Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — UNKNOWN

JUDGE WILSON: But he stopped working in the Security Police in 1990.  He was transferred back to Murder and Robbery where you've told us he was an outstanding policeman.

MS KOTZE: Can I use the example of somebody that's being sexually molested as a child.  People very often will block out their experience or they will come and sit with you and tell you that they don't even remember positive things about their childhood because they block out the negative experiences.  Then at the age of 20 or 15 or 39 I've had them, women and men at all ages, who will then come and sit and then they have a breakdown and then I will diagnose them as suffering from post-traumatic stress because they have all the symptoms.  They have flashbacks, they have nightmares, when they eventually start, when that thing breaks, when that boil breaks to the fore those are things that happened years and years ago and yet at that moment something just a little bit extra, some sort of element of stress just causes them to break down and they become unable to function as human beings for a while, and it's a long process where you have to build them up again.  So I don't know if that comparison maybe answers your question.

SISI KHAMPEPE: In that Ms Kotze are you able to give an approximation of when did the excess stress set in insofar as Mr Benzien is concerned?

MS KOTZE: Can you repeat that sorry I didn't hear you very well.

SISI KHAMPEPE: Are you able to approximate the period when the excess stress can be said to have set in, in Mr Benzien's case?

MS KOTZE: I have to answer that in different phases for you again.  First of all as I said before I cannot tell you the exact onset of when his stress initially became abnormal.  Secondly I think all the court cases etc that he was involved in also took their toll.  And thirdly, yes I agree with all of you who have questioned me on that, that these proceedings, these hearings, definitely compounded his stress and I think gave him the final breakdown. But it was not the reason for his stress, it's not the sole reason, it was just the last straw that broke the camel's back. I don't know if I answer your question if I do it like that.

SISI KHAMPEPE: It does go to answering my problem.  The other aspect which I wanted to canvas with you is whether during your consultation with Mr Benzien he did give you the information that he usually volunteered the performance of the difficult tasks of the Detective Unit that he was attached to, did he give you that kind of information?

MS KOTZE: He did not tell me that he volunteered, he told me that he was given orders.

ADV DE JAGER: May I ask you, he testified here, I can't recall the first date but it was about a month ago, six weeks ago he testified here, that's Mr Benzien, at the stage when he was giving his evidence would you say that at that stage he was sick in the way that you have diagnosed him as being sick or ill?

MS KOTZE: Yes at that stage I would have regarded him as very ill.  I would say that at that stage he was as seriously ill or disturbed as I've diagnosed him here in the report.

ADV DE JAGER: I think it's relevant that we know what his condition was when he testified here before us and not what his condition was a year or ten years ago.

MS KOTZE: His condition whilst testifying for you was that he was extremely tense, most of the symptoms described in the report were present in a serious degree.

ADV DE JAGER: It may also be that, if I may use the word "sick", you must understand it in that sense, that the cause of the sickness was actually his own doing as a result of deeds which he committed himself?

MS KOTZE: Yes deeds committed by himself but he justified it for himself, as I have said in my report somewhere, I said that he felt that the reasons why he was doing it actually justified the methods because he believed he was saving his country from serious terrorist threats.  He believed he was protecting people from bombs in shopping centres etc.

ADV DE JAGER: It may have been his initial position but later on his conscience bothered him.

MS KOTZE: His conscience always bothered him.  I know that, or I am convinced that at some stages he actually suppressed his conscience but as with sexual - children who are sexually molested these things actually do surface at some stage I think ...(intervention)

ADV DE JAGER: And that caused a point where he broke down and brought him to the situation where he is today?

MS KOTZE: Yes also with the additional stress of knowing that once he testifies everybody, including his wife and children, would know what he had actually done.  That additional stress actually broke his back.

ADV DE JAGER: Something else which I would like to know is this, does one try to do away with the unpleasant things in your past by means of your subconscious?

MS KOTZE: I think a person's mind is such that you actually have a saturation point and you can only absorb so much information because it is unpleasant and then it gets blocked out.  It's a human tendency to deal with something which you have done wrong or something that is unpleasant so you then rather forget about it, especially if you feel guilty about it.

ADV DE JAGER: Is that your diagnosis of what happened in his case, that he actually was sweeping these aside, these things that he wanted to block out?

MS KOTZE: Yes that's the way I see it.

ADV DE JAGER: Thank you.

MR DONAN: Thank you.  Did he tell you that during 1989 Mr Yengeni and Mr Kruser had taken steps to lay charges against him for crimes against humanity?

MS KOTZE: Yes we spoke about that.

MR DONAN: And did he expect to be prosecuted for that?

MS KOTZE: He didn't know because the vagueness of all the proceedings, he was uncertain about that.

MR DONAN: But he remembered those events clearly?

MS KOTZE: He didn't give me a lot of detail on that.

MR DONAN: I don't want you to give detail on my next question, but what was it that he said to you that he'd done?  Can you put it under a general heading and when he told you he'd done it.

MS KOTZE: What are you talking about?

MR DONAN: Well you said that he had done, he told you that he had done certain things which he found hard to express, what is it that he'd done?  Because we've been talking in this Committee about what he's applying ...(intervention)

MS KOTZE: He tortured people.

MR DONAN: And when did he torture people?

MS KOTZE: When he wanted information out of them.

MR DONAN: When he was in the Security Police or when he was in Murder and Robbery?

MS KOTZE: Not when he was in Murder and Robbery, when he was in the Security Branch.

MR DONAN: And he told you then that he left the Security Branch on the 1st of June 1990 and that he was the commanding officer at Stanford Police Station from the 1st of January 1993 to March 1994?

MS KOTZE: Yes I cannot verify the dates immediately with you because I haven't got it in front of me, but it sounds correct.

MR DONAN: Approximately.  And was he at Stanford when he started seeing you or when his wife started seeing you?

MS KOTZE: No that was after they came back.

MR DONAN: So they were already back.

MS KOTZE: Ja.  They were living in Brackenfell when she came to see me.

MR DONAN: Now you talked about these symptoms of flashbacks, was there any evidence of this, any information to that effect that he gave you?

MS KOTZE: He told me that he - first of all what he suffered most from was he suffered from intense nightmares, with contents relating to interrogation of people.  And he did tell me that he had a few times when he actually sat on his verandah or outside, having a cigarette outside, when he had flashbacks and that he broke out into tears and had an emotional upset because of that.  Because he said to me that it felt like he was there again, like he was in that circumstances again, and I considered that a valid description of a flashback.