Amnesty Hearings — Durban — 1999-10-18

DONALD SPENCER GOLD: Mr Chairman, just being in the Security Branch was a covert operation, I mean everything you did was covert you know.  For instance we might have got an instruction to go and keep surveillance at somebody's house, now you didn't want everybody in the neighbourhood to know you're doing this, so it was covert.  The nature of our job was covert work.

MS SAMUEL: When did you come to realise that your job of that nature, covert?  Was it after this incident?

DONALD SPENCER GOLD: No, not at all, Mr Chairman, I realised that the moment that I applied to join the Security Branch from the Police College.  I knew that was the nature of the work.

MS SAMUEL: So you were prepared to become involved in this sort of thing.

DONALD SPENCER GOLD: Covert operations?  Oh yes, as an Intelligence Officer, it's what I wanted to be ever since I was a little boy, Mr Chairman.

MS SAMUEL: And will it be correct then that later on you were prepared to get involved in bigger things, because you decided to become involved, as you mention on page 16, in the elimination of ANC guerrillas?

DONALD SPENCER GOLD: Well let's put it to you this way, Mr Chairman, that was nothing really - the elimination of guerrillas, was nothing really new to anybody who worked in intelligence in this part of the world.  I mean, like all of my colleagues, most of my colleagues, I'd been seconded to Special Branch in Rhodesia, like all of my colleagues I'd served in the then South West Africa, in anti-Swapo operations, and they were all covert operations.  This was the nature of our work.

MS SAMUEL: Now this person you mentioned in your papers who was being called by the name Rupert, Robert, Robin, is it possible that he could have also been called by the names Rue, because the names are very similar?

DONALD SPENCER GOLD: It's possible, yes, Mr Chairman.  I mean I can't deny that, it is possible.  I can't recollect hearing that one syllable, no.

MS SAMUEL: Could it have been Ronald?

DONALD SPENCER GOLD: It could have been.

MS SAMUEL: Can you tell us exactly who was actually having a discussion with him whilst you were in the car?

DONALD SPENCER GOLD: If we talk discussions ...(intervention)

MS SAMUEL: Did anybody speak to him?

DONALD SPENCER GOLD: Yes, I think people did speak to him and it would have been, Apt van Zyl would have said one or two things to him.  I might have said one or two things to him, although I wouldn't have had any business to say anything to him, but I might have.  I might have heard -I don't know who spoke to him.  But it's possible I spoke to him, it's possible Apt van Zyl spoke to him.

MS SAMUEL: Did Col Visser speak to him as well?

DONALD SPENCER GOLD: That I cannot say, that I cannot say.

MS SAMUEL: You mentioned that this person appeared to have been drugged, is that correct?

DONALD SPENCER GOLD: That was my perception at the time, which could be mistaken because when I first saw him he was sleeping.  He slept all the way from where we met till when we got to the disused farmhouse and then he lay down again when we were at the farmhouse, on the grass in front of the old farmhouse.  So, that's probably where I got the perception from.

MS SAMUEL: You see because you go on on page 16, after say that
"Visser and van Zyl were together ..."
... it's paragraph 36.
"Visser and van Zyl were together in a car and also in the same vehicle was an unknown black male who appeared to be sedated.  I later found out that this black male had been drugged."
So it couldn't have been something that you perceived or assumed, somebody must have told you.

DONALD SPENCER GOLD: Something has stuck in my mind, definitely, otherwise I would not have mentioned it, but I can't tell you exactly how or what or who told me or how it happened that I made that statement.

MS SAMUEL: So then this could not be a perception, somebody told you he was drugged and to you he appeared to be drugged, isn't that so?

DONALD SPENCER GOLD: Maybe, maybe it was just a - maybe it was a mistake on my part, but I mean as far as I was concerned, when I made this statement - it always stuck in my mind that he was sedated.  You must remember that I made this statement about 18 years after the incident, it's now almost 20 years after the incident.

MS SAMUEL: Yes, but you would not have stated that you later found out that the black male had been drugged, if this was merely something that you assumed.

DONALD SPENCER GOLD: Yes.  No, I can see whether the contention comes in, but I still say that it was a perception.

MS SAMUEL: Are you saying now that this was an error on your part, in stating that you had found out that this man ...(intervention)

DONALD SPENCER GOLD: It's possible, it's possible it was an error, Ma'am.

MS SAMUEL: Now you went on to say that van Zyl had told you sometime during the morning that this black male had been an SAP Security Branch agent operating under Visser and he had sold out and become an ANC member.

DONALD SPENCER GOLD: Yes.

MS SAMUEL: That is in paragraph 36 on page 16.

DONALD SPENCER GOLD: Yes.

MS SAMUEL: Would it be correct to say then that this person, that Visser was the handler of this person or did you assume that he was handling him?

DONALD SPENCER GOLD: I assumed that maybe he did have something to do with handling the man yes, but I couldn't say for sure.

MS SAMUEL: You see because van Zyl's statement today is different, he says when he was with this person in the car and with Visser, he doesn't say there was a handler, that Visser was a handler, he says there appeared to be a handler/informant relationship.

DONALD SPENCER GOLD: Right.

MS SAMUEL: And when it was put to him, although in error, that he had stated that he was a handler, he corrected it immediately and said "No".

DONALD SPENCER GOLD: Okay.  Mr Chairman, one must remember that I didn't have any information of what went on between Apt van Zyl and Brig Visser, all I had was what Apt van Zyl told me and in the communicating of that information to me, somewhere along the line I must have assumed that Brig Visser may have been a handler.  It's an innocent mistake.

MS SAMUEL: You see this is the second occasion you are saying that you assumed things.  If something was told to you, you would now say it was told to you, but you keep assuming things.  As soon as these discrepancies are being put to you, you are just assuming it.

DONALD SPENCER GOLD: Mr Chairman, I can't think of what else to tell you, that is exactly what happened, what I'm telling you.

MS SAMUEL: So can you tell us whether this was in fact told to you by Mr van Zyl, or are you assuming it now?

DONALD SPENCER GOLD: It's possible that he told me that.

MS SAMUEL: Now did you know Visser?

DONALD SPENCER GOLD: No, I met him for the first time on that day.

MR WILLS: With respect, Mr Chairperson, I don't see any contradiction between this and the evidence that has gone past so far.  I think it's common cause to my mind, unless I'm misunderstanding something, that this informer was actually operating under Visser.  That's exactly what the witness says.  Unless I'm missing the point of this cross-examination, I see that as being Mr van Zyl's evidence.

MS SAMUEL: No, the point I wish to make, Mr Chairman, is that when that question was put through it was immediately corrected to say there was, there appeared to be a relationship, but he didn't say specifically - that is van Zyl, that Visser was the handler of this person.  But Mr Gold says that he was told by van Zyl that ...(intervention)