Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 2000-11-21

MR MALAN: Ms Anderson, sorry for interrupting you, but really the question is a simple one and I'm sure you're able to put yourself in the shoes of this illegitimate, shoddy outfit, doesn't understand the beginning of intelligence, by your definition, but you can still get in there and then viewing the relationship between yourself and Mr Hamlyn having shared the same house, maybe having seen him in some contact with you, even fixing your motorbike and assume it for a moment, from their perspective, would they not have told themselves:  "Ah, they're still in the same outfit", in their shoddy way, wouldn't it have made sense for them to then regard Mr Hamlyn also as a target?  I think that's the background of the question.

MS ANDERSON: And I'm saying no.  I am saying no, he could not have been regarded as a target.

MR MALAN: From the perspective that I put to you.

MS ANDERSON: From their perspective.

MR MALAN: Alright, can you tell me why?

MS ANDERSON: If one had to just spend a day following Mike around, doing ...(intervention)

MR MALAN: No, I don't want you to tell me what he did and the good man he was, I accept that.  The case before us is one of, as you put it, a quality or a level of intelligence that shouldn't be called intelligence.  This is what you observed, having listened to Mr Olifant, but that's the perspective.  You accept that Olifant's intelligence, as his understanding of intelligence I mean as a basis for your argument here, you didn't challenge that.  Now from that perspective, wouldn't that have been a fair deduction to Olifant and he's not making the decision, he's simply reporting, for the sake of argument, "I've seen Hamlyn with Muff Anderson, they shared the same house.  Yes, I did see him at that address, he fixed her motor bike which was broke" and he reports back.  What would the - I'm not making a case for good intelligence, I share you opinion of the level of intelligence, but that's not the measure for deciding, necessarily.

MS ANDERSON: But I'm still saying I don't see, I fail to see how, if somebody fixed my scooter, that makes him a target for a raid.  It's like saying all these guys who went into the army:  "Oh why don't we just kill all their wives and all their children" because by association they went into the Defence Force, it makes no sense.  It makes no sense.

JUDGE MOTATA: What do you say, because as a member of the ANC which largely the Act which brought us into existence, says we should look at opposing organisations or parties, that now if we look at all those who are ANC and attacked by the South African regime, wouldn't we say those are opposing parties, or organisations, whichever way you may look at it?

MS ANDERSON: All the ...(intervention)

JUDGE MOTATA: The Truth and Reconciliation Act which brought us here and where it's part of the Amnesty Process, says largely, look there are these categories you've got to look at, but what you first have to look at is that was it a political party or a political organisation fighting against another political organisation, in a broad outline, wouldn't we say the attack to Botswana, sympathisers are there, persons like you, that the regime, the military or South African Police were now attacking ANC members in Botswana, wouldn't that be - if I'm faced with that, how do you think I should approach that kind of argument?

MS ANDERSON: Well I mean I see it as a great act of aggression against a neighbouring country and we heard yesterday about a whole army being posted at Zeerust in case the Botswana Defence Force fought back.  It's the most outrageous sort of tactic to use, it's I mean never even mind who in their heads were supposedly targets.  They were - that man yesterday said they were prepared to actually turn Gaberone into flames.  They were prepared to kill everybody in Botswana, if necessary, in pursuit of their aggressive tactics.  I can't see it in terms of a party versus a party.

JUDGE MOTATA: Sorry about that Mr Berger, we took unnecessarily long time.  We apologise.  You were still leading your evidence.

MR BERGER: No, Judge, it's not me, it's Mr Coetser.

JUDGE MOTATA: Oh sorry about that Mr Coetser.

MR COETSER: Then to continue from where I left off, you seem to suggest that the intelligence agencies in South Africa ought to have been able to have determined by their spies in Gaberone, who was who and who was responsible for what and who was doing what.

MS ANDERSON: Yes, one would have thought that they would be a bit more jacked up.

MR COETSER: But wouldn't it be correct to say that carrying out the MK activities in Gaberone, this would have been done with the utmost secrecy because you wouldn't have wanted the Intelligence Community of the South African Government to find out exactly what you were up to?

MS ANDERSON: That's correct.

MR COETSER: Right.  So in other words, you would have deliberately conducted yourselves in a way so as to not let the Intelligence Community of the South African Government know exactly what you were up to?

MS ANDERSON: That's correct.

MR COETSER: So why is it then that you make this statement, if that is the case, that you would have expected the Intelligence community of the South African Government at the time, to determine who was who, who was doing what and who was MK and who wasn't MK, etc?  If you were embarking upon obviously a secrecy, efforts at secrecy designed to prevent just that?

MS ANDERSON: Yes, Sir, I think you're correct.  I think we were secret and we were clever and we were not caught in terms of what we were doing, so it was very difficult for those Intelligence Agencies to detect what was going on.  However, to have ...

MR COETSER: Thank you, you've answered my question.

MR BERGER: No, Chairperson, if the witness could, she clearly had more to say.  We're not in an American court room.

MR COETSER: Alright.

MS ANDERSON: Okay, so I'm saying yes, we conducted our activities covertly and successfully and it was obviously very hard and they were not able to penetrate that, so what I am then saying is that in the, because they could not penetrate those successful activities and they wanted to make a statement about Botswana, they simply hit soft targets, they simply didn't care.  They hit safe targets without proper intelligence, in order to make a statement, for whatever purposes, to the white tribe of South Africa, for whatever purposes, they wanted to say:  "You see here we have your interests at heart", but it was soft targets, all of them.

MR COETSER: The point is that they wouldn't have had the opportunity, as you say, to spend a day with Mike Hamlyn to find out who he is.  They wouldn't have had the opportunity to know that he was this charming red-haired man, as you have described.  They wouldn't have had that kind of opportunity, would they?

MS ANDERSON: Well certainly not if let the likes of Mr Olifant loose and ...(intervention)

MR COETSER: ...(indistinct) really.

MS ANDERSON: Well it sounds like that is the way they were conducting it.  They were basically letting people who couldn't even recognise who they were supposed to be hitting.

MR COETSER: Putting it another way ...

MS ANDERSON: It was quite clear that they didn't care who they killed.

MR COETSER: They would never have had the opportunity to get to know Mike Hamlyn like you did.

MS ANDERSON: I don't think they were remotely interested in getting to know Mike Hamlyn, or any of the targets.

MR COETSER: Just answer the question please.

MS ANDERSON: Well no, they wouldn't have, but nor would they care to.  Nor did they care to, they just wanted to kill some people.

MR COETSER: One thing that interests me is that this fraternisation that went on between MK members in Botswana and the so-called ordinary community ...

CHAIRPERSON: Why do you call it fraternisation?