Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 2000-03-14

CHAIRPERSON: Sorry Mr Bizos, perhaps if I could just ask a question.  I think one of the points that Mr Bizos is getting at is, if you had gone to the owner of the building, not you personally, but if somebody had gone to the owner of the building and said:  "Look, subversive activity is taking place in this building, it's got to be stopped etc., those people shouldn't be allowed in", maybe that would have stopped those groups meeting in the building.  Placing a mine at the building and blowing it up, wouldn't in any way stop the people who used the building, from using another place to have their meetings, so the achievement at the end of the day would be to destroy a building without having any effect on the groups that met there, or very little effect.

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: Chairperson, it is true what you are saying, but such was the whole counter revolutionary and revolutionary war.  That is another matter to me and it was the police's function to do what you have now proposed.  When I had to act, it was not my task to do that, this was outside of my control.  Other structures were responsible for that.

MR LAX: May I interpose?  You say it was the police's function to follow up that thing.  What steps did you take to ensure the police were able to do that?  You had information at your disposal that pointed in a particular direction.  What kind of liaison - you've indicated just before tea that it was possible to get information to them, what steps did you take in that regard?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: By using the Intelligence structures, Chairperson, in other words the information is looked at by the Co-ordinator and the verification and whether they regard it as a problem and what their proposals are and whether it is so that it is indeed being used and by the time it arrives at my desk, it is information where there is consensus with regard to action against it and then I accept that information before me as a collective decision by the Intelligence community, upon which has to be acted operationally and that was the order of the day.

MR LAX: Again I come back to that issue that I was at with you before tea.  Here was  an opportunity, there was a state of emergency in place, you knew who the operators were, you knew where they met, you could have arranged for them to be picked up in terms of the state of emergency.  It would have been a good lesson to them, rather than blowing up any building perhaps.

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: This was with the lower structures of the State machinery.  My function was to destroy it or to disrupt it or that which I have told you, my function was not - then the police, the community, the rest of the Cape structures had to do that, then by the time it is a target for me, I act, because I am a soldier, I am not a diplomat and I am not a police officer.

MR LAX: Yes, but you did have to evaluate your methods.  You don't have to choose an appropriate level, that's what you've told us.

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: Yes, but my overhead mission was to disrupt the enemy and the formal bureaucratic processes which could be used, were given to other elements of the State.  I was not to use them, Chairperson.

MR LAX: Did I understand you correctly to say that:   "The enemy did one thing and then we responded, we did another"?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: In this specific regard what I can recall is that Staal Burger, for example, came back with particulars with regard to a bomb that would explode the following day or sometime afterwards, but soon afterwards and we made our plan from there and our action was to pre-empt their action.  At that stage that was the situation.

GEORGE BIZOS: Did anybody tell you that the reason for the suggestion that it should be blown up is that the people who were using it, had blown something up before the suggestion was made that the building that you say that they were using was planted?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: I am not aware of it.

GEORGE BIZOS: Did anybody tell you anything else as a reason for putting this bomb there?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: No, Chairperson.

GEORGE BIZOS: If anybody had told you that the reason was to let the community know that the premises was used for the storage of arms and that this was not, this should be seen as  ...(indistinct) was to be done that it should be seen, look what happens if you allow people to store arms in your premises, they are going to explode accidentally and blow your building up.  Did anybody tell you that?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: As I understand you now, that is a hypothetical example.  I don't know what I would have done under those circumstances.  I would have made the plan if it was before me.

GEORGE BIZOS: It's not hypothetical, it's the version of one of your co-applicants.

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: That may be so yes.

GEORGE BIZOS: Who is giving an inaccurate account for the reason for the planting of this bomb?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: Chairperson, I have listened to many projects.  If the other applicants put it as such, then it is another factor other than the one how I was motivated, so it is not necessarily incorrect or conflictory.

GEORGE BIZOS: It was a completely unproductive act, Mr Verster.  Would you agree that now on reflection it was a completely unproductive act, or must we go through the various possibilities in order to demonstrate to the Committee that you are not prepared to accept that which is reasonable?  Would you now agree that it was a completely unproductive act?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: Do not interrupt me Mr Bizos.  I do not think it was unproductive.  I think it was part of the larger picture, the war against the threat as we regarded it at that time and it is a point for a long speculation whether it was unproductive or not.

GEORGE BIZOS: The Chairman has already put to you that if it was to stop the people meeting there, the only thing that they had to do is to go to the next shebeen, if that was their inclination, or under the nearest tree, or in the veld, or in someone's house.  Why would they go to plan sabotage, why would they stop committing sabotage because one of the venues was destroyed?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: It was to deliver a message to them.  It was an obvious message to them and it happened back and forth.

GEORGE BIZOS: You were not going to make public that this was an act committed by the CCB or one of its affiliates or the police or anybody else and unless you made that public, it wouldn't have been interpreted as a threat.

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: Uncertainty is a specific technique, so it does not matter, it is internationally known.

GEORGE BIZOS: ;   Well it was not - do you agree that it was not the proper way of giving them notice that you were on their tail, if you were not going to say that you had done it?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: Now you have interrupted me again Mr Bizos.

GEORGE BIZOS: You started answering before I completed my question.  Please wait for my question.

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: That is not so.

GEORGE BIZOS: Now if you had made proper inquiries and you had learned that the Chairman of this Trust was Mr Franklin Son ...(intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: Sorry, Mr Bizos, what Trust is that, the owners?

GEORGE BIZOS: The owners.

CHAIRPERSON: Do you have the name of that Trust?

GEORGE BIZOS: Yes, Mr Chairman, it's called the Foundation for Community Work, that its Chairman was Mr Franklin Son, that that name would have meant anything to you?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: No, Chairperson, I did not know him.