Amnesty Hearings — Johannesburg — 1998-05-06

ABOOBAKER ISMAIL: Mr Chairperson and Honourable Member, the Morogoro reiterated again the centrality of the struggle.  We had the Wankie campaigns and by that time the SADF had been actively also involved in assisting the Rhodesian regime and the military increasingly was identified as targets.
	As one went forward and we came to the period of 1976 with the shooting of innocent school children protesting against the use of apartheid in Soweto, the ANC from then on made it absolutely clear that the police and the SADF were legitimate targets.  In fact by 1978/'79 there had been a number of deliberate attacks against police stations in the Soweto area and also in the white areas, in Booysens for instance where policemen were injured or killed.
	So already then the thrust of it was there that enemy personnel, police, defence force members, were legitimate targets and from then on all of the training we received, the instructions we received, were to target enemy personnel with the Mandate given to us by the ANC.
	And in discussions with comrade Slovo we said we had gone through attacking the oil refineries, we had attacked the power stations, we had carried out other attacks, we had attacked Voortrekkerhoogte.  And the feeling was, we needed to really make the enemy security forces bleed.  They were very callous in their treatment of the civilian population in the country, especially the black civilian population.
	One understand the way in which they may have dealt with MK cadres.  Matola we understand, yes we were living in a residence, we didn't have a base in Mozambique but we understood that but we then said we have to make it quite clear, they could not think they could go on doing what they wanted to any which way and that they who had the guns were the only ones that could shoot.
	Because until then, if you looked at the struggle, was it yielding the kind of results.  The ANC statements all point to the need to show the people that the enemy bled.  We had to show the racist regime that they would not go unchallenged.  We had to make them bleed and that is what we intended to do.

UNKNOWN: Let me get to the heart of my question where I was actually leading to, is that you have been questioned at length about the Church Street bomb in 1983, that you had for instance reconnoitred the place and identified the headquarters of the military, would I be right thusfar?

ABOOBAKER ISMAIL: Yes, that we had reconnaissance done.

UNKNOWN: And you realised that at approximately 16H00 to 16H30, these personnel of the military would getting out of the building to board busses and that would be the ideal time to hit at them, would I be correct?

ABOOBAKER ISMAIL: Yes, our reconnaissance indicated that from 16H15 to, for about the next 20 to 25 minutes military personnel were there in large numbers.

UNKNOWN: And you were obviously aware whilst you did that that there were shops surrounding the area and that kind of thing.

ABOOBAKER ISMAIL: Yes, we were.

UNKNOWN: But did you make headcount for instance that the personnel from the building, Nedbank building which housed the military, those people were more than the civilians surrounding that building?  Did you have that kind of information or did your interest just centre around the military headquarters?

ABOOBAKER ISMAIL: Well, the reports were that the military were concentrated in a particular area, a point, the endeavour was to get the vehicle to that point or as close as possible to that point and that is what we wanted to strike.
	There is also another matter that one needs to consider and perhaps one doesn't have that information, but look at the seriousness of the injuries that were caused because if we simply perform a headcount, you then say there are 100 and you could have 90 superficial injuries and 10 serious injuries but let us also check, where were those serious injuries occurring?  
	And I would suggest to you it would be amongst the uniformed personnel because the reports, the initial reports were such that we were absolutely convinced that that was a successful operation against airforce  personnel.  Yes, that there were some civilian casualties but it seemed as though it was, that the civilian casualties were not as heavy as the military casualties.

UNKNOWN: Now still being on the question of civilians, let's go to Sasol 1 and this would come out from your interview with the people who wrote the report which counsel for the victims has referred to, Mr Visser.
	That we say that that inferno was the highest ever experienced in the country and reports were that people nearby had to flee because it was so devastating that they were not even sure of their safety.  But it doesn't end there, it says even people a few kilometres away would feel the heat because it went hundreds and hundreds of metres high.  Wouldn't that endanger civilians lives because that was not a target, the target was just to hit the hub of the then regime?

ABOOBAKER ISMAIL: Mr Chairperson, the target, what you described is correct, that once fuel ignites and burns it burns at a very high temperature but people that worked in there know that there is a danger of further explosions etc., and that very little could be done about bringing that fire under control.
	In fact, what happened is they allowed it to burn out.  What they tried to do was make sure that they cooled the rest of the area in order to contain where the fire was burning but people were to have left that area.  The danger always existed that others could be injured etc., but again here we ask ourselves a question. 	At every point, anywhere you go, in any walk in life, you can go to a military base and you'll find civilians working in there, does that mean therefore you cannot hit that target?  The moment you put an installation and you identify that installation, you accept that that is something you will target and hit.

UNKNOWN: Accepting the question that it would be virtually impossibly actually to say it would have any -to use your words, military organisation to work without civilians but let's concentrate again on this Sasol 1 and say we look at it.  There's a township there and predominantly black, Zamdele.  I'm referring to those people, did you take the risk of the inferno towards those people?

ABOOBAKER ISMAIL: Mr Chairperson, that was considered and it was felt that that was far away enough because the immediate conflagration would be with the fuel, with fuel burning.  We did not think that there was a danger to the civilian population in that area.  We would not have taken the risk to hit at - or if we felt that civilians in the area could have got hurt, especially if they were outside of the target itself.

UNKNOWN: Thank you Mr Chairman, I've got no further questions.

CHAIRPERSON: Doctor Tsotsi, do you have any questions?

DR TSOTSI: No questions.
NO QUESTIONS BY DR TSOTSI

CHAIRPERSON: Judge Pillay?

JUDGE PILLAY: Mr Ismail, it seems to me that during all these plans that the President OR took a particular interest in the activities of MK and the special unit, does it follow then that everything that was done by the special unit carried the political approval of the African National Congress?