Amnesty Hearings — Durban — 1999-08-23

MR LAX: What difference would it have made and what huge embarrassment would it have made for Ndaba to admit to the ANC that he was an informer?  Everybody uses informers.  At that stage both sides were using informers, on your own version, your own organisation had been penetrated.

J A STEYN: That's correct.  Ndaba, according to Col Botha, was familiar with certain of our movements and operations and networks and if he was to reveal those, it could have compromised the Intelligence network existing between Botha and Shabalala.

MR LAX: Except to say this, that the network that we're talking about was one from 1988.  We're now two years down the line.  This had very little to do with Swaziland, the whole picture has changed, he's now operating in the country not from Swaziland.  It's a totally new scenario.  Where's the big catch?

J A STEYN: Botha had already, after he arrived in the country, had several meetings with him.

MR LAX: Botha's testimony was that all that he got out of him during this time was the bare bones of this President's Committee operation.  The bare bones and that's your testimony as well.  It's your case that only the bare bones came out at this stage and that the detail came out later, so how could he have known what Ndaba knew in detail at that stage?

J A STEYN: His meetings with Ndaba took place in ways which, as I understand it and according to normal practice and procedure, in such a way that Ndaba could have been aware of our methods of operation, making contact etc and Ndaba had also been at the safe-house and he'd been interrogated there by other members, members from Head Office, he'd made certain identifications from a photograph album and Shabalala had done the same, so in this process, according to Botha and I agreed with him, Ndaba could have become aware of more than just that which him and Botha had talked about and discussed over the months.

MR LAX: Every single suspect or detainee gets put through the same sort of interrogation where they are shown photo albums and they're asked to try and identify people and sometimes they co-operate and sometimes they don't.  We have Botha's evidence, which is that he wasn't contacted via some other channel, Ndaba had a phone number to get hold of him which he used when he wanted a meeting, so it's not as if there was another whole network of people that would be put in danger, it was a direct contact, that's Botha's evidence.  Do you understand my problem?  We're not talking about a man who - you see, the problem is that Botha says he got the bare bones from the man, you say he got the bare bones from the man, nobody else knew about Ndaba's status except you and Botha, nobody else.

J A STEYN: That's correct.

CHAIRPERSON: I understood that very clearly from what I have been told that that was the position.  So Ndaba had no information about anybody else in the police force, about any contact, anything.  He could have merely told them that he had met Botha.

J A STEYN: Except for the contact which he'd done.  There were several ways of making contact with informers.  Botha couldn't be sure in his own mind that his meetings hadn't perhaps been observed, that it hadn't become known.

CHAIRPERSON: By who?

J A STEYN: By the ANC itself.

CHAIRPERSON: But the ANC already knew Ndaba was an informer.  You say it's possible they'd observed him meeting Botha.

J A STEYN: No, this was a properly structured network in terms of which secrecy had been practised to a large extent by  Operation Vula and pursuit observation - there were several possibilities which existed.

MR LAX: Except to say this, General, and that is in a sense you people panicked when Nyanda was suddenly arrested.

J A STEYN: Yes.

MR LAX: You panicked when Shabalala and Ndaba were arrested.  They were equally integral to this operation.  They were - their arrest could equally have precipitated the sort of panic you say was likely to occur within the chain and the network from Nyanda's arrest.  Do you understand what I'm saying, what I'm asking you?

J A STEYN: Could you repeat please?

MR LAX: What I'm saying to you is this, your big concern about why you went on with the rest of the arrests was that you thought there would be a panic in the ranks of Operation Vula, people would cover their tracks, they would disappear and so on and that was a consideration for you.  I'm asking, why wasn't there this same consideration when you arrested, on your version, a senior person in that operation, who's been responsible for its establishment in KwaZulu Natal and Shabalala, who was someone who works with him, where you are now saying to the Chair that you were worried the ANC was watching its operatives and watching these goings-on.

J A STEYN: This is one possibility, but the fact of the matter was that this detention of Shabalala which had been unlawful and carried on for quite some time, made it impossible to place him back.  Botha told me that Ndaba would not testify against Shabalala if there was something that he could testify about.  After this period of time, such a long period of time to entertain the possibility that Ndaba was going to go to the ANC and spill the beans, well that created a problem.

MR WILLS: You see, you haven't answered my question.  I'll try and put it in a different way, so that you can - let's see of I cam get my meaning across to you and I don't mean that in a paternalistic way at all, I'm sorry if I come across that way.  One of your big concerns was the panic that Nyanda's arrest precipitated.  I'm asking why didn't that occur to you, that same notion of panic that might be precipitated in Shabalala and Ndaba's "arrest", I use arrest in inverted commas, because we know it wasn't an arrest but be that as it may.

ADV BOSMAN: Perhaps I can just come to your assistance here, Mr Lax.  Gen Steyn Mr Lax's is referring to the panic which was expected in the ANC circles after Nyanda's arrest and his question is why would you not have expected that after Ndaba and Shabalala had been arrested, there to be a similar kind of panic in the ANC circles?

J A STEYN: That's correct, there probably would have been such panic, I can accept that.

MR LAX: My question is, why didn't you then proceed with wholesale arrests immediately, because you had the information, you'd already raided the safe-houses, you'd  established some of that information through the unlawful raid that Botha referred to on two separate houses and we know that one of those houses was one of the houses where there was a computer in.

J A STEYN: Yes, the investigation was not yet finalised at that stage.

MR LAX: You see, by that stage the horse could have bolted, so you were willing to take the chance at one stage but two days later or three days later you weren't willing to take the chance.

J A STEYN: The fact was that the fact that we had Ndaba in our possession and Shabalala, that created a problem for us.  As I explained their release could have led to several options.

MR LAX: Sorry, Mr Wills, we took over from you for a long time.

CHAIRPERSON: Sorry, I want to ask something before you go back to Mr Wills.  As I understand the evidence, only you and Botha knew that Ndaba was an informer.

J A STEYN: That's correct.

CHAIRPERSON: He gets arrested by one of Taylor's askaris.

J A STEYN: Correct.

CHAIRPERSON: Which was contrary to all your plans.  He was a most important person.

J A STEYN: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: Can you explain, did you ask Botha, why he then told so many people that Ndaba was an informer?  According to what Mr Visser has told me, he told Wasserman, van der Westhuizen, Taylor and Ninela and du Preez.

J A STEYN: That's correct.

CHAIRPERSON: Why was he suddenly disclosing to all sorts of people, including Ninela?