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

MR MCADAM: My recollection of South Africa in 1976  for example, was for a State under siege, where we were fighting an anti- communist, anti-revolutionary war and the things that were subsequently done in the late 70's and 80's and so on are absolutely consistent with the principles of counter-revolutionary warfare.  The people who have appeared before this Commission have said time and time again that they operated within that milieu and they understood that, that was what they have been asked to do.  Now, I'm not asking this question in a judgemental way and don't get me wrong,   I'm asking it because we need to, one of the objects of this commission is to understand, what is it that let's people on the ground, in that situation, behave in that way precisely the things you're talking about in your submission.  Those people who feel betrayed, need to understand what led them into that mindset that allowed those things to happen when the people at the top as you say didn't intend it to be that way?

LUCAS DANIEL BARNARD: I want to answer this question in two parts.  I am under the impression that up to now it seems to me that there has not been a breakthrough. I have the impression that no breakthrough has been made at the Truth Commission or it cannot be made on the basis of various submissions.  I've also tried this morning to do this to tell you about the revolutionary climate which existed in this country.  People were killed not only the questions I have to answer repeatedly about the security forces also by the liberation movement. People went home landmines exploded and the most immoral actions were committed.  How do you know who was the next person travelling on that road?  If you plant a bomb in front of a office building in Pretoria, and I would like to say, those deeds were absolutely immoral.
 The Government of that day through its security structures followed the line of thought where the dangers of communism were underlined.  I'm not always sure whether at certain instances it was exaggerated, you must remember you're referring to 1975.  I'm talking about a world environment in which revolutionary and the so-called what we called in Afrikaans "terrorism and terror" and that's also something which you could not beat.  Mao Tsung overtook China, Che Gueverra,  Fidel Castro took over Cuba in that way. Many books were written in this regard.  There was - we had that fear that here was a communist inspired alliance of people who wanted to use the power to usurp the Government of the day.  This was supplemented by all these deeds when all these people were killed.  The SSC's contribution and also the remarks of PW Botha and his colleagues consequently when I was there they felt responsible and they said we would act within the law.  We should act morally and in the execution of these deeds if people act unlawfully it should be understood within this context. I find as if you are hitting your head against a wall to determine how did the people from the old order, how did they experience this?  When people were killed, landmines exploded and I hear that, that various points of view saying that people in this country were necklaced in a most barbaric way.  I think that in the 26 ages this was the most barbaric method ever used.  This led to a psychosis of anciety.  This is what I want to say on the one hand.  
 On the other hand, and that is the second point I want to put, is that certain people who were involved in the middle, who were in the middle of the struggle on grassroots level and as  I said there were no angels involved on both sides, and in this climate sometimes and have already committed atrocities, which are unacceptable and I cannot justify that at all.  It was absolutely unacceptable.  But that was the climate in which the activities or the actions of those times should be understood.  
 A last remark I think it's not just, if the inference is drawn that the leaders of the Government or the Government figures of that day who functioned within the law and who acted morally correct are not accepted.

MR MCADAM: Earlier in your evidence you spoke about the situation where information was being gathered together by your department and it was then being handed over to other departments and you said in essence,  "our job was to gather this information -  we handed it over and it wasn't our problem what happened to it afterwards".  In essence that's what you were saying.  Did I get you correctly?

LUCAS DANIEL BARNARD: You now express it in too strong language.  It was not our responsibility to check what was happening to that,  that's what I said.

MR MCADAM: You said, your words were, "it wasn't my responsibiliy, I wasn't my problem", I think that was the specific word you used at that point, I wrote it down as such as a note here.
 What I didn't understand at that time and I didn't want to interfere in the questioning at that moment was, in essence it was your problem if that information got used in a different way.  It wasn't strategic to the purposes which you were seeking to be used.  In essence you collected information on person X, whoever that person was, and a month or so later person X wound up dead in the most bizarre circumstances, and then it really did become your problem because particularly that was not strategic.   How would you have dealt with that situation?

LUCAS DANIEL BARNARD: I think I have already indicated to you that after these murders occurred I discussed the matters with colleagues of mine involved in the security structures and I said to them, that while I do not know who are responsible for these murders that this would not facilitate that we could have a peaceful negotiated settlement in South Africa.  Such actions were worked in a destabilising manner on the negotiations and that would definitely then  reflect my position.

MR MCADAM: Do you not think that this fairly neat compartmentalisation of operations and structures which allows one group to collect information, another group to execute, literally and figuratively and allows the allocation, if you like, of responsibility in a way to be dissipated.  What Craig Williamson refers to as the "arms-length ability" in a sense, the ability  to take arms-length lawfully or otherwise of the situation.  Should we not restructure the security services in a way that doesn't ever allow that to happen again?

LUCAS DANIEL BARNARD: The original reason for the creation of a Central Intelligence Service, called the Central Intelligence Capacity was exactly to prevent that what you have not described if you have information to execute an action then you use the information to guide the execution of that action.  If one has to look at it in this way, one looks at how many people there are in a ministerium that determines the strength of your department.  That is why the development of a national independent body was not supposed to be involved in executing certain actions because then one would look for information to justify one's actions.
 For the future of our country in the security and Intelligence community it will have to be investigated very carefully.   I do not want to express an opinion on that.  When I left in January 1992, I refrained from getting involved in Intelligence, but because you have asked me the question, and because I want to say something about Intelligence I do not think it  makes sense to have the division that one has in Europe, like the National Intelligence agency and the South African Intelligence service etc.  There's no model which works for example in England which says it will work here.  You just asked me the question but that restructuring is necessary is critically important.

MR MCADAM: Then, sort of physical line functioning, restructuring and stuff like that.