Special Hearings — Armed Forces Hearings — 1997-10-07

MEMBER OF DELEGATION: Thank you, Mr Chairman.  To wind up the question by Mr Goosen, but before that I will, I just want to say that this is the body where we air our feelings, this is the  body where we are required to narrate history, this is the body where we are to present ourselves before the nation, this is the body where we are to vent our anger. That is why even last year we asked the Chairman of the TRC the meaning of the truth and, of course, it was broadly based, etcetera and so on, but I must say that it must be accommodated if we feel a little bit triggered, because we are recently from war and we seized hostilities, we stopped the war and, as somebody will say, nobody won, but in the final analysis we had to integrate the former enemies regardless of the memories, regardless of the feelings, regardless of the deaths, etcetera and so on.
 So, I want to say is that, please, accommodate us if we tend to resume or to show our true colours, to a certain extent and we are trying to be as frank as possible so that in the final analysis you draw out the truth and nothing else but the truth.
 Going back to Mr Goosen's question, just to sum up.  He referred to the 50s, during the rise of Africanism in South Africa and the ultimate creation and the foundation, establishment of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania in 1959 and in our document, this morning, we did indicate that in the Constitution of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania there is no structure known as Azanian Peoples' Liberation Army and there is no accommodation of the military programme, because, basically, it was political and we thought or they thought, that generation, because some of us were not there, that what they are dealing were understanding people, reasonable people, people who relate in fellowship with the other people, but we were proven wrong.
 You study the documents, the statements of Robert (indistinct) so we get the founding father of the Pan Africanist Congress.  There is nowhere he says war or military programme, etcetera, he emphasise the need for political change and for the liberation of the oppressed which mean that factor was accommodated and that went on until the banning of the political organisation, not the military organisation, the political organisations.  That is the PAC and other organisations, 1960, and, of course, they were forced to go underground and under such abnormal situation they were forced to create and establish their respective military wings.  In 1961, the 11th of September that is Apla and, of course, various kinds of operations started as early as all that.
 Now, I wanted just to give that historical background that this is not a sudden discovery or a sudden upsurge.  It is a history that stretches for four decades of political programme, political hostility and military confrontation between the State and the people and the oppressed.  So, I just wanted to put it in the correct, more especially, when you refer to the creation, the foundation of the PAC and, ultimately, of Apla as to how do they link and, also, to emphasise the question of the defensive nature of the war we have been trying to advocate or trying to clarify, to explain before you and before the nation as to what actually were we trying to do.  I do not know whether it satisfies.  We are waiting for more questions.  Thank you.

MR GOOSEN: Thank you very much.  Mr Chairperson, I am going to move to a slightly different set of questions.  Regrettably, they are going to be as tough as the first set of questions or first couple of set of questions, part of my function.  Hostilities may have been ended, but in the process of determining our own history some of us have a function of having to, at least, choreograph war.
 I want to deal with the repossession units or the reference to the nature of your operations conducted, which is set out, I beg your pardon, on page seven of this statement this morning.  You indicated that, and you clarify, that Apla cadres have never engaged in armed robberies, but you did, you do concede in that paragraph that one of the major sources of income, and I think in the explanation that you gave as well also of arms, was, what is termed repossession and what you described as revolutionary repossession.  Is it possible for the Apla command to provide a list of those authorised operations?

CHAIRPERSON: Colonel Nkunene.

WILLY NKUNENE: I hope not all of them were stolen in Lesotho and Leklapa was taken away from them.

MEMBER OF DELEGATION: Yes, I think the Chairman is preempting.

WILLY NKUNENE: Can you clarify your question further than what you have just said now?

MR GOOSEN: Certainly, I will attempt to.  As I understand the position that you have set out here, you are saying Apla cadres are not responsible or, put it this way, Apla cadres have never engaged in armed robberies, have never, in a sense, engaged in criminal actions, but you concede that, at least as a source of income, that repossession, revolutionary repossession, was something that Apla cadres would have engaged in as part of the process of resourcing the organisation in order to prosecute the struggle, but you do not specify or provide, for that matter, a basis on which an outside body, such as the TRC, the Amnesty Committee, for example, can determine which operations, which repossession operations were authorised by the command and which were not.  Is it possible to provide us with a list of those authorised operations?

WILLY NKUNENE: First and foremost in your statement, now, you assume that every operation that Apla undertook was necessarily sanctioned by the high command.  I want to believe earlier on our, my other colleagues here have actually shown you the chain of command of Apla and if that has been done, I want to believe, by now, the TRC together with us should understood very clearly how Apla operated and, as such, such a question would not arise at all.

MR GOOSEN: Well, ... (intervention).

WILLY NKUNENE: Secondly, I want to say, also, that the question of repossession is not an issue that was brought about by Apla in the TRC or anywhere, but is an issue that has been brought up by the media and, probably, the TRC and also, probably, our cadres that are languishing in jail presently.  We are putting this statement to put it very clearly so that the TRC should be aware that in the event that the TRC brings up such charges, we have already put it clearly to the TRC that Apla had never engaged in any armed robbery and as such, we should not be expected to submit a list of those.  In fact, we are expecting the TRC to submit a list to us of those armed robberies.

MR GOOSEN: Let me indicate the difficulty.  We have got literally dozens of applications for amnesty from persons who claim that they are Apla cadres and who claim that they were involved in and the acts for which they apply for amnesty, are armed robberies, murders, culpable homicide committed during the course of those robberies and they claim in their amnesty applications that they were involved in revolutionary repossession in order to finance the activities of units and in order to prosecute this, the armed struggle as prosecuted by those Apla units.  Now, how does the Amnesty Committee or the TRC, for that matter, determine whether any one particular action falls within the ambit of an authorised repossession or not?