Special Hearings — Armed Forces Hearings — 1997-10-10

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: So yes communications also would get compromised, and of course it would be the dream of the other side to intercept a communication channel so that they could put in their own communications into it to lure you. The same thing is documented in the case of a person called, I think his student name's Librarian.
 Librarian had similarly infiltrated because one of the communications' mechanisms was to use couriers and Librarian was used by the enemy forces to infiltrate us in a position of couriers.  Again we can talk about the Librarian case because when we tumbled on to the fact that he was an enemy agent, we were able to rescue two comrades from within the country, George Naiker and Ebrahim Ismail and then the enemy, callous as they are with regard to black cannon fodder, because Librarian was an Indian chap, they sent him back to Swaziland and Mozambique to look for what's happened to George and Ebrahim and we were able to lure him from Swaziland into Mozambique and apprehend him and take him to Angola and question him.
 So that pattern is there and communications was a crucial problem, crucial, crucial problem. And that is why when Sipiwe and I came into the country, in that mission sent by President Tambo, we spent 50,000 pounds developing our communication system, and whatever the Stadlers have got to say, they didn't crack it, what they got, what was available decoded on the tapes, but it is those long lines of communication are a guarantee of vulnerability.  
 So the infiltration was not only within us at command level, it was in the communications system, it was on the ground. And interestingly Chairperson, you ought to get Craig Williamson here to ask him about Ben Langa, because he was one who was feeding the information within the country suggesting that Ben Langa was working with the enemy. And he ought to come clean, not just on the theory of his superiors, but what he was doing.

CHAIRPERSON: Advocate Goosen.

MR GOOSEN: Thank you Mr Chairperson.  On a different tack. The point was made earlier by Minister Maharaj I think, about the significance of the January 8 statement as a general statement of policy, and the question really concerns the position articulated at the beginning of, in January 8, 1983 in respect of the necessity to organise democratic forces into a front for national liberation. Now you will know that the question that has often been raised, certainly perspective raised by security forces, is that the United Democratic Front which was initiated during the course of 1983 and established, that that was a front effectively established by the African National Congress, and the question there is whether that in the view of the MK command would be correct as well as whether the UDF would then have been seen as a part of the ANC's overall military strategy
aimed at the seizure of power?

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: Mr Chairperson, besides our statements, yes at times people would read our statement and interpret it in the way their mindset wants to see it.  But again because I was at that time secretary to the underground political structure, there is a video that we sent into this country that people still speak about, Bound to Strike Back, where I was interviewed on the relationship between the ANC and the UDF. That video and articles that we wrote in Sishaba appeared in the Delmas Trial for the defence and even the court accepted that the United Democratic Front was not a rubber stamp or a simple creation of the ANC.  I used the word on the video that there was a symbiotic relationship, now I don't even know the meaning of that word, and I hope none of you are going to ask me for a dictionary, but the question when posed by the security forces is that no matter what we said in our policy statements, they had a mindset where they were incapable of processing what they were reading. They read it with a mindset to see a sinister conspiracy in everything. Detainees Parents Support Committee is created in the country for the legitimate reason that thousands of people are going into detention, they need welfare support. The cases are not reported, the families don't know. From the regime's security forces that's a sinister arm of the SACP and from SACP it's a Moscow arm, from Moscow arm it's led by Colonel Joe Slovo who became a Colonel at the age of 11. That's the mindset and that's a major problem.
 Chairperson if you go to the Mayabuwa Centre, in '94 I donated to the Mayabuwa Centre three volumes of the National Intelligence Service study of me.  It has got the official stamp of NIS, and you will see that they were intercepting every letter coming to me in prison and going out from me from prison, that is once in six months letters.  And they had Carl Edwards sitting and doing a profound study of the implications of each word used in that letter, and what they saw when I called my wife, darling in one letter and sweetheart in the other, they underlined it to say, now who is he referring to?  (General laughter)
 That's the context in which we've got to get to grips with this divide in our country. That the security forces were so sheltered, so protected not only by the law but by their superiors when they broke the law and murdered people, that the regime saw their security forces as their bible and they did not have to prove their assessments. Events were not even sufficient when they contradicted their assessment. They were a total law unto themselves licensed by their political masters. So they read all our statements, whether on the UDF or on anything. 
 They never accepted that what we said in our NEC statements was policy.  They saw that as a conspiracy and read between it that no it's written that way to mislead them. They never understood that we were mobilising our people.
 So that's the framework on the UDF. The UDF was not created by the ANC, the UDF is well documented that comrades on the ground in the Mass Democratic Movement, analysing the problems of this country, saw the need to build a broad front.  
 Yes the January 8 statement of that year had also called for a broad front.  The fact that our analysis coincided did not mean that there was an instruction now to form it or that Cas Saloojee and Alan Boesak who proposed it at a TIC Conference were now stooges of the ANC.  But I can understand how the security forces would ask you that question.

MR GOOSEN: Thank you very much Mr Chairperson.  Mr Chairperson I know that the panel have some matters that you would wish to raise, I have no further matters to raise at this stage thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Mrs Burton.

MARY BURTON: Thank you Chairperson.  I would like to return to my earlier question about the difficulty that we have of drawing dividing lines between trained armed combatants, aware of the risks that they run and of members of the population. Sometimes those people were politically willing to follow the call to action, sometimes they were coerced or maybe intimidated, but in any case,
in many ways they were what you might call, cannon fodder. Have you got any further comments how we as the TRC can draw this distinction and make this finding which we have to make about people who were victims of gross human rights violations?
 Mr Chairperson, Mr Kasrils indicated that he might have some thoughts on the matter, maybe I could address my question to him in the first instance.

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: We just want to understand the question you're grappling with Mr Chairperson.

RONNIE KASRILS: Do you understand the reason, we just really want to have clarity amongst ourselves to try to help on this because we have discussed it earlier.