Amnesty Hearings — Boksburg — 1998-06-22

MR BRACHER: You see as I understand your evidence it is this and correct me if I am wrong, because as far as I am concerned, your answers to my learned friend, have killed your amnesty application.
	Nobody ever gave you instructions to kill innocent people as the target in the AWB?

JAN B DE WET: Nobody gave me the instruction to kill innocent people, that is correct yes.

MR BRACHER: Nobody in the AWB has ever accepted responsibility publicly for any of these bombings?

JAN B DE WET: Mr Chairperson, in the AWB people did not take responsibility in public for this.  For me Nico Prinsloo and Leon van der Merwe were there, they were people who had direct contact with Terreblanche and it had his approval.

MR BRACHER: No, you can't give that answer because you have just told me nobody told you to target innocent civilians, so you can't blame them.  You can't blame them for what you did in Germiston.
	You can't blame them for associating with Bree Street, can you?  How do you blame them?

JAN B DE WET: Mr Chairperson, we were in a war situation, it was told to us that it is war and when I fight in a war, everything is made available, irrespective of what happen.

MR BRACHER: You know Mr De Wet, you are like a parrot, you go through a war situation, and I must stop the election.  You had one bomb that you knew about in a trailer, and you had 20 pipe bombs, are you going to cause the stoppage of an election, and you chose a target which has nothing to do with an election, you chose innocent people.  What has, how do you justify that as anything to do with the policy of the ANC, even if it is to stop an election, it is rubbish?

JAN B DE WET: Mr Chairperson, we were told that we must stop the elections, using any means available and some of them were successful, and I cannot say further.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr De Wet, in order to simplify the question, how would this bomb in Germiston in any way prevent that large, or come near to preventing that large election, that was an international microscope?

JAN B DE WET: Mr Chairperson, as far as I know the chaos and damage that occurred after the bombings, would have prevented the people to go to the voting polls, and that is how I saw it.

MR BRACHER: Mr De Wet, if it was your intention to do something adverse to the election, you could easily have chosen a polling booth which were well known by the time you planted the bomb?

JAN B DE WET: Mr Chairperson, I was not involved with the planning of what will occur in this war, I was a soldier, and I only followed my instructions, I cannot comment on that.

MR BRACHER: Mr De Wet, I am not accepting these answers about instructions, because you didn't get instructions from anybody to do anything, except to drive a car, is that correct?

JAN B DE WET: Mr Chairperson, I made my vehicle available, and nobody told me I must go and plant a bomb.  When I arrived at Koesterfontein, it was said that this bomb was going to Germiston, that in the trailer is a bomb and we are going to Germiston.
	I associated myself, no one said that I must plant it there, I only associated myself when I made my motor vehicle available.

MR BRACHER: But not on anybody's orders, was it?

JAN B DE WET: No one gave me instructions to do that.

MR BRACHER: You didn't know what target had been chosen?

JAN B DE WET: No, I did not know what target was chosen.

MR BRACHER: Have you any idea when they gave instructions how to use pipe bombs, what targets were intended for those bombs?

JAN B DE WET: Mr Chairperson, with the pipe bombs they said that missions will go out and what the instructions were, I was not there.  They said they were looking for a driver and two people who would accompany this driver.
	What was said there, I cannot tell you.

MR BRACHER: Now, when you say you associated yourself with the Bree Street bomb, what do you associate yourself with, the killing of innocent people without instructions from above, is that what you are associating yourself with?

JAN B DE WET: Mr Chairperson, we were in a war situation.

MR BRACHER: Here we go.

JAN B DE WET: Yes, Mr Chairperson, we were in a war situation and that which occurred there, I associated myself with.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr De Wet, you come now, arrive in Germiston, in the beginning you drive into Germiston, you do not know where this bomb will be planted?

JAN B DE WET: That is correct yes.

CHAIRPERSON: And your colleague shows you or indicates to use your words, the orders are that the bomb must be planted here, close to this taxi rank and you say at that stage, you, yourself associated yourself with the planing of the bomb there, knowing that people will be killed?

JAN B DE WET: That is correct Mr Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: With what political purpose, objective, did you associate yourself with that?

JAN B DE WET: Mr Chairperson, in order for the elections to be stopped and that the government of the day will be shown that the Boerevolk will fight for the freedom for their own Volkstaat.

CHAIRPERSON: How would the people who was involved with the election, how would they have known that the bomb was planted there in order to create chaos and to disrupt the elections, because you wanted a Volkstaat?

JAN B DE WET: Mr Chairperson, for me it was that the leaders who were involved, that they used the media and the radio, they would make it known to the world why and where the bombs would be planted.

CHAIRPERSON: The previous day was the first bomb that you thought was done by the AWB?

JAN B DE WET: Yes, that is correct.

CHAIRPERSON: If it was the AWB, we do not know.  But you thought it was them and no one in the AWB took responsibility for that?

JAN B DE WET: That is correct Mr Chairperson.   There was that evening, the BKA did take responsibility for that and that is all that I can remember.

CHAIRPERSON: What made you think that the AWB's leadership would take responsibility for the Germiston bomb?

JAN B DE WET: Because we who were gathered there, were AWB members.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes, Mr Bracher?

MR BRACHER: You see, you said that you assumed that there was some trap that General Viljoen was setting by participating in the election, but you don't seem to have asked anybody about that?  You just assumed all these things and made up your own mind and your own plans what to do next, is that right?

JAN B DE WET: That is correct yes.

MR BRACHER: And the same after the Bree Street bombing, nobody takes responsibility on behalf of the AWB, they carrying on, there is war now, but nobody says a word about this is our bomb, they don't say it in Koesterfontein, they don't say it at the game farm, they don't say it in the press, they don't say it on TV that you were watching, you just assumed that this is part of the war?

JAN B DE WET: Mr Chairperson, after what happened in Bree Street and the BKA took responsibility for it, I realised that Constand Viljoen and Eugene Terreblanche and Ferdi Hartzenberg and the other organisations, who belonged to the BKA would take responsibility for it.  That is how I understood it.

MR BRACHER: You keep saying that, but why don't you ask somebody, why don't you ask one of your Generals or one of your superiors before you go and kill some more innocent people?

JAN B DE WET: Mr Chairperson, I was in a war period, and there you do not ask questions.  That is how I was trained.

MR BRACHER: Is that your answer, that you don't ask any questions at all?

JAN B DE WET: Mr Chairperson, I did ask questions why we fought this war and they said that they wanted to stop the elections, but I didn't ask why.

MR BRACHER: Mr De Wet, my question is different, you did not know that this had anything to do with the war struggle of the AWB, because nobody had said so to you?

JAN B DE WET: Mr Chairperson, I assumed that what happened there, carried the approval of the leaders, and that is why I associated myself with that.