Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 1998-02-13

DIRK COETZEE: My private agenda, that's true Mr Chairman, the truth and nothing but the truth ...[intervention]

MR VISSER: No, pardon me ...[intervention]

DIRK COETZEE: Will and shall come out.

MR VISSER: Yes, apart from that.  Your agenda was to attempt to join the ANC?

DIRK COETZEE: I did eventually join Mr Chairman, because they were looking after me in exile, feeding me, boarding me, lodging me and given me protection from onslaughts on my life.

MR VISSER: Yes.  And you saw your future as the chief investigator and prosecutor in the Nuremberg Trials that were going to follow in South Africa, isn't that so?

DIRK COETZEE: I said if that was the only way out, I would like to get into investigating - it's in my manuscript too, because it will be a song, it is so easy to get down to the truth if there is a will to be but you can't get down to the truth if you have applicants like du Plessis in the Harms Commission as chief investigating officers.

MR VISSER: Yes, all right.  In any event the real sinister agenda which I want to come to and which is relevant to this case is this one and that is, Mr Coetzee I put it to you that it can be summed up by the following: "They burnt me and now I'm burning them".

DIRK COETZEE: No, not at all Mr Chairman, I've told the story consistently from 1989 where I've put my role that I played.  I've never falsely accused people on purpose if I - I did not but if I would have done the shooting in a certain incident I implicated myself, I never implicated anyone else.  I told a story of the role everyone played in context and I said the truth.  That is the truth and it will be proven one day to be the truth.

MR VISSER: Is that a good example which you've just mentioned,  if you did the shooting you admitted it?  Where did you do the shooting, in which incident?

DIRK COETZEE: I constantly said - consistently said I've never pulled the trigger ...[intervention]

MR VISSER: Yes, of course.

DIRK COETZEE: And - that's correct Mr Chairman.

MR VISSER: So that's a bad example Mr Coetzee.

DIRK COETZEE: No, that's not a bad example, that is exactly the truth Mr Chairman.  If I did pull the trigger I would ...[intervention]

MR VISSER: Which you did not?

DIRK COETZEE: But I did not.

MR VISSER: Yes, of course but that's a good example.

ADV DE JAGER: But in fact Mr Coetzee, you ordered other people to pull the trigger?

DIRK COETZEE: Not ordered any specific one, there were enough volunteers on each occasion that I recorded just volunteered, grabbed the gun and did the shooting when the word was ...[intervention]

ADV DE JAGER: And you elected the volunteers to go with you on many occasions?

DIRK COETZEE: I elected the men to go with me and they volunteered, that's correct Mr Chairman.

MR VISSER: Yes, and just seeing that we've been side-tracked, this morning I sat here listening to you while you were implicated - as you say: "I can't remember whether it was Paul van Dyk or Koos Vermeulen", implicating people in serious criminal offences at the drop of a hat Mr Coetzee, that's my point I'm making to you.

DIRK COETZEE: Can you just refresh my memory please Mr Visser, on what occasion did I implicate Koos or Paul van Dyk?

MR VISSER: This morning you said in answer to my learned friend
- and I don't want to get bogged down with you Mr Coetzee, the record will speak for itself: "Either Koos Vermeulen or Paul van Dyk, I can't remember whom" implicating them in the Kondile matter.

DIRK COETZEE: No, no, no ...[intervention]

MR VISSER: Or in the Vuzi and Peter matter, I don't care.

DIRK COETZEE: Both of them were present at the Vuzi and Peter killing, Paul van Dyk and Koos Vermeulen Mr Chair.

MR VISSER: Let's follow this up, let's follow this up.  You see, Jan Raath has come to this Commission to make a full disclosure and he has told the members of this Committee that he received an instruction which he decided to obey, which entailed that he left from Port Elizabeth in 1981 together with van Rensburg, du Plessis and Kondile and they went to Bloemfontein and at Bloemfontein they collected the car apparently belonging to the late Mr Hani and he drove that car directly from Bloemfontein in the direction of Barbeton, you heard him say that.

DIRK COETZEE: I wasn't present ...[intervention]

MR VISSER: No you weren't?

DIRK COETZEE: But I'll accept your version.

MR VISSER: Then just as well I repeated it to you fully.  He says and he is supported in that evidence by du Plessis and van Rensburg, that this motorcar was left near Barbeton just off the main road near the border.

DIRK COETZEE: I'll accept that Mr Chairman.

MR VISSER: Yes.  He says that they then all travelled, all four of them - and I've already mentioned which four, travelled to Barbeton where they met you and ...[intervention]

ADV DE JAGER: ...[intervention] to Komatiepoort.

MR VISSER: Thank you Mr Commissioner.
	To Komatiepoort where they met yourself together with a person who Raath says he didn't know but who he later realised must have been Mr Roy Otto.

DIRK COETZEE: That's incorrect.

MR VISSER: That's incorrect.

DIRK COETZEE: That's correct - incorrect.

MR VISSER: And that they followed you in your car with their car to a place in the bush where the events took place.

DIRK COETZEE: They followed Mr Archie Flemmington's men in their vehicle to the point in the bush where myself and Archie Flemmington and Paul van Dyk were already waiting.

MR VISSER: All right.  Now I've put the full story to you and now I want to go back to the car.  Do you have any real ground for objecting to the evidence of Raath that the car was left along the main road near Barbeton near the border?

DIRK COETZEE: I have because that was not what was said to me - that was not what was originally arranged and that was not what was said to me by Nick van Rensburg.

MR VISSER: Yes.  And what you told us - and now you must please listen very carefully and I'm inviting you to qualify anything I say, what you were told by van Rensburg, you were told at the time after you'd arrived in the bush near Komatiepoort where Mr Kondile was going to be eliminated or had been eliminated but at that spot and what you told was this:  arrangements had been made for the car to be taken through - I'm not about this Datsum car, to be taken through the border and parked near the Legogo Holiday Inn, was that correct?

DIRK COETZEE: If you say you don't talk about the Datsun car, can you just please ...[intervention]

MR VISSER: I'm talking about the Datsun car Mr Coetzee.

DIRK COETZEE: Oh yes, yes, sorry I ...[intervention]

MR VISSER: What car did you think I was talking about?

DIRK COETZEE: I thought you said: "I'm not talking about the Datsun car".

CHAIRPERSON: That's what you said Mr Visser.

MR VISSER: ...[inaudible]

CHAIRPERSON: No, no, it was a slip-up.

MR VISSER: And I apologise to you Mr Coetzee.

DIRK COETZEE: I'll accept Mr Chairman.

MR VISSER: Did he then tell you who took the car through?

DIRK COETZEE: That's correct, Chris and Chris Rorich ...[indistinct}

MR VISSER: And he said so to you.

DIRK COETZEE: That's correct.

MR VISSER: You see Mr Coetzee, I want to refer you to your Mauritius statement in Volume 3 at page 28, and I'm going to suggest that this was the time when matters were far fresher in your memory than now 17 years later because at that time it was about eight years later.

DIRK COETZEE: No, Mr Chairman, at that time it was eight years that I hadn't spoken about it, I had no-one to confer with, I hadn't had the luxuries of sitting in hotels discussing with former colleagues all the contents and what happened, so it was vague in my memory if you Mauritius statement in context - not even remembering well-known persons that were close to me, not even their surnames.