Amnesty Hearings — Port Elizabeth — 1997-09-24

MR PHOSA: Are you saying that not a single one of your senior police officers could be trusted to keep this a secret and yet give an indication you should go ahead?

NICHOLAS JACOBUS JANSE VAN RENSBURG: I did not say that, but you are not involved in this kind of activity and then go unnecessarily and tell everybody on ground level what you busy doing and the execution of a plan like that or planning something like that even.

MR PHOSA: I wasn't suggesting unnecessarily, I was putting it on this basis that before you killed Kondile - having considered the idea, you went and approached Mr Erasmus.  Before you killed the other two - having considered the idea, you went and approached Mr Erasmus, so the concept of finding out from a senior was there in your minds.

NICHOLAS JACOBUS JANSE VAN RENSBURG: That is because Mr Erasmus was my immediate head of this section locally and therefore I regarded it as something that had to be discussed with him.

MR PHOSA: Can I put it this way, it was not impossible to eliminate the other two if you had wanted to - those two persons, Mthimkhulu and Madaka, you could have eliminated them without telling Mr Erasmus - physically it was possible?

NICHOLAS JACOBUS JANSE VAN RENSBURG: Yes, I could have done so.

MR PHOSA: And on a need to know basis that would have been the best method because that would have meant very few of you knew about it, isn't it?

NICHOLAS JACOBUS JANSE VAN RENSBURG: Yes, it is correct but it was my feeling at that stage that I could not have something like this happen in the area where Mr Erasmus was the officer in command and my commanding officer personally.  I couldn't - at that stage I was the third most senior person, I couldn't allow something like that to happen without his having any knowledge about it, that's the way I felt at that stage.  Nobody else, in other words the number two in command did not know anything about this at all.

MR PHOSA: It seems to me that you arrived - you yourself, arrived at the conclusion that it was the correct thing to do, in other words to eliminate.  That decision you arrived at independently of Mr Erasmus.

NICHOLAS JACOBUS JANSE VAN RENSBURG: Yes, I had.

MR PHOSA: And you've already said that you could have executed that without referring to him - physically you could have done that.

NICHOLAS JACOBUS JANSE VAN RENSBURG: Yes, that is correct.

MR PHOSA: So I'm therefore saying to you it appears that it was - the need to go to Mr Erasmus, was not essential on the basis of need to know principle, in other words if you were sticking - adhering to the need to know concept, the few of you who knew about it, all the better would it have been.  Do you understand me?

NICHOLAS JACOBUS JANSE VAN RENSBURG: Yes, that's correct.

MR PHOSA: To get it a bit further, Mr Erasmus could have had no problems also on a need to know basis of his own - going to someone senior, that would not have been inappropriate, picking up someone on a need to know basis just to clear his mind, that wouldn't have been a problem.

NICHOLAS JACOBUS JANSE VAN RENSBURG: I don't know how Mr Erasmus feels about this but in my opinion it would have been a further risk which would have been unnecessary.  Okay, we'll leave it there.

CHAIRPERSON: But on your evidence as I understand it and I appreciate it that it's in any Quasi military organisation it would be that.  You felt you should not take action in the area in which Mr Erasmus was in command of or the fact that he was your immediate commander that you shouldn't do - take action without informing him, without letting him know.  Why didn't the same apply in the relationship between Mr Erasmus and his commanding officer, the divisional commander?  Shouldn't Mr Erasmus have felt the same feeling - that he must let him know what's been done in the division as his senior officer, that I think is the question.

NICHOLAS JACOBUS JANSE VAN RENSBURG: Okay, if I have to reply to that and react to what you've asked, Mr Erasmus and I were in the same building - a few offices dividing us and it would have been difficult for me, although possible, for two or more days to be away from my office with another section head Mr du Plessis, without telling him where we were going and for how long we would be away.
	In the case - in other words I therefore felt that Mr Erasmus had to know, that he would not ask unnecessary questions when we were away.  In the case of Mr Erasmus, I can't say how he thought and I never asked him about this but if I were in his shoes, I would have felt it was unnecessary to inform headquarters, it was a local situation and a local action.  And it was unnecessary because it involved further risks and that's the way I saw it.

CHAIRPERSON: What you are saying now is, the reason for telling Colonel Erasmus was to shut him up that he wouldn't go around making enquiries as to where you and Mr du Plessis were when you had left headquarters.

NICHOLAS JACOBUS JANSE VAN RENSBURG: No, Mr Chairman, if it was assumed as Mr Phosa had said - if it was supposed that I had to exclude Mr Erasmus, I would have just sketched to him the risks of not telling him and that would have - would not - the must know basis wouldn't have made sense in that context.

ADV SANDI: Was there a risk in not telling Mr Erasmus?  And what was that risk if any?

NICHOLAS JACOBUS JANSE VAN RENSBURG: No, if I went and did something that Mr Erasmus was not aware of and he is my immediate head and he would hear about it afterwards that I had done something like this without his knowledge or yes, without his knowing, he could have been affronted by this and he could have said to me: "The fact that you did not entrust me with this knowledge could create problems for us".

MR PHOSA: I can detect a shift now in your answer and I'll tell you in what sense.  I first of all established from you that had you wanted to, you could quite easily have eliminated these two without Mr Erasmus's knowledge - now that aspect was established.  Now, when you have a problem about why you went to him, it appeared as though it wouldn't have been easy for you to eliminate these two without him knowing.  It seems now that you are not very happy about the fact that you could easily have dealt with them without his knowing, is that your attitude?

NICHOLAS JACOBUS JANSE VAN RENSBURG: No, I'm saying that it was possible to do it without his knowledge but the possibility also existed that he could have found out about it, that something might have happened to spill the beans and then it could have placed him in an embarrassing situation.

MR PHOSA: You are talking about a possibility now?

NICHOLAS JACOBUS JANSE VAN RENSBURG: Yes.

MR PHOSA: The possibility - you must have known that the possibility that what you and others including Mr Erasmus did - that of eliminating people, existed, it existed that others might know.  You could always not exclude the possibility of someone else someday discovering that, could you?

NICHOLAS JACOBUS JANSE VAN RENSBURG: No, but what I mean is we could have encountered problems along the way, the operation could have failed - the kidnapping, these were all possibilities and they were risks.

MR PHOSA: Mr van Rensburg, that's not correct.  The process as described to you was very simple and not tricky, it was - they were going to be kidnapped in the normal way that people, politicos are stopped by the police.  It was not going to be a kidnapping on the face of this, isn't it?

NICHOLAS JACOBUS JANSE VAN RENSBURG: Correct.

MR PHOSA: They were just going to be taken as they were taken in fact?

NICHOLAS JACOBUS JANSE VAN RENSBURG: Correct.

MR PHOSA: I mean, according to your information they stopped in the normal way that policemen would stop them, isn't it?

NICHOLAS JACOBUS JANSE VAN RENSBURG: That's correct.