMINATION BY MR DU PLESSIS (contd)

<UNKNOWN>: Brigadier, this starts on page 56.   It isa document containing the following.   It is a conversation withChris Hani who was a member of the Executive Council of the ANC,he was also the army commissar of MK, it was published in Sitraba(?)during December 1986 in the ...I want to ask you to read it brieflyor in part from this document.   My apologies this is from theFoundation for Equality Before the Law, I referred you to thewrong document.   Mr Chairman that's the presentation that wasmade by the Stigting ...voor die Reg, before the Truth Commission,it is part of that document before the Human Rights ViolationsCommission.   Foundation for Equality before the Law.  Brigadiercould you then begin to read in the middle of the page that isunderlined, the question asked "...6 has been declared theyear of Umkhonto we Sizwe, what do you think has been the progressand achievement of MK in the military field.   Could you justread from there please?   This is on page 56, the middle parthas an underlined sentence, can you see this?    If you can startfrom "if we go back"?
ANSWER:
  "If we go back to the days when the President of the AfricanNational Congress, who is in fact the Commander-in-Chief of Umkhontowe Sizwe, designated it we shall remember that this is the yearof Umkhonto we Sizwe, the people's army, for the following reasons;
  it has become very clear that the enemy has no other optionin the solution of the problems of the country except violenceand we also know that
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   the tensions, the escalation of the militant resistance ofour people has been the violent response of the enemy.   In theface of the escalating violence of the enemy, the revolutionaryviolence of the people becomes very, very important and we knowthat the revolutionary violence of the oppressed people of ourcountry is epitomised by MK is the revolutionary violent arm ofour people.   The designation of the year as the year of MK isa clarion call to the people's army, MK, to escalate the armedstruggle.   Now you are asking what have we achieved in the militaryfield, I believe in all modesty that MK has become a permanentfeature of the struggle of our national liberation and socialemancipation, we have enriched the struggles of our people byintroducing the armed element.   The enemy statement itself hasadmitted openly that 1986 has seen an unprecedented escalationof armed struggle.   I believe we have taken the armed struggletoday to every corner of our country.   We have, for instance,spread the armed struggle to areas which in the past few yearswere not affected by armed struggle.   We know that for a longtime the armed struggle tended to be confined to the Transvaaland Natal but this year our units have spread armed activitiesto the whole of the Cape Province as well as to the Orange FreeState.  Our units have been in action in the Western Cape attackingpolice stations and installations of the enemy.   What is importantis that we have
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   converged with the forces on the ground, what I mean by thisis that the militant upsurge of our people has thrown up thousandsof activists, who have reached the same conclusion as the ANC,that the crucial aspect of our struggle is the armed one.   Wehave got young militants literally numbering thousands confrontingthe enemy.   At the beginning of course, these militant youthsconfronted the enemy with stones, petrol bombs but now we haveintroduced an armed element to the militancy of our young people.  We have introduced hand grenades.   I think this has deepenedthe development of the process we began to see last year, thegrowing ungovernability of our country as a result of the armedelement of the struggle, including MK and other armed units, militaryunits of our people which are born out of the struggle.   Ourpeople have utilised the skills we have imparted on them, dealwith the police, community councils, collaborationist elements,by so doing we have rendered most townships ungovernable."