Special Hearings — Political Party Recalls — UNKNOWN

MR VALLY: The NWC would be the National Working Committee. Was it ever any requirement that there would be legally trained people on this tribunal, this ad hoc - we are now talking about ad hoc tribunals, the first tribunal you had?

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: I don't think that the '82 had a legal representative to defend those who were brought to book.
I need to just go on to one other matter. The '81 discovery of the incursion into our ranks, was actually information that quite shocked us as well, as to the degree of that incursion. For example, the leader had been found out for activities that he had conducted, not only in Angola, but he had been intercepted and found out at a point where we were considering sending him home. Other members of his group, when they heard that we had picked up this particular individual, fled Lusaka. One of them, if I recall, went as far as Botswana, and we had no powers to simply arrest a person in Botswana. We had to lure him back. These people were being assembled as they began to talk, in different parts of Africa, and we were busy taking them - we then took the decision to then send them to Angola. It is in that context that we had to address this particular problem of '82, on an ad hoc basis.
I can now say for certainty, as I am recalling the events, and looking at the number of people that were arrested in different parts of Africa, that at least two members of the Revolutionary Council, in addition to anybody else from the working committee, were sent to that tribunal.

MR VALLY: What were the rights of the accused at these ad hoc tribunals?

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: On an ad hoc basis the accused were confronted with the information that we had gathered. As I say, the one who had fled, who I knew personally, certainly made his confession on the plane from Luanda, from Lusaka to Luanda, to his escort. When he realised that the game was up, he immediately began to speak freely on the plane, giving information as to his activities and his contacts.
So they were confronted with that information and they were given the opportunity to explain the events and the information that they had transmitted.
In fact, one of the leaders actually had a tape recording in his possession that he had made of discussions that had taken place in one of our transit houses in Lusaka. So that was part of the evidence, tangible material evidence, together with their confessions that they were confronted with.

MR VALLY: What I am talking about is generally the rights of the accused. We are talking about 22 executions. Some of them were potential or alleged infiltrators. Other people who were party to the mutiny. Generally, besides being told what the charges against them were, did they have a right to someone defending them and did in fact anyone defend them?

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: I think, Chairperson, we need to be, to separate the 1982 incident. The majority of the names on this list are 1982. They are more than half. 1984 has a number and 1985. Our supplementary submission today, the page that Mr Vally has referred me to, specifically says in 1984 a tribunal was constituted. 1982, what I am saying to the best of my recollection, we made no provision for legal defence of the accused. What we did, was to present them with their confessions, the material evidence, for example, including things like one of them caught with a stack of airplane tickets. All this was put to them and they were given the opportunity to explain. This was the first major incursion I must emphasise. So therefore, I don't believe that we had yet reached the point where tribunals as a mechanism, where the mechanisms of the rights of the accused were gone into in detail as we did by 1984.

MR VALLY: There is enough evidence before us to suggest that - sorry, maybe I should preface this question with the following question.
The people who were responsible for convening the tribunal and for gathering the evidence, was the Department of Intelligence and Security, would that be correct?

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: No. The people who constituted the tribunals would be the National Working Committee, which is the body in-between sessions of the National Executive, that is in overall charge. It would do so in consultation with the Revolutionary Council, which was the body charged with the conduct of the struggle at home, which was the body charged with the training of cadres, which was the body where the underground political heads and the military structures sat together. So the National Working Committee would constitute that.

MR VALLY: Who would gather the evidence of the charges?

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: The evidence would have been collected first and foremost in 1982 by the national intelligence and security department.

MR VALLY: I see it is also commonly referred to as NAT, N-A-T. Maybe I should do so, unless it creates problems for you, Mr Chair.

CHAIRPERSON: I am not quite sure what people think as they listen on radio, I think that there might be a confusion. There are NATS and Nats.

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: We took that title, that abbreviation for political reasons. MR

VALLY: The head of the department of intelligence and security was Mr Mzwai Poliso.

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: That is correct.

MR VALLY: So the evidence placed before this ad hoc tribunal, would be the evidence gathered by Mr Poliso's department.

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: Maybe, yes.

MR VALLY: It may?

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: Mainly it would - I say primarily from the intelligence and security section, but access to home information as to what was happening, would come also from the military structures and the political structures.

MR VALLY: I say this because I am looking at the Skewiya Commission of Inquiry, which is the annexure to the first report, on page 21, specifically where Mr Poliso, and I am looking at the last paragraph, the second sentence - the third sentence, I beg your pardon.
"Mr Poliso candidly admitted his personal participation in the beating of suspects in 1981. A plot to assassinate certain ANC members had been uncovered and suspects were interrogated over a period of two weeks. These suspects were beaten on the soles of their feet in Mr Poliso's presence. The soles of the feet were specially chosen, according to Mr Poliso, because other parts of the body `easily rupture'. Mr Poliso justified this treatment on the basis that he wanted information and he wanted it in his words, `at any cost'."
So could you trust the confessions obtained by Mr Poliso and his department?