Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 2000-11-19

UNKNOWN: He was an ex officio Chairman, who was supposed to rubber stamp, but on some of the evidence he wasn't asked to rubber stamp so I don't think that, I would submit that Basson doesn't really escape the criticism.
	Then we've already made the paragraph 85.  I don't want to read it.  There was no political zeal.  We've already canvassed that.  We'll go to the next matter, Mr Chairman and you may find some inspiration on the writer of the anonymous slogan t-shirt.

CHAIRPERSON: It's like airline food as well, also an oxymoron, n-o.

UNKNOWN: Yes, especially if you do it as regularly as you do it.  Now this is on the basis on which they operate.  The ground level operatives would be asked to justify the truth of an allegation made about the victims.  Being unable to do so, the Committee would be told that this information was sent upstairs somewhere, where it was verified.  Verster and Webb were asked to justify the truth of the allegations relied on, to justify decisions to eliminate, would tell us that we must ask people at the ground level where they obtained this information.  Whenever the ground level operative denied that he was a source of the so-called intelligence, the Committee were then told that the information must have come via the intelligence system.  This evidential ping-pong match, I would submit, had the end result that the truth or otherwise of the allegations made about the victims, could never be tested.  It is submitted that the applicants should not be allowed to derive the benefit of the doubt which results from this process.  It is the applicants who are seeking amnesty.  They had made certain claims about the victims in order to justify their own decisions.  If the applicants claim that the CCB decided to eliminate Omar or members of the Q-Town Youth because the CCB had evidence that these people were terrorists, or because they had evidence of Gavin Evans's links with Grosskopf, then insofar as the victims dispute these allegations, it is the applicant who must produce evidence to support their allegations.  The Committee, it is respectfully submitted, cannot make findings in favour of the applicants on the basis of "evidence", which amounts to no more than the applicants saying:  "I can't justify what I say, you can't test the truth of what I say, but someone out there would probably justify what I have to say, but I can't tell you who."
	The effect of this is rather bizarre, Mr Chair, because we have heard some very quaint reasons for killing, that Adv Omar was counselling the leading terrorism case.  Now once it is given, it is a fact of which apparently was considered of relevance.  Who was it, who are we to judge for that Judgment?  Was that enough?  He was Chairman of Lawyer for Human Rights, which he wasn't.  In fact the Chairman of the Lawyer for Human Rights at the time was, if I remember correctly, George Brodie and before that Mr Justice Kriegler, when he was still a member of the Bar.  Now were they potential victims?  It had a Council of eight originally, some of them leading members of the Bar who are now judges on the Constitutional Court and Senior counsel in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, were they victims?  Who - what responsibility was there?   And in relation to motive and in relation to circumstance and in relation to proportionality, they do not square up, Mr Chairman.
	Then we want to deal on page 46 with the next question, which we deal with.  We quote Gen Webb's evidence:
"The only case during my time was the Athlone Bomb incident."
R30 000 000, international tentacles, provincial responsibilities of Co-ordinators and the Chairman of the CCB tells us that's all I was consulted about.  Now if we are to believe that, then if we believe that then we can believe anything, but he's not alone.  Section 20(2) provides that:
"Whenever a particular offence is an act association with a political objective, decided with reference to criteria which include the motive, the context, proportionality."

MR LAX: That must obviously be a mistake, it should be 20(3).

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.
TAPE TURNED OFF

UNKNOWN: Crimes planned or executed by the CCB outside the borders of the RSA in the period 98 or 99 and crimes planned or executed by the CCB within the Borders of the RSA in the same period.  The applicants have, with their own evidence, made it abundantly clear that the Committee has not been placed in a position to have regard to the full conspectus of facts relevant to the assessment of the factors listed in 20(3) Mr Chairman.  We have noted context is one, as we have noted, context is one of the considerations referred to in the Act.  Context surely concerns the overall activities of the CCB.  These activities were the context in which the offences for which amnesties are sought, were planned and executed.  The applicants have acknowledged this in a way in which the applications have been drafted.  All that - they have decided only to disclose those facts pertaining to context which happened to suite their version.  The context that suites their version, Mr Chairman to give us the mechanics of how things were done, and that sort of thing.  The Act also refers to proportionality.  Proportionality involves comparison, as far as for example the applications of Verster and Webb are concerned, it will certainly impact on the Committee's assessment of the proportionality of their conduct, were the Committee to know that for example, there was undisclosed evidence which showed the following, that apart from a few minor incidents, these applicants disclose they were in addition and at the same time responsible for the death of ten or twenty or fifty or a hundred other people and which explained why those other victims were targeted, which explained whether the victims were targeted as military targets or civilian targets, were they UDF or ANC or ECC or NUSAS, or AZAPO, so that we can see what the parameters of this conspiracy were.  It is submitted that it cannot be seriously suggested that the fact that Webb and Verster authorised the poisoning of water holes at refugee camps, is irrelevant to an assessment of their entitlement to amnesty.
	The relevance and importance of evidence concerned in the full extent of the conspiracy, is emphasised by the Applicant's own testimony.  Verster's evidence was that the CCB activities were mainly outside the RSA.  He also said that Region 6's activities were only a drop on the CCB's activities.  We know that there were ten regions, the CCB 89 budget was approximately R30 000 000, that the CCB had between 170 and 200 projects of which half were offensive in nature.  It is also no argument to say that only South African operations were relevant to these proceedings, because Region 6 only operated in the Republic.  The evidence is that Region 6 was also being used externally and Basson's evidence is quoted.  In fact Maree has almost exclusively been working outside the Republic and Basson, the Region 6 Co-ordinator, was involved in various operations in South Africa, Maree's quote.  
"Basson also testified that the Region 6 had other members who weren't applying for amnesty because they worked externally."

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Bizos, I don't think it necessary to read the whole thing because we're going to be running out of time because there's also Mr Hockey and then the replies.

UNKNOWN: Yes, Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: We've read it but if you could just perhaps stress the points you want to.