Special Hearings — State Security Council Hearings — UNKNOWN

ADRIAAN VLOK: It is difficult to actually say scores, I don't know how many there were, but I want to say this and this links up with a comment somebody made yesterday relating to the large numbers of policemen involved in these things, I tried to make enquiries as to how many policemen had applied for amnesty and my information was that it wasn't more than a 150.  You will know how many actually applied.  But these things to which Mr Goosen is now referring took place over decades.  There were more than 100,000 policemen in the force who actually worked with these things and who could have been involved in illegal actions, and 150 actually applying for amnesty let me say this, one person killed or one death is one death too many.  That is my view of death as a result of a policeman's action, and one illegal action is one too many.  That is my view and nobody should doubt that.
 But if I say to you that 150 policemen possibly applied for amnesty out of a total of more than 100,000 then that is a percentage of ,05 or ,01 I am not quite sure, but I think then I am justified in saying that that happened purely by exception, and I have to state that once again so that there's no misunderstanding that one exception as far as I am concerned was one exception too many.

MR GOOSEN: Mr Vlok the amnesty applications relate to incidents which date back to the early 1970's right through to the 1990's concern unlawful activities involving torture, assaults, murders, bombings and a range of other activities.  In respect of amnesty applications where people seek amnesty for torture the indication that they state in their amnesty application that torture and assaults on detainees were systematic, right across the board.  How do you account for the fact that right across the country, across all sections and particularly the Security Police, there is a systematic misinterpretation of policy directives emanating from the State Security Council and senior echelons of government?

ADRIAAN VLOK: I am in a difficult position here, it's difficult to answer for what they did.  I think they will all appear before you or before the Amnesty Committee and they will have to explain why they did what they did.  I never knew that they were torturing these people and I never approved it because there was never any report which appeared on my desk saying that we tortured Mr X and he gave us certain information, or that we killed somebody and we went and buried him.  That's why I said yesterday in my submission I am sorry that this happened, I now realise what happened and I can't close my eyes for the reality.  You and Mr Goosen have more information at your disposal about these things than I ever had and what was always said to me was there was certain information obtained, I just got a little information note or memo and never was there knowledge contained in that that anybody had been tortured or killed.
 I said yesterday that we should have done more to try and prevent it, we didn't do enough and I can say no more than that.

MR GOOSEN: Mr Vlok I can - we'll come to the question about information in due course.  The thrust of my question is simply this.  It's your position that certain policy directives were issued, approaches to combat the revolution were approved, those could have been misinterpreted, it was never intended that certain unlawful actions should flow from it, but what we see is systematic pattern of unlawful activity, systematic misinterpretation right across the board, unlawful activities being carried out. How can you account for the fact that policemen, senior policemen, commissioners of police right the way down to divisional level can systemically misinterpret instructions?

ADRIAAN VLOK: I want to reiterate, Mr Goosen is in a better position to say that it was systematic.  I don't know.  In my time it wasn't obvious, it wasn't put before me and I will accept what he says, I am not disputing this.  All I can say is that I never approved it and it was never brought to my attention that there was evidence about these things.  And where there were cases where these things were revealed people were actually taken to court, they were charged and justice took its course, and that is still my position to this day, that I didn't approve it, I didn't know that they were actually engaged in these activities and when we found it out, when and where we found it out we charged people.  That's why I said, if these things happened I am sorry that it happened and I must accept the responsibility for that because I was the political head.

CHAIRPERSON: Just wait - Dr Boraine.

UNKNOWN: Thank you Chairperson.  Mr Vlok you have answered that you certainly never gave any orders or instructions, if some of these things were happening and were systematic, we've got many, many hundreds, perhaps thousands of victims, survivors who testified before the Commission, and let me say immediately these are untested allegations, accept that, but when they come from all over the country and they repeat, and many of them are very simple people, of incidences which happened to them or to their family or to their friends or to their loved ones, together with - and a lot of people were very sceptical when those first hearings were held, now to back that up we've got scores, let me just put it no higher than that, of applications from people who worked in the security forces and often their application deals with many and not one incident.
 I recall, certainly inside and outside of Parliament, allegations made on the basis of complaints received in one's normal work that torture was taking place in prisons, churches, civil rights groups, yes, even some opposition politicians were approached by families who said, you know, they've come back there's blood all over their shirt, or they are hurt or they are wounded or they are dead, many, many people's voices were raised, many books were written, many articles were written, now as a responsible Minister, and I don't want to single out you alone because there were many other people and you were only there for a specific period of time, but you are here before us and they are not at the moment, if, if - you must have heard some of this.  You must have, because you were there and I was there in part, did you ever set up an investigation saying this is absolutely forbidden, unacceptable and therefore I am going to have a judicial commission to investigate  allegations of torture which appear to be systematic.  In other words they just weren't freak occurrences they seemed to be happening all over the country.  Did you ever do that?