Human Rights Violation Hearings — Johannesburg — 1996-05-03

MAGGIE FRIEDMAN: It was the first of May 1989 which was seven years ago this week, and it was a public holiday almost the first real Workers' Day.  David and I left the house early in the morning with our two dogs to go running in David's bakkie and we returned to the house at about 10 o'clock in the morning. David was driving, he parked the car in our street in front of our house and he got out of the car to go out to the back to let the dogs out of the car and I was getting out more slowly on the passenger side and I was aware of a car coming down the street and then I heard what I thought was a car backfiring and it accelerated down the street, and it was only afterwards that I realised something was wrong when I saw that David was staggering and he was holding his chest in the front and he said to me, I've been shot by a shotgun, get an ambulance.  So David obviously saw his killers, he saw the weapon that killed him and then he fell down on the pavement and he died about a half an hour later.
 Just about David's activities in those organisations that you mentioned.  David played a prominent role in those organisations, he wasn't really a very public figure, he wasn't a well-known figure and it's that concerns my beliefs that it wasn't just rogue elements within the security forces that killed him, that it was actually something that was initiated at a much more senior level.
 There have been a lot of investigations and enquiries that have touched on David's death.  The first thing is the police investigation by the Brixton Murder and Robbery Squad.  After that there was an investigation in 1989 after the revelations of Nofomela on Death Row, it was commissioned by the Minister of Justice, Magnas Malan and the Minister of Law and Order, Adrian Vlok and headed by the attorney general of the Orange Free State at that time, Tim McNally and this was to look into the issue of hit squads. Almost at the same time there was an internal military inquiry which was after the emergence of the existence of the CCB and this was conducted by Witkop Badenhorst who reported to Magnus Malan and Adrian Vlok and to my knowledge the outcome of that inquiry has never been made public.
 Then there was a commission of inquiry into certain alleged murders by Judge Louis Harms, that was in early 1990, that was followed by a commission of inquiry into alleged irregularities in the Security Department of the City Council of Johannesburg, that was chaired by Judge Hiemstra and then there was an inquest investigation which was looking specifically at David Webster's death and that was presided over by Judge Stegmann and then as well as those there have been investigations by lawyers, by journalists, by the Independent Board of Inquiry and by a lot of other organisations and individuals. 
 From these investigations a huge body of documentation has been assembled, piles and piles and I can make them available to the Commission what they need of this except for the inquest documentation which has been destroyed at the Supreme Court, apparently they are already destroying stuff from only three years ago and the only copy that I know of is with the Attorney General.
 From all these investigations, nobody has been prosecuted and there are prosecutions envisaged by the state arising out of the investigations, and each and everyone of them is inconclusive and leaves the frustrating that the answer's there but it's been allowed to slip past under cover of a morass of disinformation and conflicting interests.
 I'd just like now to go through some of the limitations of the investigations because I don't think we can say that because there were all these investigations that the matter has now gone as far as it could.  I think there's a lot of investigative work still to be done and I also think just when we look at the investigations we can see that there are a lot of sinister conclusions that can be drawn from the investigations themselves.
 Firstly the police investigation was limited by the resources that were made available and the lack of vigour with which the police pursued the investigation and the interference in the investigation by the arms of the state. As one of the examples, the Oribi Hotel at the top of our street was an ideal look-out point and surveillance point and although the police went along an looked at the hotel register to see who had stayed there that night, they actually never interviewed the members of the staff, and some of the entrusted legal team actually did that work a long time later and found that there was nobody there who would admit to even being on duty that night when it happened.
 In October 1989, Ferdi Barnard and Calla Botha were picked up and held in detention under Section 29 of the Internal Security Act.  Whilst in detention they were seen by police officer, Krappies Engelbrecht who told them not to reveal anything about CCB activities.  Barnard and Botha testified this at the inquest.  These and other examples give the impression that the police were not rigorous in their investigation and that even worse, they might have been deliberately isolating these individuals.  By the police's own admission they have not done any investigative work on the case since Botha and Barnard were released from detention.
 The police investigation was also hampered by the difficulties arising when information started to point to the military establishment and this is because it was quite a junior officer who was assigned to the case and he was only allowed to question officers in the military who were of a lower rank to himself and it just seems without going through an enormous amount of red tape that the red tape was increasingly used to bar the way to uncover indications of military involvement.
 The McNally Investigation, this is the one that McNally and Krappies Engelbrecht carried out in late 1989, and they omitted to interview former head of Vlakplaas, Dirk Coetzee and this Krappies Engelbrecht is the same one who interfered with the witnesses in an attempt to cover up CCB activity. It has subsequently been alleged that the same Krappies Engelbrecht functioned as functioned as a sweeper for the police ensuring the evidence that was embarrassing for the police and the government was suppressed or destroyed.  This has come out in the de Kock trial that's on at the moment or just finished.
 There was also the investigation that was headed by Witkop Badenhorst into the military hit squad, the CCB and it subsequently turned out that in fact the CCB fell directly under Badenhorst's control, they reported to him, any head of the CCB reported to Witkop Badenhorst. So I don't think we can place much store by this investigation.
 Then in early 1990, the Harms Commission suffered from extremely restricted terms of reference that were very strictly applied by Harms and which prevented serious investigation in areas that significantly pertains to David Webster's murder.  In particular it didn't allow the investigation to go beyond the borders of the country and because of that it didn't allow the strong links to be made  between Anton Lubowski's murder and David's murder , although all the indications pointed to the fact that there were links between them, and Lubowski was murdered in September a few months after David, but at the same time the terms of reference cynically allowed that the matter of Lubowski's alleged links to the South African military to be investigated.
 In addition both the commission and the police took so long to so long to try and collect documentary evidence that it had disappeared or been destroyed by the time that they tried to do so.
 And that particular commission gave a feeling of a sense of powerlessness that many of the victims have experienced at the hands of the judicial system.
 The Hiemstra Commission into the Jo'burg City Council Spy Ring found evidence that spying activities have been carried out by employees of the Johannesburg City Council and information had been passed on to both the security police and the military intelligence but neither the Commission nor the police followed up on this aspect, and to my knowledge, there's been no investigation into that at all.
 The inquest into David Webster's death was severely undermined by the growth in public intimidation of the key witness, one Willy Smit who was testifying to the fact that Ferdie Barnard told him that he had committed the murder as well as to the rest of the CCB's involvement and in one of the tea breaks he was approached by Barnard's brother, Calla Barnard, and after the tea break he withdrew all the evidence that he testified to under oath before the break. The Presiding officer Stegmann didn't take up this issue and he simply allowed the testimony to be refuted, and to my knowledge Willy Smit has not been charged with perjury.
 There was an astounding amount of conflicting evidence heard at the inquest from members of the CCB, the police and the military and it seems to me that this was a coordinated attempt to spread a web of lies and half truths in such a way that a positive finding could not be made, and in fact that is what Judge Stegmann said at the end that he had heard so much conflicting evidence that he couldn't distinguish truth from lies.  And I feel that from the time that suspicion first fell on the CCB that this was a deliberate tactic used by the perpetrators.
 The assassination of Webster and the subsequent attempts to identify the perpetrators and planners of this can't be seen in isolation nor viewed as an individual incident.  I believe that assassination of selected opponents of the apartheid based state formed part of a carefully planned strategy and based on a set of conspiracies within a number of state institutions and these conspiracies included carefully implemented plans to hinder investigations to sow disinformation and protect those individuals and institutions responsible for planning assassinations and related acts.
 The chain of command and hence responsibility for these illegal acts and conspiracies reach high into the structures of the state and government and certainly included cabinet ministers, military intelligence, the CCB, the South African Police, the State Security Council and additionally other institutions and individuals associated themselves with these conspiracies like suppressing information, hindering investigations and failing to fulfil duties and tasks which they were legally bound to undertake.
 Arising from all the investigations, I believe that David Webster's murder was ordered and planned from within State structures, that many employees of the State and many of its institutions were involved or have knowledge of this assassination, that State resources were used in its execution and that the state apparatus has been used and manipulated in such a fashion as to prevent its exposure.
 I call for the indictment and prosecution of the following people,
 Firstly those immediately involved in the assassination which are the CCB Region 6 Operatives:
 Wouter Basson also known as Christo Britz,
 Staal Burger
 Chappie Marie
 Ferdie Barnard
 Calla Botha 
 Slang van Zyl 
 I would also have included Eugene Riley who has since died a violent death , allegedly by suicide.
 Secondly those having responsibility and knowledge of the planning of the assassination:
 Magnus Malan, the Minister of Defence
 Eddie Webb, the head of the CCB who has been obliged to apply for amnesty in his own cover-up evidence
 Joe Verster, the "managing director", of the CCB
 Witkop Badenhorst, the Chief of Staff Operations, and direct superior of Eddie Webb.
 I can't say that all were implicated directly in the planning and execution of the murder, but they've all been involved in the same security force units indicating a knowledge of who was responsible and a failure to disclose the knowledge, thereby becoming parties to the conspiracy to protect their colleagues.
 The following people have been involved in the cover-up of information:
 Krappies Engelbrecht, who told CCB members in detention not to talk about CCB activities.
 Louis Harms, who was able to find that no hit squads operated out of Vlakplaas and who, in my mind, steered his commission  so firmly away from the evidence.
 Now the reasons why I said that Judge Harms was involved in the cover-up, I first think his willingness to limit the inquiries strictly to the terms of reference, when it was obviously to examine the involvement of the CCB in the Lubowski killings, I can hardly think that he really wanted to get to the bottom of David's killing and would have allowed the terms of reference to exclude that avenue of inquiry.  And second his willingness to accept the limited terms of reference.  In retrospect as the evidence submerged it became plain that the terms of reference had been carefully constructed to limit the damage to the government of activities of the intelligence structures and  believe that Harms must know who formulated and insisted on these terms of reference.  If Harms had believed Dirk Coetzee with regard to Vlakplaas and Third Force activities, then in early 1990 it would have prevented the dreadful dreadful train massacres that were instigated out of that same Vlakplaas a couple of years later, and it probably would have prevented the escalation of violence in Kwazulu Natal.  Instead Harms went to London to hear Dirk Coetzee's evidence and had that ugly confrontation with him and referred to Coetzee's evidence as crap.
 I also believe that the following people are amongst those who have information that they may divulge in this new political climate and who could assist in further investigation and those are:
 Floris Mostert, who headed the police investigation
 Jaap Joubert, Mostert's superior who reported directly to Mr Vlok
 Martin Hennig, who was a senior member of the Johannesburg City Council security department
 Tony Naude, who spied on David Webster and handed information to the Security Police and to Military intelligence
 Lafras Luitingh, a CCB member who gave evidence at the inquest, and
 Willie Smit, who was intimidated at the inquest calling him to withdraw his evidence.
 I would also like to add to that, I also think Adrian Vlok, Minister of Law and Order.
 Can I go on to what I want from the Truth Commission or do you want to-?