Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 2000-11-21

MS ANDERSON: When you say member, it implies a kind of card-carrying member.  When I understand member, I understand member as a person working within a particular unit and reporting to a certain set of structures and I would say no, Mike was not working as an ANC member, reporting to structures.  As a supporter and with the general ANC community, I would say yes, we would consider Mike ANC, in the sense of being supportive, not in a sense of working under discipline in a particular structure.

MR MALAN: Is you measure of membership of the ANC not a very personal one then, by your definition now?

MS ANDERSON: No, I don't think it's person, I think it's practical.  I think that ...(intervention)

MR MALAN: When would a person be working within the structures and when not and then is that the measure for membership, or is there some kind of formal membership?

MS ANDERSON: We worked in quite tight, you could say cells, units, departments.  You had for example Wally working in the cultural section, you had various people working in Intelligence, you had various people working in MK and it was quite tight, the way in which people worked was quite tight, there wasn't just a loose thing of these - these are also - what I would say is these were people who were supporters that you could feel safe with and trust to hang around with, but they were not necessarily carrying out instructions on behalf of the ANC, they were not.

MR MALAN: I'm asking this question, I think you heard Ms Mbethe's evidence where she said:  "We regarded all these people as ANC people."

MS ANDERSON: ANC community.  She was talking about the ANC community.  You are asking specifically, almost like about card-carrying membership of ANC and I'm saying no, I'm saying these were supportive, progressive people whom it was a joy to be around and they were friends, very good friends, but not working in a disciplined way within a unit.

MR MALAN: Okay.  Thank you.

MR BERGER: Ms Anderson, when you talk about people working within the structures, you mean people working either in political or military structures?

MS ANDERSON: Yes.

MR BERGER: And when you say that Mike Hamlyn was not a member of the ANC, you're saying that he was not working within either the political or the military structures of the ANC?

MS ANDERSON: Yes, I'm saying he was a supporter, part of the ANC community, not ANC Cadre as we would say.

CHAIRPERSON: Tell me at the time of his death were you, were the two of you house mates still?

MS ANDERSON: No, I had actually left.  I'd been on a weapons of war charge for about the year before and I'd been acquitted just shortly before the Botswana raid, but for 10 months prior to the raid, I'd been living in another house in Broadhurst and ironically Mike was the only person in Gaberone who knew where I was staying was who was going to be my future husband and the only reason he knew, was I needed my scooter fixed and he came to fix it and because we considered him such a safe person and not involved in anything and we knew he was not going to lead other people or be followed or there was no reason for ultra caution around Mike ever, he was the only person who knew where we stayed.

MR BERGER: What about Uriel prior to the raid?  Was Uriel involved in MK activities?

MS ANDERSON: Uriel was not involved in MK activities.  He became involved in MK after the raid and there's an example of somebody who became militant because of the raid.  Uriel was absolutely not involved, we had actually tried to get him involved at an earlier stage and he wasn't up to it at all and he was again a very, very sympathetic sweet guy to have around.  We knew that constant exposure to MK people could bring him into MK, but he was actually not involved at the time of the raid.

MR BERGER: Did you know Thami Mnyele?

MS ANDERSON: Very well.  I worked with Thami Mnyele and Wally Serotse on the MEDU newsletter, we co-edited it and Thami I think was the gentlest man I've ever met.  The gentlest, sweetest man I've ever met and one of the most brilliant artists.

MR BERGER: And what was he involved in in Gaberone?

MS ANDERSON: Art.  He worked for MEDU and he was dealing with the graphics unit, he was working with Judy ...(indistinct) another artist and they brought art to ordinary people in an extraordinary way.  Thami had this idea that you mustn't go and hang your stuff in galleries so that only rich people can buy it, you must have your art on the streets and when we used to have these discussions around June 1076, the art should be there on the streets for kids to be able to enjoy and sort of understand and relate it to their lives.  It mustn't become something that just gets hung in galleries.  He was a darling, an absolute darling.

MR BERGER: Do you know - well let me ask you this, were any of the people who were killed in this raid, involved in any way in MK activities?

MS ANDERSON: No.  I have no doubt that they were targets, I've heard my name being mentioned as a target in some of the prior things, but the point is they didn't get me, they got other people who were not involved with MK.  It seems to me the most shoddy intelligence work was done and it seems to me as well that there was a cavalier attitude, especially when I heard the evidence of that man Olifant yesterday, I was thinking:  "Good gracious, were these people really responsible for providing information that was going to lead to the deaths of 14 people, including kids ..." ...(intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: What is worse, it was relied upon.

MS ANDERSON: And it was relied upon and that's what so scary and I think what we all realised, those of us who were survivors of the raid, we realised afterwards that there's actually no such thing of I am MK and he was somebody nice who happened to be there and paint, there's just no distinction.  It didn't even matter, you could be in Botswana, have nothing at all to do with South Africa and you could be killed and you could appear in the paper as some sort of PLO agent which is what happened with Geer, it was completely shoddy and cavalier and so careless that wherever we went afterwards, one became frightened to become friends with just normal Zimbabweans, normal English people, because you'd think this person just by brushing with me, might end up as a target, they might get killed and some fantastic, fabulous story is going to appear about this person and what they were doing and suicide squads and it's all utterly made up and a whole country believes it.

MR BERGER: Ms Anderson, coming back to your statement, paragraph 6, you talk about the charge that you faced and you were eventually acquitted and you then moved out of that, why was it that you moved out of the house after your acquittal?

MS ANDERSON: In the court case, it went on for about a year and in the court case they kept mentioning that I had been staying in 2914 Pudulogo Crescent, so obviously as a trained operative, it wouldn't have made sense for me to go and live back again in the house where you know the address had been mentioned, so that is why I moved out and why I'd actually spoken to Mike and said the address has been mentioned here and we should move out and Mike said:  "But why?  I mean why would I be a target?" and I thought yes, true, why, because at that point we actually believed that there was some type of integrity to the SADF's Intelligence, we believed that they were actually targeting proper targets.

CHAIRPERSON: You mean what would be considered acceptable targets?

MS ANDERSON: Acceptable targets, you see, so I mean for Mike and I must say for me and I regret this to this day, but there was this concept of:  yes, but of course, how can Mike be a target, how can he possibly be?

MR BERGER: So you moved out of the house and that was approximately 10 months before the raid?

MS ANDERSON: That's correct.