Amnesty Hearings — Pretoria — 1996-07-01

UNKNOWN: Now would you then agree with me that from the beginning of your operation up to the time you got arrested, you did not have a movement then but you have a political belief to establish a movement. Would that be correct?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: No, it was definitely a movement, although it was in its infant state, it was definitely a movement.  That is why we had conspired to certain objectives.  The first members had already put their names to it, and had - we had decided to follow a certain modus operandi with certain objectives. It was definitely an organisation with certain supportive structures from the other organisations. So I wouldn't say it was just a group of people coming together and doing something. It was definitely the beginning of an organisation.

UNKNOWN: But is it not, Mr Du Plessis, that your modus operandi and the collection of arms and money, this was a process towards establishing a movement, which to my mind never got established.  You were still attempting to establish it, you were still trying to concretise your political belief.

JEAN DU PLESSIS: I was still - what about my political beliefs? Sorry?

UNKNOWN: Your modus operandi, the collection of weapons and other things and the support, the previous support that you had, you did all this as a process towards establishing a movement. In other words, at that time you were still trying to concretise a political belief.

JEAN DU PLESSIS: No, the political belief was already concretised.  And the movement was already founded.  We originally founded the movement as the South African Republican Organisation, that was to be the public organisation, which would have been open.  This was in December, the 16th of December 1990.  With a military wing called the South African Partisans. After that I had changed, we had a bit of contact and I had changed the name to the National Socialist Partisans, in order to accommodate our international ties as well, with Europe and possibly with America later on.  The organisation was already founded.  We had already our structures. We had already a very sophisticated and well thought out plan, but we were in the beginning stage of the organisation, of organising it, it had already been founded and it was on its way.

JUDGE WILSON: Four people?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: No, the four people was the nucleus, but there were already many people who I had confronted who seemed that they would be interested in joining with us, but because of a lack of funds, because of a lack of the premises, to do the training, we couldn't accommodate everybody all yet.  So we had to first do the preliminary organising for the military wing. But the organisation had already been founded.

JUDGE WILSON: When you say lack of training, do you mean military training?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: That's correct.

JUDGE WILSON: What you were concentrating on was military training?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: No, we initially wanted ... (intervention).

JUDGE WILSON: But that is what you have just said.

JEAN DU PLESSIS: We initially wanted a military training, to be able to defend ourselves and the organisation, and then from there we would have done information training, propaganda training and communications training.

UNKNOWN: Mr Du Plessis, besides the four of you being members of NSP, can you give us any - can you give us a number of other people who were members to the NSP?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: As I said, that was the four of us, were the written in members, thus far.

UNKNOWN: And the rest of the people just showed interest, they never at all became members of the NSP?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Well, as I said, we had the support of many groups, and it was an unspoken agreement that they would support us and that we were to support them. However, they hadn't officially been sworn in.

UNKNOWN: Can you say

SISI KHAMPEPE: Excuse me, Mr Mpshe.  The unspoken support which you had, where people would belong to their own political movements, is it not so?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: That's correct.

UNKNOWN: Can you say, in your NSP was there a commander?  Can you speak of a commander?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: A military commander? Or a ...

UNKNOWN: A person who could have been said to have been a commander in the NSP amongst the four of you?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Right. I was the leader of the organisation. Because of the youth of the organisation, we hadn't been able to define everybody's role yet.  But the initial planning was that White would become the military commander and I would go myself into the political field.

UNKNOWN: Right. Now you just said the initial planning. Do I understand you correctly to be saying that you were only four people who came together to do something that never took off?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: I wouldn't say that. It wasn't just four people who came together.  There had been a lot of planning, a lot of correspondence, the Mr Oliver Matthie had already  left for Europe. I suppose one could describe him also as a member because he - even though he wasn't a sworn-in member, he was a member of us.  And the people that he got in Europe, specifically in Italy at that stage, one could also see as members of the organisation.

UNKNOWN: Yes, you may have had a contact overseas, you may have handled correspondence and everything and taken an oath, but what I am saying is, all this you did towards forming a movement which was never formed.

JEAN DU PLESSIS: The organisation was already formed.  It was busy growing and it still had to grow into a much larger organisation. Yet, the organisation was already formed.

UNKNOWN: Now let's move to the "Kerk van die Skepper".  How often did you attend their meetings?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: It was once a month.  They used to come together once a month.

UNKNOWN: And what is the duration of the meetings?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: A couple of hours.

UNKNOWN: What do you mean by a couple of hours?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Maybe three or four hours on a Sunday morning.

UNKNOWN: And during that three or four hours, what was being discussed, what was the main issue?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: It was usually political speeches by various people, plus the philosophy of the Church of the Creator.

UNKNOWN: Did you have any leadership role to play in this organisation?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Yes, we formed what was called the leadership institute and I was an active member there.  I had also given a couple of speeches at that stage.

UNKNOWN: Mr Du Plessis, you knew, you said actually you planned the collection of weapons in Louis Trichardt, where unfortunately people lost their lives.  Did you foresee or indicate - no, did you foresee that loss of life would take place?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Excuse me. I didn't foresee the death of any people.  When White had given me the - well, when White came to me with the idea that he wanted to steal those weapons, I told him I can go along with that, I can agree with it, but he must make sure that nobody is in the house, and therefore it would be a simple theft, because he assured me that it was a simple operation, that there would only be a theft of weapons. I didn't foresee, unfortunately I didn't foresee the death of anybody at that stage.

UNKNOWN: Would you then agree with me that the killing of these three innocent people was not at all part of your process towards reaching your objectives?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: No, it wasn't part of our planning at all.

UNKNOWN: And in fact, you said earlier in your evidence that "die dood van die drie mense, dit kon julle nie ..." The death of the three people, you could not justify that.

JEAN DU PLESSIS: I didn't know how to justify it at all.  It was a very unfortunate thing that took place.  And I couldn't justify it at all. I thought that White had been very - well, he hadn't thought about what he was doing when he went in there and did, and they did what they did, and I felt that this actually jeopardised our chances of success greatly.