Special Hearings — Political Party Recalls — 1997-05-16

GEN VILJOEN: I think the same kind of action.  The word third force became a sort-of name given to clandestine operations carried out by people pretending to belong to the other group by doing certain actions.  I think it has been testified in front of the Amnesty Commission that there were even necklacing cases where it was actually traced back to some security force action.  I think this is the kind of thing that can happen.
 I think discrediting where you really go for the hearts and minds of the people is a very powerful weapon and that is why I say revolutionary warfare and terrorism and this kind of dishonest way of operating to me makes this war worse than, or at least on the same level as nuclear war.
It's completely unacceptable.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.  Dumisa Ntsebeza.

MR NTSEBEZA: General would this discrediting also take the form of what I put to Gen Magnus Malan, namely where units or soldiers would blacken their faces to create the impression that they were SWAPO operatives in order to discredit Swapo in any of the things that they had done?  Would that be for instance, part of this whole elaborate scheme of discrediting your enemy?

GEN VILJOEN: I would just like to point out Chairperson, that the blackening of faces in the military operation is
actually a part of camouflage and it is done quite often, especially when people operate at night time and if they have a fair complexion, a white skin then they blacken their faces so that it doesn't show up in the light of the moon and so on, so the blackening of faces is not really - but what you say is a possibility.  I don't know about this but it is certainly a possibility.  Because remember what I said, discrediting in this kind of war is a powerful weapon and if you can do certain actions to discredit a certain group in the face of the enemy, I think it's also possible that it could have been done from the liberation side. It probably was done from the liberation side too, so discrediting is a weapon and this is why I say it's an unacceptable form of war.

MR NTSEBEZA: There wouldn't be much to blacken there among SWAPO members, there wouldn't really be much to blacken, but I take your point.  (General laughter)

GEN VILJOEN: But all SWAPO members were not Black.

MR NTSEBEZA: Yes Lebowski wasn't.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.  I realise there seem to be some benefits in a dark complexion.  (General laughter)

UNKNOWN: General having given the similarity between the third force as you understand it and the third force as explained by other people, now given your experience, particularly in 1994, the occurrence in 1994, wouldn't you now say that because of this experience you've reached a stage where you believe that the third force other than the one that you understand, did exist.

GEN VILJOEN: No I have no reason to say that I can bring proof or even have a firm idea that this form does exist.  I'm sure from what I've heard from Gen Malan and from what I've spoken to the people, it never materialised, and Gen Malan has said that it was considered by the previous State  Security Council in '86, but eventually the decision was against it.  I give my assurance to this Commission that I do not know of any such force that exists.

UNKNOWN: Can we then move to the well-planned campaign as explained by yourself and I'll just quote briefly what you said thereon. And before doing that may I take this opportunity to thank you for the detailed response to this question of the well-planned campaign of resistance and mass action, but still having said that we would still like to have some clarification on these issues.  On page 19, paragraph 2, you refer to the four retired generals forming a directorate to provide strategic guidance to the Volksfront. Now my question is, why were these retired generals involved, does this not show that right at the initial stages there was that intent towards violence?

GEN VILJOEN: Chairperson at that stage, as I've explained, the more conservative Afrikaner and most of the farmers belonged to this grouping, had lost all confidence in the National Party and in fact in political leaders of the Government at that stage.  That being so, when we had a big meeting in Potchefstroom, and that has dealt with in this, I had to say a few words on the issue of the ongoing violence and the many murders that took place on farmers, and I made a point saying that I think Mr de Klerk is making a mistake by just accepting that the process is free and fair and that the ANC through mass action is probably intimidating or influencing this negotiation process.  And we also had a meeting of Afrikaner organisations, and in that meeting Afrikaner organisations the specific point was made that there is no longer confidence in the political leadership that has brought the Afrikaners to where they were.
 And then they said, won't you generals, originally we were six but then only four accepted, won't you generals come in, you know this kind of war, you've been at it, and give us strategic guidance. And this is the way the four generals became involved in this. Now the question as to whether this is not indicative of a war.  For the layman, yes it might look like this, but as I explained earlier on, we've made a study of this kind of war and we know that this kind of war has a military or a violent side but it also has some very important political, psychological and economical sides, and we also used to say that in this kind of war the military side, the violent side can only be about 20% and what we actually say is, far far more important than the military side is the other side. 
 And our knowledge in this regard then convinced us that we should start with the strategic exercise for the Afrikaner people. When I say strategic, I do not say military strategic, I say strategic in the total sense and then we planned, how do we start up the Afrikaner people, how do we get their emotions going and how do we get the cause known and how do we sell the idea of self determination and how do we negotiate this?  Negotiation is part of the strategy and how do we apply a little bit more force and that's the way we started using our force etc.
 So this is the idea of strategic guidance.  In fact if it hadn't been for the knowledge of the strategic importance of the other points of this kind of this kind of war, we might have fallen into the trap of going for a military solution because part of our considerations in this very difficult decision, part of the consideration was the fact that we could win militarily, we had all the might in the world, but the big South Africa had lost because of political resistance to change because of economic isolation, because of psychological collapse and now we were considering with a small group of Afrikaners to start a military operation, and unless we could be sure about the backing of the political, the psychological and the economic actions it might have been foolish to go for this, so that is the way we eventually and maybe that is the knowledge of this kind of war that enabled us to follow the road which I have explained at the beginning of my presentation before I came to dealing with the past.

UNKNOWN: General does that explanation you have just given, the strategic planning and whatever it takes, does it take care of what you said on page 22, paragraph H of your submission, and I'll just quote where you say,
This created an impression inside our community  and also at national level that a war was being planned.
Does your explanation take care of this as well?