Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 1997-11-17

MR P WILLIAMS: Mr Bellingan, I will refer to your application as well as to your answers or statements that you made during the Section 29 inquiry.  I want to start off on page 23 of your application.  You make the following statement or statement to this effect.  That is page 23 of the paginated bundle.  At the bottom you say that
"The carte blanche which politicians and generals gave to de Kock made us juniors realise that we should obey all orders from de Kock."
Before I ask the question, I also want to refer you to a statement at, on page 19 where you say, also the last paragraph,
"Vlakplaas was regularly visited by politicans like Adriaan Vlok and other senior police officers where members were told about the total onslaught against the Republic and that units like Vlakplaas was very important and we should use all methods in this combatting terrorism."
Now, I want to refer to the words "that we should obey all orders" and I want to refer to the words "and we should use all possible methods".  Does this include illegal methods or orders?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: Mr Chairman, Colonel de Kock was taken into the confidence of the general staff and Minsters when they visited Vlakplaas and said that we should do something regarding Shell House.  De Kock was called in and the necessary plans were drawn up and when we say legal instructions, that does not mean legal, it means that the general staff and the Ministers gave him instructions.  On a regular basis they called him in, because they trusted him.  If there was instructions for a cross-border operation or operations internally, that would be conveyed to de Kock and he would plan accordingly.

MR P WILLIAMS: If an order was manifestally unlawful or illegal would you have obeyed such an order from the commanders?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: Yes, I, in my amnesty application I say that when I receive a command from de Kock I regarded that as a legal instruction.  We would do that for the flag and our anthem.

MR P WILLIAMS: And I want to refer again to the words, the Afrikaans words that I have referred to earlier and my question is do those words include murder, "all instructions or all possible methods"?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: We also committed murder and people who have turned, we had to eliminate.  We also did that.  Whether you shot a man in Botswana, Johannesburg or Swaziland, murder remains murder and we saw that as a legal instruction.

MR P WILLIAMS: Mr Bellingan, in your, one of the answers that you gave at the Section 29 inquiry was on page 53.  The second sentence or the first sentence,
"Headquarters felt that these askaris had to infiltrate these various groups further to eliminate some of them."
Now, today you have said that the word "eliminate" means to kill.  Is that correct?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: The word "eliminate" and I do not want to have, discuss this in detail, because it has various meanings.  At that time it meant, eliminate was not a police term at that stage, it was a term used by other security forces.  We said directly it is time for that person to be taken out or a plan had to be made with him.  To eliminate a person was to kill him.

MR P WILLIAMS: Now, can you just shed more light, what was the meaning of the word at that stage?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: We wanted to arrest those people, but as I said earlier in my evidence, I knew and my common sense told me that it would not be an easy task, so I planned to become involved in a shooting where people could be killed.

MR P WILLIAMS: Mr Bellingan, you are not answering my question.  The question is, what did the word "eliminate" mean at that stage?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: To arrest.

MR P WILLIAMS: And why is it that the word "eliminate" has a different meaning today?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: I do not want to start quoting from dictionaries, because it can mean arrest, kill, it all depends on how  you interpret it.

MR P WILLIAMS: Now, on the same page, 53, you also say,
"If I say 'eliminate' I mean thereby by means of arrest or actually in any possible way.",
and I think further onwards you concede that it might mean also to murder.  Is that correct?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: It can be correct.

MR P WILLIAMS: Now, if askaris had instructions at that stage to infiltrate groups and to eliminate them, if I understand you correctly, would that mean they would, that they can either arrest them or that they can kill them?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: The askaris would not have received instructions from us to go and arrest somebody or kill somebody on his own or of his own accord.  It would have come back to us and that is what I mean there.

MR P WILLIAMS: If an askari was given the instruction that he must go and eliminate a certain ANC member, is it correct that the askari would, according to your definition of the word "eliminate", either understand it to mean that, that he must arrest the person or that he must kill the person?  Is that correct?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: It depends on the particular case.

MR P WILLIAMS: But you do not discount the possibility or the strong possibility that it would not mean that he would have to kill the person?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: I would never have given an askari such a task if I was not prepared to do it myself.  If I was not prepared to kill somebody, I would not have given the task to an askari.  So, I do not actually understand the question.

MR P WILLIAMS: Mr Bellingan, what were the requirements for a person to be drafted as an askari?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: Usually the Research Desk and the local security police, they started, did the preparation and as soon as a freedom fighter was arrested, they would try and determine whether he had been involved in any act of terror in South Africa.  If he had not been so involved then the people who had actually made the identification from photograph albums and so on would then have gone to the person, had an interview with him and from that interview it would have been determined whether that person was suitable for recruitment to Vlakplaas.  So, it was mostly people who were involved in murders or motor car bombs did not become askaris.  I think there were a couple of exceptions to that rule though and, of course, he had to renounce violence and he had to co-operate with the security police.

MR P WILLIAMS: I think you say something to that effect on page 74 as well.  Now, assume that an askari successfully infiltrate a group consisting of ANC members and he arrest that person.  What would he do to that person if that person failed to co-operate or if that person was involved in some car bomb or something to that effect?  Would he still be arrested?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: Yes, he could still be arrested and he could then have been handed over to the local security police who would have opened a docket.

MR P WILLIAMS: But then the askaris had instructions, if I understand your statements correctly, to eliminate those people.  Would it not also mean that they had carte blanche to kill those persons?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: No, if you look at my Vlakplaas record I was involved in several shooting incidents and arrests and my members as well.  So, it all depended on the circumstances on the ground and at that particular scene.

MR P WILLIAMS: Mr, you also say on page 24 you use the term "counter-terrorism, acts of counter-terrorism", page 24, that is the paginated page.  In the second paragraph, excuse me, it is the first sentence, the last part of that sentence read,
"... because units such as us, such as ourselves had to commit counter-terrorism acts behind the scenes."
What do you mean by the term "counter-terrorism acts"?