Amnesty Hearings — Durban — 2000-01-17

MR VISSER: Yes, certainly Chairperson.
	Now Mr Chairman, Botha also gave evidence that the information which he had received after the attack on Mrs Sabelo and the children, was given to Steyn and to Andy Taylor, to follow up.  And the next was when van Sittert contacted Botha to say that the group was in a house in KwaMashu and that it was the house in which they had left firearms, according to another informant of van Sittert, and that an action was planned.  And Botha went out and contacted Steyn, who in turn contacted Andy Taylor and Andy Taylor I believe it was, had contacted Wasserman, and those four went out to KwaMashu Police Station where they met members of the task force, who were under the command of a certain Capt Breytenbach.  And you've heard of Breytenbach during the hearing.  
	The plan was a pure and simple one.  There was reason to their minds, not to attack or to attempt to arrest these people in their house.  You heard the evidence of the possibility of unmasking an informer.  The plan was to wait until they left the house and then to accost them somewhere on the road and then to arrest them.
	Chairperson, as it turned out there were two people keeping observation on the house, who were in radio contact according to evidence of Botha and Steyn, with I think it was Colonel at the time, van Sittert - no he wasn't a Colonel, he was a lower rank, but let's call him a Captain, I'm not sure what his rank was, van Sittert, and that at some stage a call came through the radio to van Sittert to say that the group had left the house.
	Everybody then scurried to vehicles and they then drove off to try to block any possible escape route.  You will recall the evidence of what transpired thereafter.  Botha and Steyn found themselves together with Wasserman on the N2 freeway.  At some stage - there was heavy traffic, but at some stage they spotted the car of which they had the description beforehand.  Apparently it was a blue Toyota Cressida car.  They spotted the car and Botha tried to wave them down as they turned down the Quarry Road off-ramp from the freeway, or perhaps even while they were on the freeway.  This was unsuccessful and in fact what happened was that the Cressida attempted to ram the vehicle which Botha was driving and in which Steyn was a passenger twice, but there was no contact between the vehicles.
	Botha then gave evidence to say that in the confused state of chasing this car, of the car trying to ram them, he decided that he wanted to stop the vehicle by firing at the left rear tyre.  He says, and when he fired at the tyre some of his shots may have gone higher and may have entered the car.  
	It was at that stage apparently, as we can piece the evidence together, that Lembede and Wasserman must have thought that they were being fired upon in the kombi which was on the other side of the Cressida from where Botha was and they opened fire on the Cressida, firing a number of shots.
	You will recall that the evidence was that the Cressida had just before that, in fact rammed into the left side of the kombi in which Wasserman, Lembede and Mduli were travelling and that the shots were fired and thereafter the kombi moved in front of the Cressida, applied its brakes and the Cressida collided with the rear of the kombi and thus both those vehicles came to a standstill.  
	Thereupon Wasserman and Lembede got out of the kombi and while moving to the vehicle, there were further shots fired from the direction in which they had come.  And they told you Chairperson, that that could only have been fired from the task force members who were behind them at the time.
	Wasserman and Lembede ran up an embankment to avoid being hit themselves and later came back.  Botha at that stage, after the Cressida had come to a halt, had gone to investigate what was going on in the Cressida.  He found two things.  One, that the occupants were dead and two, that there were no weapons in the car.
	Immediately this occurred to them as a problem from the point of view of the inquest or possible later prosecutions, and they decided - Steyn says he decided, Botha said to you that they both decided, be that as it may, a decision was taken probably by Steyn, that the weapons which they assumed were in the car and therefore according to their perception still had to be at the house, be fetched to be planted on the occupants of the car so that they could show at the inquest that they acted in self-defence.  And interestingly enough you heard one of the witnesses here this morning tell you that that is what she was told had happened, that the police had fired on these occupants of the car in self-defence.
	It is clear Chairperson, although we don't have the finding of the Magistrate before us, that the finding of the Magistrate at the inquest was that it was justifiable homicide and no doubt at all that finding was based on the evidence of Botha, who told you that he told the inquest Magistrate in his affidavit, that the people in the Cressida were in fact armed.
	Chairperson, as far as the facts are concerned, very briefly those are the main features.  We would submit Mr Chairman, as Commissioner Bosman pointed out that we really have here is a plan gone horribly wrong ...(intervention)

MR LAX: Mr Visser, was there any plan in reality?

MR VISSER: Yes, the plan was to arrest them, they all told you that.

MR LAX: But there wasn't a plan, they didn't set up any roadblocks, all that happened was when the information came through that these people had left, there was no planning, they simply all ran off in their own directions trying to find this car.  It's a hardly a plan, is it?

MR VISSER: Well Chairperson, fortunately I don't have to convince you that the plan was a good one.

CHAIRPERSON: The plan was what?

MR VISSER: The plan was a good plan or it was well worked out, well conceived.  The fact is that they all told you that the plan was to arrest them.  Certainly you can criticise the way they went about the plan, but of course Steyn told you and Botha told you that it wasn't their operation, it was van Sittert's operation.  And van Sittert was the commander of Breytenbach and Breytenbach's task force was the Task force that had to execute the plan.  They were the ones that had to arrest them, they were better equipped, they were better trained for that kind of thing.  That was the evidence ...(intervention)

MR LAX: Mr Visser, with the greatest of respect, with the greatest of respect, Breytenbach and his men were never deployed in any way, they simply managed to follow up behind your clients and the others.  They weren't physically deployed.  When we asked all the applicants to explain what the plan was, besides the mere arrest of these people, there was no other plan.

MR VISSER: There was no other plan, yes.

MR LAX: Precisely, so there's no plan, that's just an intention.

MR VISSER: But what do we make of that, Chairperson?  Do you say there wasn't a good plan, or there wasn't any putting into place of any action as a result of the intention, that that should be held against them, Chairperson?

CHAIRPERSON: Well now if there wasn't a plan there might have been an expressed intention to arrest them without there being any plan.

MR VISSER: Yes, whatever you call it Chairperson, yes.

CHAIRPERSON: No but the question that - implied in the question as I understand it is, nothing seems to have been done to put into effect the plan if there was a plan.  Here was this car, the Cressida, being chased by the car driven by Botha and there was a kombi and then there was a task force, they're all moving in the same direction behind the Cressida.

MR VISSER: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: Now where they going to stop this Cressida, was it planned as to when they were going to stop this Cressida and where?