Special Hearings — Legal Hearings — 1997-10-27

MR NEIDT: Ja. Recommendations on the necessity, adequacy, fairness and efficacy of legislation pertaining to the internal security of the republic. The internal security act of 1982 which came into effect on 2 July 1982 was drafted after consideration of the Rabie report. It was not so much a new piece of legislation as a consolidation of most of the old security legislation. Chairperson I won't go into all the detail but it's contained here and you will see that the security legislation moved between the minister of justice and the minister of which was then minister of law and order. And we also give you once again all the details there as far as we could.
 I just want to stress as far as this particular period of time is concerned, the security legislation is concerned in the department of justice we still have all our files. I think they are about 20 000 and we extracted this from the files. All the information is available should the commission require further information we'll kindly assist but we've kept them. The only problem we have at the moment is that everybody wants to do research on these matters and I'm just scared that the essential parts of these files may disappear. But Mr du Bruin is with me and that's why I brought him along. He's in charge of that and it's securely locked away and we try our utmost best but I must tell you various people come to see these files if they want particulars as far as pensions are concerned, they want to do research. I think there were people from overseas they recommended us that the state of the files be kept but everything is available there. And I just want to point out if there's any specific matter. I just want to stress because it was raised this morning. But I confirm it with Mr du Bruin that there are quite a number of reports for all the magistrates who visited people who were detained in a particular point in time. I don't have the details but if you want to look at a specific report; what was said and what was done in this regard. We have quite a number on file. Chairperson I think I'll leave the security legislation at that and if you're impressed with me going to page 34 I'm going to jump to the next page.
 At page 54 we give you the head office of the department, what it consists of. It's unfortunately we've done a lot of work. I did want to give you all these matters. But any how. Then the role of the director general. I just say that mainly the functions of the director general was to manage the staff but the most important function of the director general is to as far as I'm concerned he is the accounting officer of the department of justice. So he is responsible to parliament to keep within the limits of his budget. 
 And we also speak about the grading of the posts and then in the involvement of the state security council I should perhaps just refer to page 59. The state security council was one of four cabinet committees, you should have known that perhaps already. It was the only one that was created and prescribed by statute and the director general was a member of the state security council.
 I won't deal in detail with policy making and implementation. And then at page 62 I give you the personnel in the courts. And at page 63 I give you some details of what the position was as far as representivity in the department is concerned. And then at page 64 I deal with the whole question of the situation where we came to the point where we could appoint also other people of colour. Then I give you a short description of the law advisors, the legislative process - I was asked to make submissions on this. I think there's also a section dealing with the attorney general's office, office for the serious economic offences, the state attorney's office and the judiciary. The role of the judiciary I think we've heard a lot about. What I said here is merely a repetition of what has been said before the commission already since Monday. I'm not going to quote or go into detail. Chairperson I hope I'm not going to quickly for you. 
 The appointment of magistrates I deal with and how they become independent, what year they became independent and then once again the special courts for black people I set out in detail. I've already dealt with that. Appeal court for commissioner's courts I've already dealt with that briefly. Divorce courts for black people and the lay assessors, when they were introduced. A short section on the interpreters and then there's also a short section on the department's relationship with the legal profession. But I think the legal profession was here. They explained the situation fully to you so it's not necessary to go into that.
 I think justice college, perhaps I just want to mention that justice college has been handling the training of officials in the department of justice. It was started in the 40's, in the early 50's. And as usual there were teething troubles but I think today we are proud of what justice college has done and in this respect I specifically want to make mention of the human rights institute which we have at justice college and that we are training our people at an extensive rate in human rights. Since we have received the interim constitution, even before that we started training our officials and I must say this particular institute is doing an excellent job. But apart from that the justice training college also train officials for various other state departments. I've given you details. 
 Then I think chairperson the most important part I want to bring to your attention and say that since 1990 to '94, even before that the department became fully involved in a transitional process to a democratic dispensation and various offices of the department made an important contribution in this regard. And I don't want to list them here. Except to say that I think that many of us who were in the department were glad to get the opportunity to be of assist with the knowledge you had and to try and expedite this whole process. And as far as the department's head office is concerned we are just about fully representative today and the various bills the minister has handled here these were drafted, some of these we even started drafting before the elections. We even took steps to put up the constitutional court before the elections. I was personally involved in negotiations with members of the ANC. I said to them it's obvious that the most important aspect for the department of justice is going to be the constitutional court and if we wait until ... 
 ... after I've consulted them and I authorised the department of public works before that to start building a constitutional court. And that's why we could get a constitutional court so quickly off the ground. 
 Then chairperson I think it's very important - I will probably be questioned on this but, at page 102 I just want to stress this in the spirit of truth and reconciliation we submit that many of the practices within the ministry in the department of justice between 1960 and 1994 were an affront to human dignity. In this respect we refer particularly to our administration of the security legislation, to the structuring and functioning of the court system and to our departmental employment practices. We acknowledge that we failed in the task of providing a fair system of justice for all South Africans. Our administration of justice was not even-handed in all respects. Through our court system and the laws we upheld we failed to protect the basic human rights of all the citizens of South Africa. Our employment practices denied people equality and dignity and for that we apologise.
 As pointed out in the beginning this is a factual submission and it is trusted that it will enable the commission to judge the department's administration of justice during the period concerned. I want to conclude by saying that there's so much during this particular period and it seems impossible to put everything in writing but if there's a need for further information we'll try to assist. And I just want to say Mr Rasafarti is here with me. He was formally in Lebowa. Mr du Bruin and Mr Braille and they made an excellent contribution in preparing this particular submission. I didn't have the time personally to do it all. I was involved and of course as I said the planning unit, various other senior officials like Mr Picolli of the department of justice assisted in drafting it. And unless there is something else you want me to highlight I'll leave it at that.