Special Hearings — Caprivi Hearings — 1997-08-11

MR MARITZ: Yes.  Now, Doctor, it appeals to me that in this case, with a very limited force of 200 people which you have to reduce to some 170 or maybe less because some of the died and what have you and maybe there were a few cooks, but let's for argument's sake say a little force of 170 comprising some 120 that were trained in contra-mobilisation, a small little unit of 30 offensive people and a small little unit of 30 intelligence people, you're really stretching it in an area as big as KwaZulu-Natal?  It's a very small little force.  Do you agree with that?

WITNESS:   Certainly it's a small force, but I mean these were - it should also be qualified that - there are two possible options, I mean, the one is that the force is going to stay that size for a long time, the other is that this was a nucleus of a force that was going to be expanded.

MR MARITZ: /No,

MR MARITZ: 2A No, I'm not talking about that.  I'm talking about the simple fact that this was per se a small force ... (intervention)

WITNESS:   Tactically.

MR MARITZ: ... which must have been extremely stretched in such a big area?

WITNESS:   It appears small, but I think given the fact that it was operating in an environment where it was very difficult to quantify the nature of the military opposition against it numerically, it may have been quite effective.

MR MARITZ: No, no, I'm not talking about an ex post facto situation.  I'm talking about the military planners that were faced with the problem.  Imagine that you're General Kat Liebenberg and you were asked to give a - what would one call it - a scenario as to how one could do the job, in that sense, it is a very small, very limited force which, for obvious reasons, must have been stretched to its utmost.  Would you agree with that?

WITNESS:   I'd still come back to my point that, I mean, this is a military force that's being inserted(?) in an area where you don't know the nature of your military threat that you're against, so ... (intervention)

MR MARITZ: That's the other difficulty.

WITNESS:   ... it's small against what?  Small against a battalion, small against a brigade, small against a division?  It's difficult to quantify something like that.

MR MARITZ: Absolutely, so the military planner or the strategist is faced with this grave difficulty on top of it.  He does not know what is going to transpire in fact.  He has to cater for what he could reasonably expect, but the permutations are almost uncountable.  Virtually any method could have been employed by the insurgent to

MR MARITZ: /threaten

MR MARITZ: 2A threaten the local population, especially the VIP or their chieftains, which needed protection.  Would you agree with that?

WITNESS:   Still not having the benefit of the military threat upon which this is based quantifiably and numerically, I think it's a very difficult question to accede to, either to agree or to disagree with.  And we don't have that - we don't have that quantifiable threat.  Against what precisely?  The political influence of a particular organisation at the time, yes, but militarily and numerically against what?  That is why a force, a company and this is basically a company's strength, depending on the circumstances and depending on the level of counter military organisation that exists, it can either be benign or it can be devastating.  You've got to know against what it was actually being configured.

MR MARITZ: Yes, I suppose one could argue the matter in small detail and try and make headway, but for our purposes, we are not going anywhere.  Can I just say this to you, as an example and I think you've mentioned it, is that you questioned the use of - or the training in RPG7s.  Now say for instance you're taking Dr Buthelezi from Ulundi to Durban and you have to take a little team and inspect the route to obviate the threats, surely you would have to know where to expect an RPG7 attack, what the range would be, in which terrain you could use it, where you would expect to find it?  Wouldn't that be so?

WITNESS:   Once again, my point, it depends on your estimation and determination of the military threat.  You could take that point and extend it a couple of points further.  You could say possibly along the way you needed to anticipate artillery attacks.  Possibly along the way you needed to

MR MARITZ: /anticipate

MR MARITZ: 2A anticipate attacks of a much more substantial nature, where do you draw the line?  I think in a military appreciation you draw the line in terms of the appreciation you make of the enemy's capabilities and I think if one is speaking about light artillery pieces and RPG7s, to my knowledge and to the reading of the evidence that's been presented here, it was not the nature of the military threat that was being faced at the time, it was more a political threat that they were responding to, so ... (intervention)

MR MARITZ: Aha, but now you're getting to a very salient point or an important point.  I must accept and possibly I must say to you that I put it to you that of necessity, the intelligence community in the then South Africa must have had a pretty shrewd idea of the threat that they could expect, not so?

WITNESS:   If one adopts the approach that you were using these forces simply as reaction forces for purely defensive purposes and amongst other things you train them in the type of training that they had received and there's still a couple of anomalies there, why are they trained in abduction, why are they trained in plastic explosives?  Why are they trained in concealment of evidence?  Be that as it may, you could - you you're determining it simply on the basis of a military threat that you're going to react defensively and reactively against, certainly you could factor it into that, but equally so, if you had decided to go out on the defensive, such weaponry would play a similar and an important role.  So once again it becomes a question of scenarios.

MR MARITZ: I couldn't agree with you more, Doctor, because I mean you can take the poor individual like myself, who has

MR MARITZ: /a clay

MR MARITZ: 2A a clay pigeon rifle, a shotgun.  I use it to shoot clay pigeon, that is my intent at all times, but I can turn around and become very offensive with that - exactly the same weapon.  It's a state of mind.  It's a choice that you make, not so?

WITNESS:   It depends very much on your political objectives.

MR MARITZ: Yes and ... (intervention)

WITNESS:   And your military objectives that you want to accomplish.

MR MARITZ: It depends in the first instance on how you decide to employ your capability.  Isn't that so?

WITNESS:   Absolutely.

MR MARITZ: As a matter of fact, I'm going to throw this in as an example.  I think it has been said by one my clients, General Malan, and I may be wrong and if I'm wrong I apologise, but this is the figure that I remember, is that say from 1970 onwards, the SADF trained some 500 000 conscripts.

WITNESS:   It certainly did.

MR MARITZ: In warfare.  Not so?

WITNESS:   It did.

MR MARITZ: It does not mean that you're stating thereby that you have trained 500 000 criminals or murderers.  It means that you have trained 500 000 soldiers.  Not so?

WITNESS:   Absolutely.

MR MARITZ: Each one of them thinking that they are acting lawfully.  Not so?

WITNESS:   Hopefully.

MR MARITZ: Absolutely.  Now, Doctor, there's another thing that I just want to discuss with you very briefly and I appreciate that once again there are political difficulties, but from a military point of view there doesn't appear to be difficulties in this regard, in regard with the subject that I want to broach now.  Sorry, but you are well aware of the fact that at the relevant

MR MARITZ: /time