Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 2000-11-19

UNKNOWN: I'm not aware of what the evidential status is of the TRC Committee's findings here.  I think that would be extremely dangerous for this Committee to rely on various paragraphs in...(intervention)

MR LAX: No, we're not in any way obliged to accept those findings, but I'm saying what is - that's one of the arguments the applicants are using.  If certainly, if I've read the Heads correctly, is that in line with that finding of the Commission, they say that that finding in a sense corroborates some of their ...(inaudible).

UNKNOWN: There are two answers to that.  Firstly, it's not tested evidence here, no one was ever given the opportunity to test that evidence.  One would have expected then, particularly in the light of Verster's evidence, which suggests at this juncture between the CCB and the government itself on what the government stated policies were.  If they wanted this Committee to believe that it was in truth and in fact government stated policy to get involved in this sort of thing, one would have expected them to either call or subpoena someone higher up that ladder and to give all of us an opportunity to test that proposition.  We haven't been able to test the proposition, I don't see how the Committee can make a finding of fact.  If we were to take that further and we say well, let's then look in the Committee's report and see what the - not the Committee, the Commission's Report, let's see what the Commission found about who the CCB probably murdered.  I assume my learned friends will not have you accept as proven facts what is contained in that report because if you had to do that it would have a rather serious impact on the applications.

CHAIRPERSON: We can't do that, we can't go through the report and accept that as evidence.

UNKNOWN: Yes.  Now page 37 paragraph 71, we've already dealt with that point.  72, what we submit is that we would have thought that the General and the Colonel might have sought to explain the circumstances under which the army forming death squads to murder civilian politicians might be reviewed as a proportional response to the threat posed by such civilians to the State.  They have not done so.  It almost appears to have been assumed to be axiomatic on the part of certain of the witnesses that at some or other particular stage in South Africa's history the natural thing that one might have expected the State to do was to get involved in this sort of activity and therefore it's not really necessary to deal with this issue in any depth.
	We say also that what is obvious from the evidence but was not admitted by the CCB leadership, is that region six of the CCB was obviously not created to kill or arrest actual terrorists operating within South Africa's borders.  Enough State agencies already existed for that purpose.  Region six was created at the point that the State intended to expand its ability to kill and intimidate persons who were not part of its traditional enemy, the exiled organisations and the military structures and that is why, certainly as far as the incidents which you have been told about as far as they are concerned, we have been talking about the End Conscription Campaign, JODAC, UDF, UDF affiliates like the Kewtown Youth.  We can infer that from what we've heard here but nobody has come along to you to explain to you as a Committee, our philosophy at that time was to kill these people for these reasons and it was justified and proportional.
	Then paragraph 75 page 38, we submit that in order to promote that objective, ex-policemen known for their character defects and criminal propensities were hired and that it was a stroke of good fortune that they were only fully active within the country's borders for less than one year.  I think there was some suggestion in argument also yesterday about - they never knew before they got involved what it was they were going to get involved in therefore how can you make an assessment of their political motivation for becoming involved in the CCB, if I understood the argument.

CHAIRPERSON: But to this end, ex-policemen known for their character defects and criminal propensities - that certainly applies with regard to Barnard, he was a convicted murderer etc but what about somebody like Van Zyl, I mean he was a policeman and we haven't got any evidence as to his ...(intervention)

MR VAN ECK: Mr Chairperson, may I for the same price ask that my learned friend address Burger here as well, the case of Burger, because there's a plural used there, policeman clearly doesn't refer to Barnard only.  I would like him, if possible, to justify that remark regarding Burger and Maree specifically and this states that they known obviously at the time when they were drafted into the CCB for their character defects and criminal propensities and he must then please explain this remark.

UNKNOWN: In fact that was in part just paraphrasing a line from the - it was either in the Harms or the Stegman decision but both of those decisions, not only in relation to Barnard.  Barnard obviously loomed large, but one of the things that they were looking at is what kind of people did the CCB try to recruit to carry out its activities and let's just pause for a moment to consider their own evidence.  If you are Joe Verster and you want to ask people to join an organisation that is going to carry out these activities and by the time they know enough about what it is you are going to do, you can hardly afford to have them leave because they are in a position to expose you.  You're going to make pretty sure that in hiring them that you know that they're the kind of people that are likely to be willing to do what you ask them to do.  Barnard and Burger got together and Burger knew his men in Brixton, who were all in trouble, at round about the same time, for something connected to certain murders that had been carried out by other members of the Brixton and Robbery Unit.  It cannot seriously be suggested that if I'm going to hire someone and ask them to come and carry out crimes on my behalf and I'm going to hire policemen to do that, I'm not going to be hiring policemen who I think are fine upstanding, honest and righteous citizens.  It would be an exercise in futility.

MR COETZEE: Mr Commissioner, I don't know whether Mr Kahanovitz just made a mispronunciation there, I think he was meaning Mr Verster and Burger came together, not Barnard and Burger.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr ...(inaudible).

UNKNOWN: We quote ...(indistinct), I don't think it's necessary to read that out.  Then dealing with motive - are you going to deal with that?  Alright.