Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 2000-03-17

ABRAM VAN ZYL: Mr Chairperson, I want to tell you that I don't think we should confuse this aspect.  Peaches and also Gakie was primarily recruited not as informants to gain information regarding banned organisations or targets, those persons were recruited to give execution to our projects.  In other words I want to give him a weapon and I want to indicate a target for him and I want to tell him please go and shoot this person, please go and kill that person, that is why they were initially recruited and it is for the same reason, Mr Chairperson, that we could not use our old structures because they were informants, they were sources and they could not be used for the means that we wanted to use Isgak and Peaches.

MR LAX: That's why I didn't understand your earlier answer to Mr Khanovitz in relation to these people and that is in relation to a specifically your intention with regard to Omar.  You see your intention and it's throughout these documents was to get projects, to develop projects, that was your primary task.  Not the gathering of information, that was secondary and so the minute you had information on Mr Omar your intention was to develop a project possibly around that information.  That would have been your goal?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: It was not my primary goal at that stage.  I saw that as part of my secondary duty and my function.  I have information, I have gained this information by making contact with the person that I recruited to kill other people.  If he gives me information then I'm not going to take the information, I just ignore it.  I process the information,  I sent it through to the information officer or through the information channel.  Does this answer your question?

MR LAX: Except that you haven't answered this aspect.  Why did you send it through there?  So that it could be analysed and dealt with but with the primary object in the back of your head constantly, this is a potential project?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: I cannot deny that it could have been a possible project or would have been a possible project but I did not send it through at that time specifically with the aim that I'm now going to exercise pressure on the information office and they have to process this because I want to make the elimination of Minister Omar my project.  If they never came back to me they never came back to me, Chairperson, they would have given me some other tasks to perform.  I did not have to go and look for my own word at the outside.

MR LAX: You see that's where I'm a little puzzled because at this stage you've gone to the Western Cape to begin to establish a network so that you can have projects to do, that's what you're there for.  What other work were you going to look for if you didn't have projects to do?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: Mr Chairperson, what happened, I want to state it very clearly, I was given the Western Cape region as an area so that within this area I could give execution to certain projects.  I came down here to, let's call them the hit men, to recruit people like Peaches.  These are the people that I needed because I was given specific instructions, I could not myself give execution to these projects, I had to get someone else to go and kill person X or shoot person X, it was my exclusive aim with the recruitment of peaches and also the recruitment of Isgak.

MR LAX: I accept your answer but for this simple aspect that worries me underlying all of this and that is that in your documents here, the reasons that you give for why you were looking for people and the reasons you gave your brother when you asked him to look for certain people and that's what you say your reasons were, are not that you were looking for people to recruit as hit men, you were looking for people to recruit for information?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: That is correct, Mr Chairperson, but the reason why I said this is that my brother did not know that I was involved with the organisation of the CCB.  I told my brother, I misled him, I told him that I am looking for people who can gather information regarding thefts, Matthysen's buses are coming down here because he thought I was working for Matthysen and then they would break into the buses or they would steal some of the vehicles and I am looking for an information network that I want to start but I misled him and this is not the reason why I recruited them.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Khanovitz?

MR SIBANYONI: Sorry, may I just ask one question?

CHAIRPERSON: Sorry, Mr Sibanyoni?

MR SIBANYONI: Mr van Zyl, I don't know whether I misunderstood you, I heard you saying the UDF was one of the banned organisations?  Was the UDF banned at that stage?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: I assume so.  I can't say with certainty, Mr Chairperson.

MR SIBANYONI: Okay maybe we'll have to check it and we'll verify it next time during the hearing.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Khanovitz?

MR KHANOVITZ: Thank you Mr Chairperson.
	Mr van Zyl, your version that you're giving now as to why you recruited Peaches is at variance with your amnesty application.  Look at page 93 of the bundle A.  You'll agree with me if you were looking for a hit man whether he had knowledge about politics in the Western Cape was neither here nor there, you just want to send him to a place to assassinate someone on your behalf, do you agree with me?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: In most cases it probably would be like that yes.

MR KHANOVITZ: Look at page 93 where you describe your meeting with Peaches.  Approximately the middle of the page.
"Peaches was asked if he had any contacts within the ANC and the UDF and other radical organisations.  He answered that he knew quite a lot of people."
And then you go on in the rest of your statement to talk about how you contacted Peaches from time to time and he fed you information.  So how can you possibly suggest to the Commission that you recruited Peaches exclusively for the purpose of using him as an offensive person, a hit man?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: I saying this because I knew at that stage that the ANC and also the UDF were seen as the enemies of the State.  I recruited someone and I was looking for someone who was close enough or who could move close enough to those people so that that person could act as a hit man for me.  It would serve absolutely no purpose to bring a person who did not fit into that community and to ask that person in certain cases to give execution to certain projects.  In other cases it is possible but specifically in this context I wanted people who could get close enough to possible target people.

MR KHANOVITZ: But Mr van Zyl, your version doesn't really make sense.  Why would a hit man need to be from the community?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: In order to evaluate any project properly you would need as much information as possible.  If a person could then go into an environment very well and the better he knows that environment, the better he can do his task.

MR KHANOVITZ: Mr van Zyl, those are all reasons that you're giving as to why you might want to use somebody as a source of information, not as a hit man?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: That is not so, that is a difference in opinion.  I have tried to explain it ten times now.  You don't want to see my point, I'm telling you I did not recruit Peaches as a source of information, I did not recruit Gakie as a source of information, Gakie is still living you can ask him yourself.

MR KHANOVITZ: Well I can give you the example of Adv Lubowski's assassination.  There an Irish mercenary was brought in to carry out the hit.

ABRAM VAN ZYL: According to me that is not proven or confirmed at all that Aitchison killed Lubowski.

MR KHANOVITZ: Mr van Zyl, informers, your experience in the Police, why do informers normally agree to supply the Police with information?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: In most cases as a result of the money advantages.