Special Hearings — State Security Council Hearings — 1997-10-14

MR R F BOTHA: They went there, they planted a bomb, you can correct me if I am wrong, I think the bomb was aimed at the ANC or their offices but a Zimbabwe citizen got killed and the Zimbabwe government so far at one stage, we must be careful here, according to the Zimbabwean government they are all Zimbabweans but they have relatives of wives or children, family here, which Mr Mugabe understands, he understands it, he's very sympathetic, but on the other hand it's his citizens in a certain way.  So this puts him in a very difficult position.  If they were South Africans it might have been easier for the President of Zimbabwe to act here, but I don't want to say too much here.  I know you will agree with me and I appreciate your interest, I thank you for it, I think we are working here for exactly the same purpose.

DR BORAINE: I certainly wouldn't want in any way to jeopardise any chances that they may have of release.  Just in conclusion what I am really getting at is that whether it has been acknowledged in public before or not this was an official and authorised act but never discussed in your presence in the Cabinet or the State Security Council?

MR R F BOTHA: No an incident of this nature would not have, this is perhaps an example of the "moet weet", you can imagine - and please I speak under correction, I do not have the facts, I made the deduction on the basis of the evidence that was led during the court case in Zimbabwe of these people, I made that deduction.  And I did discuss, I think, on one or two occasions the matter with my colleague of the defence force and I am on thin ice here when I must tell you I know for sure, I don't know for sure.  All I know is that I was trying to get them out because of the appeals of their family here in South Africa and I wrote a letter which I considered that if the Zimbabwe authorities read my letter they would react sympathetically towards the prisoners.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.  Richard.

MR LYSTER: Thank you.  Mr Botha the impression that one gets from your answer and from other answers that you have given, and from answers that have been given by other people who have appeared in similar forums as you are now appearing, is that you and they are not absolutely sure who in fact was running the country at that time or who was responsible for making vitally important decisions about this country and what it did and how it was perceived abroad.  If one thinks of the example you have just given of this military incursion into Zimbabwe; if you think of the example that was given earlier on about the Seychelles and the clear involvement there of the National Intelligence Service as well as of Military Intelligence in that debacle and yet nobody in the State Security Council and Cabinet knew about it; if you think of the various projects of the Directorate of Special Tasks of Military Intelligence; the support to Renamo in Mozambique after the Nkomati Accord, there was evidence given about that last week by Mr Williamson in Cape Town that there was substantial assistance to Renamo after Nkomati; the support to Angola, to Unita in Angola; the support to the Lesotho Liberation Army where Military Intelligence set up a huge training camp in Natal where it trained over a thousand people to destabilise and overthrow the government of Lesotho.  Another Directorate with Special Tasks operation was Operation Marion internally where people were trained by special forces to carry out certain actions in Natal.  And one listens to all this evidence and it certainly leaves me with the impression that there were two parallel systems of government going on in this country, that there was the Cabinet and the State Security Council and that there was the military, there were special forces, there was a Directorate of Special Tasks, there was this shadowy - the highest possible level to which many people have referred and we just get the general impression, or certainly I do, is that the left hand very often didn't know what the right hand was doing, and that decisions, vital decisions were taken about this country, vital decisions were being taken not by the people who should have been taking those decisions.  And that there were in effect two or more systems of government that were taking place at the same time.  Do you want to comment on that?