Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — UNKNOWN

ADV STEENKAMP: I can just say that the documents that you 
have in front of you was the copies of the latest amnesty 
applications that we had in our possession.

CHAIRPERSON: However you'll have these made, you'll have 
copies made for everybody and make that available to all of us.

JUDGE PILLAY: Then Mr du Plessis, I understand that 
Humansdorp was perceived, or the police cells in Humansdorp 
was perceived to be as you put it, a safe cell?

H B DU PLESSIS: Actually Jeffrey's Bay.

JUDGE PILLAY: Was Humansdorp Police Station not as 
appropriate as you would have wanted it?

H B DU PLESSIS: That's correct.

JUDGE PILLAY: Why was he then sent to Humansdorp in  the 
first  place?

H B DU PLESSIS: Because other detainees were being detained 
at Jeffrey's Bay at that stage and we could not get any other 
accommodation for them at that stage as far as I can remember.

JUDGE PILLAY: Now how long after  you first met him did 
you make this offer to become an informer?

H B DU PLESSIS: At this stage I must speculate, possibly 
fourteen days after that.

JUDGE PILLAY: Did you assault him as you described before 
then or after then?

H B DU PLESSIS: No, before that.

JUDGE PILLAY: And how long after your offer did he accept 
the offer?

H B DU PLESSIS: His co-operation was so good that it is 
difficult to say.   A day or two or three thereafter he said that he 
was prepared to cooperate.  There were still questions that posed 
a problem and one was as to how he was going to be transferred 
and he made suggestions himself as to how he could be taken up 
into this stream again.

JUDGE PILLAY: And did you only assault him on one day?

H B DU PLESSIS: I can recall one day specifically but if 
someone tells me that it was twice then I would believe it to be 
true.

JUDGE PILLAY: How long after you first met him and started 
to interrogate  him did you find it necessary to assault him?

H B DU PLESSIS: It was not very long thereafter.

JUDGE PILLAY: And then over two weeks of interrogation and 
perhaps assault if I can include it, you then decided that he'd been 
broken down sufficiently to make him the offer?

H B DU PLESSIS: No we did not break him down.  In the 
beginning we did.  I did that personally, but thereafter he gave his 
co-operation and we started building him up.

JUDGE PILLAY: Now tell me,  after the decision, as you put it 
in your statement, it was an agreement between the top three 
members of the Security Police in Port Elizabeth, it was decided 
that Mr Kondile should be assassinated.   You then asked 
someone whether he'd participate in it. Who was that?

H B DU PLESSIS: Mr Raath.

JUDGE PILLAY: And he took some time to consider the issue 
and then came back to you and said he was willing to participate.

H B DU PLESSIS: Yes it could have been the same day or the 
next day, I cannot remember.

JUDGE PILLAY: Did you explain to him the whole history 
behind the decision and what was going to happen?

H B DU PLESSIS: In general yes.

JUDGE PILLAY: What would have been his position had he 
refused to cooperate?

H B DU PLESSIS: Nothing.

JUDGE PILLAY: He would have known all this information?

H B DU PLESSIS: No no.

JUDGE PILLAY: Would he not have been a danger to certain 
members?

H B DU PLESSIS: No Mr Raath was never present where we 
dealt with the briefing and the informer story.  I did this on my 
own.  I made mistakes with Kondile but I did not make that 
mistake.

ADV DE JAGER: Is he not asking you as to you informed Raath 
that you were going to murder this man, so Raath knew that you 
were going to murder him?  And what would have happened if he 
had said that he was not going to cooperate?  Surely then he 
could have laid charges against you?

H B DU PLESSIS: I trusted him, I had the confidence in him to 
say voluntarily whether he wanted to go with or not and that he 
would have left it at that.  That's a chance that we took.

JUDGE PILLAY: You testified that whatever you did to Mr 
Kondile and your participation whatever occurred to him,  you 
did not on a personal basis but rather as part of your duty as a 
policeman.   What duty would that be?

H B DU PLESSIS: Well in the first instance my task was to 
protect the government against enemy forces; we were in a state 
of war at that stage with the ANC and I was sent by the 
government to Rhodesia to Zimbabwe or as it was then called, 
Rhodesia, where we did the same and all that happened there was 
that it was across our border and this inside our border; so it 
remains the same.  If one ran into one another and shot one 
another, it remained the same.

JUDGE PILLAY: Members of the South African Police even 
now have the power to shoot, even to kill under certain precise 
guide lines, not so?

H B DU PLESSIS: That's correct.

JUDGE PILLAY: Would you agree that this would not fall under 
that,  would not be covered by the Act?

H B DU PLESSIS: That's correct.

ADV GCABASHE: Mr Du Plessis, if you can help me with one 
point. Sizwe Kondile agreed to work for you.  He then turned on 
you.  You drove to Barberton and he was in shackles if I 
understood the translation correctly. Is that right?

H B DU PLESSIS: I do not believe that he was handcuffed, I do 
not recall saying that.  Nor can I remember, it's possible but I 
cannot remember.

ADV GCABASHE: He was then shackled or tied to the tree, 
that was your evidence if I understood you correctly?

H B DU PLESSIS: Yes there he was bound or shackled.

ADV GCABASHE: Now if this man became a comrade of yours 
because he had agreed to work for you,  why was he shackled to 
the tree?

H B DU PLESSIS: He leant against the tree, he wasn't tied to 
the tree, his hands were just cuffed and we had just told one 
another that at that stage it had already been decided as to what 
his end would be.

ADV GCABASHE: So he wasn't shackled to the tree but his 
hands were cuffed at that stage, yes?

H B DU PLESSIS: Yes that's correct.

ADV GCABASHE: And when you gave him his drinks he had 
these with his hands cuffed?

H B DU PLESSIS: I did not give him his drink.  I do not recall 
if anybody untied him.

CHAIRPERSON: But you did say that he was given something 
to eat and drink.

H B DU PLESSIS: That's correct but I cannot remember in 
detail whether he was cuffed while he was eating or drinking.

CHAIRPERSON: But you do remember that he was cuffed.

H B DU PLESSIS: That's correct.

CHAIRPERSON: You do remember that he was given something 
to eat and drink.

H B DU PLESSIS: That's correct.

CHAIRPERSON: Well the question is this, what is the only 
inference you can draw from that?  That somebody else took the 
cuffs off?

H B DU PLESSIS: He could have eaten with his handcuffs on, 
that's the other deduction you can make, that he could have been 
eating and drinking with his cuffs on but I cannot recall this 
specifically.

CHAIRPERSON: And I trust nobody told him why he was being 
cuffed?

H B DU PLESSIS: I don't believe so.  It could also be that we 
told him, but I really don't know.  It's too long ago.

CHAIRPERSON: This is a very dramatic situation isn't it.

H B DU PLESSIS: That's correct.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes, now here is a man who co-operates with 
you, you know that he is not a true co-operator, he does not 
know that you have found out his duplicity towards you.  You 
take him in the car travelling a long distance.  As far as  you are 
concerned, at no stage he's told that you have found him out and 
you haven't told us what his attitude was, whether he asked you 
where he was being taken, why he was being taken and so on.  All 
I gather from your information is at various stages you say you 
can't remember.  Now these are important facets of the case and I 
would like you to to try and remember.