Amnesty Hearings — Vosloorus — 1998-11-24

RONNIE KASRILS: The nature of apartheid was to so divide us and to divide our communities, black and white obviously, coloured and Indian, amongst the African people according to language or ethnicity or region and even within regions, so we could look at a rather homogenous area like the rural parts of KwaZulu Natal and find fierce hostility between residents of villages as we found here in the melting pot on the Rand.  This was what apartheid was about and if we're to understand say the tools that you refer to, if these happened to be migrant workers or whatever background, living in a township, living in a hostel be it in Durban where the rural migrant workers living in the hostels around Durban or in the Cape, anywhere in the Cape or in Jo'burg East/West Rand, those people living in the hostels, everything was done over the years which is why I think 1976 was such an important example, to keep them separate from the broader community because we could see in established communities whether your home language was Zulu, Sotho, Tswana, Xhosa, you mixed and you related and you inter-married but where you had migrant workers in a hostel under specific regulations with a different kind of background and perhaps lower level of education, everything was done during apartheid period to create the division and hostility, so in that sense one sees the perfect mechanism or example or tool to carry out the kind of dirty job for the power and the privilege of the land and again we look at history and we see that every tyranny has always been able to find division amongst people, to find tools there to carry out their dirty deeds and we've seen in history, India is a very good example, it's one of the classic examples of how the British Raj finally had to withdraw after the mutiny of the Indian army, side by side with the mass struggle in India.  In South Africa we can look at why apartheid failed in the end, why it collapsed because it got to a stage where in the end they couldn't go on using different people in the way they had and I would say we need to see how 1990 to 1994 was a period of tremendous intensity in terms of striving to find those tools, that it's interesting to see how in a place called the Ciskei under Brigadier Gqozo, Oupa Gqozo, how there they had to largely rely on the security forces of the regime but nevertheless strove to give the chiefs in the Ciskei some privileges and then through the chiefs there, there was an attempt which totally failed to develop some form of social force behind Gqozo.  We saw the same thing happening in the then Bophuthatswana where I would say Lucas Mangope succeeded to a greater degree than Gqozo because of the wealth that he had which he was pilfering from the mineral rights that was able to establishing the beginnings of some form of bureaucratic class which supported him.

CHAIRPERSON: I see you omitted the Transkei?

ADV MOTATA: Mr Kasrils, if we refocus and say we look at the East Rand which is the subject matter of this hearing that the hostilities emanated from the hostels and what we know and I think we should take cognisance of that, is that the hostel dwellers came from all over and if we want to say people were fortifying themselves against the Inkatha Freedom Party, can we really say if we had this healthy mixture of the so-called migrant labourers who all stayed at the hostels and with the evidence we have heard today that for instance you take Khalenyoni  Hostel where there was in-fighting though it was hearsay largely and that hostel was demolished brick by brick?  Can we say then all these hostel dwellers would have belonged because the hostilities emanated from there would have belonged to the IFP?

RONNIE KASRILS: I think the - an unfortunate aspect of conflict of any kind is that we need to generalise and people will generalise and that's also human nature so if you take particular objects such as the hostel you refer to, I'm sure that within that hostel there would have been people who had absolutely nothing to do with any form of violence, wanted to keep out of it, perhaps would pack their bags and leave, prefer to do that if they couldn't - found that they had to remain there.  A lot of intimidation was used, we know that, to force people into impis and lines of activity.  So from that point of view it's always difficult to say that in a German battalion in the Second World War every single member there was evil or every single member there supported Hitler or was a member of the Nazi Party, but in the battle gunfire would open from the allied side on that entire battalion in the same way as with the bombings that Churchill or Rooseveldt carried out, had his forces carry out against the Japanese or the German people, so in the same way people here, moving against a hostel and feeling that this hostel represented death to them, represented acute danger, that it was necessary for the sake of their lives and their children that it should be demolished, they would do so given the chance and I know that the feelings were very, very high in those days and we were constantly trying at the political level to find ways to create to a cordon sanitaire around hostels which was done, if you remember, in one of the agreements with then President de Klerk and they agreed to put fencing around hostels, security guards around hostels, security checks of people going in and out.  They failed to do that but that would have been another way of dealing with the problem, rather than having to destroy it brick by brick and in that way punish every member of that particular hostel.  So I think it's just very, very difficult to distinguish, unfortunately.

CHAIRPERSON: Is that all, Mr Samuels?

RONNIE KASRILS: If I may, I just wanted to remind the Commission of the Goldstone and the Haremse Commissions and the revelations in those Commissions about the source of violence and particularly Goldstone.  It's referred to in the ANC documentation of August 1996 and I would like to refer Commission to pages 63 to 66 in particular, it's just three pages, where the ANC deal with the SDU's.

CHAIRPERSON: Which document are you talking about?

RONNIE KASRILS: Sorry of the August '96 statement to the Commission, August '96 and that's pages 63 to 66 and then I have submissions Sir, is the ANC's further submission of 12th May 1997 and the relevant pages there are 27 to 31.  In addition to particularly Goldstone, there were the revelations by Mr Luthuli to the TRC about the third force activities, the Caprivi training and they way their units then carried out actions of terror in KwaZulu Natal.

RONNIE KASRILS: Is that all Mr Kasrils?

ADV MOTATA: Just one thing about the Caprivians in the form of Dalokolo Luthuli.  Didn't that spread even to the then Transvaal, that it wasn't confined only to KwaZulu Natal but it was felt here in the then Transvaal?

RONNIE KASRILS: That's very much so and our belief was that when I talked about elements from KwaZulu Natal coming to the townships and coming to the hostels that the hostels were used as these bases for individuals who had been trained there, Sir, to be brought to the ...(inaudible) and had been to the TRC.  Many instances and reports of weaponry being brought into these hostels and been brought by the AWB, by the Police, by the military and by those elements who had been trained as you've indicated.  Thank you.

ADV DE JAGER: We've heard this morning that Mr McBride also brought weapons into this area.

RONNIE KASRILS: Judge de Jager, in my ...(intervention)

ADV DE JAGER: It's from both sides.