Human Rights Violation Hearings — Bisho — 1996-09-09

CHAIRPERSON: Are there any questions?  Dumisa Ntsebeza?

UNKNOWN: I just wish to again thank you Deputy Minister, for also the Commission to get not only a first-hand report, but to get a perspective and I daresay from the position of the investigative unit which had a background.  We now are going to have a fair sense of balance and I would therefore like for the sake of the record just to make sure that we are going about our facts correctly.
 When the Pickhard Commission met or set, is it your evidence that you were not called or you did not participate in that Commission so that your perspective can be given.  That's now the first question.
 The second question, also for the record, just for us to, because there are certain sections that I want to put to you as to what their conclusions were but I would like to know as a matter of record, historical record, that these conclusions, either about yourself and your conduct or about others, were done by judges, judiciary judges, some of whom are being respected and being banded about as examples of what judiciaries should be.  But I'm keen to find out whether as a matter of historical record, it is your testimony under oath that when Goldstone also had a Commission and conducted this Commission of enquiry against the background of what you had said, where media, speculations about your particular role and when as a consequence thereof, he made not only certain findings about your conduct which were not flattering, but he actually called on the ANC to censure you, because I'm going to ask whether that was done and if it was not done, why was it not done etc. but is it so that your evidence under oath is that those conclusions were made by that judge without you ever having been given an opportunity to be heard.  I just want for record.

RONNIE KASRILS: Yes Advocate Ntsebeza that is the case.  I received no invitation or notification from either Pickhard or Goldstone whatsoever.  I've got no idea whether Goldstone discussed with the ANC, whether they should have anybody there but I don't think so.

UNKNOWN: Well to me it is immaterial but I'm not making a judgement now.  I don't think it is material for me whether he should have had a discussion.  I think the issue is whether a judge, let alone a judge who conducts a Commission of that nature and who then who comes with recommendations and findings, can do so at a time when the person about whom he makes adverse findings has not been given an opportunity to be heard.  I think to me, that's the bottom line.

RONNIE KASRILS: Well that is exactly what happened.  I read about this in the press.

UNKNOWN: Now I don't know whether you are in a position to ask then, to answer then the further question, and the further question is  Are you aware if, according to the Goldstone Commission report, the ANC were aware that they were supposed to publicly censure you and other ANC leaders and if so, when was this done?  If you were publicly censured by them, when was this done?  If not, why not?

RONNIE KASRILS: This was recommended.  The ANC was well aware of it and I was, we received the Goldstone reports.  The ANC discussed it at a meeting and it was decided that they would not censure me because the ANC did not feel that it was necessary that I should be censured.

UNKNOWN: Now one last question.  Maybe you've heard that Mr Botha referred to a visit to the Ciskei Council of State by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Schoeman, on the 28th August 1992.  Now I don't know whether you have had access to some Minutes of that meeting because somewhere you do express a desire for you personally, to know what must have been going on in the minds of the foot soldiers and you are asking the Commission to also find out whether the conspiracy theory can be sustained because it does appear from the evidence, and from all the objective circumstances, that there was this wide gap, whether it was as a consequence of incompetence or a planned design, but there was that route that was open and we have to look into the conspiracy theory.
 But there are Minutes dubbed confidential which the investigation unit here has had access to.  I don't know whether you have had access to the meetings.

RONNIE KASRILS: No, No.

UNKNOWN: You  know it's very interesting to find that at that meeting, what might happen on the day of the march was discussed towards the end and one person who was present at that meeting was a certain gentleman called Mr Webb.  I think he was a Minister of Justice then and there was another Minister called Mr Keyser.  Now they took the view that they are so, in fact Keyser says here -  another point is that the people tend to think of the brigadier as a dictator, 5% of our budget is spent on security forces who are so thin on the ground that if those people  [those people are yourselves on the 7th]  if those people get in here to Bisho we would not know how to handle them and thousands of civil servants are sitting there crumbling in their offices.
 What is going to happen then if it comes from all sides?  Our security forces won't be adequate on the ground.  Now do you think if we were to look just as this as somewhat, do you think that it could have constituted sufficient reason for them, just the fear of being unseated by popular demand, that that was sufficient for them as a Council of State to have drummed into the heads of the soldiers that if those people come in here, you'll be lynched.  If that was the thinking that they were prepared in a meeting to convey to Schoeman.

RONNIE KASRILS: Well it's, I find it a little bit hard to speculate because one was not even sure whether what they're saying, let's say to Schoeman, is an actual situation or were they trying to use it as a reason to justify the fact that they're saying we can't agree.  I think they're basically using it to say we can't agree to allow anybody to come in and simply have a march because this was being done throughout South Africa.  We went to the Union Buildings with about 150,000 people on the 4th August with Madiba.
 It was the biggest ever demonstration in South Africa.  Not a street light, not a window was broken in Pretoria.  We were doing that in the klein dorpe as well.  Small dorps, small towns, big cities and what I would say is that they were just outright petrified of the democratic voice.  If we had come into Bisho, and we were in the CBD, and we wanted to stay there and we felt that, like a strike, we were going to sit down and a type of sit-in and hope this would build up pressure.  But we are human beings, we wouldn't have been able to sit there for weeks on end starving.
 We, that's why we thought maybe 24 hours.  Some of us thought maybe we could string it out to two/three days and anybody reasoning this would have realised that the marchers would have been in the CBD and as elsewhere 24/48 hours later, we would have succeeded in making our point and we would have had to have gone off.  We wouldn't have been able to break down the doors and the windows and take over Gqozo's throne and Ministry of Justice.
 They still had the guns and we were without arms.  So if there was going to be any change, it would have had to have been a velvet change like in the former East Germany and Lifesig and these places, or Czechoslovakia or so.  Certainly not Tinamin Square where the tanks came in.  This was a little like Tinamin Square because they opened fire at us in the same way.

UNKNOWN: But is it the sort of thing that you think could have been fed in the minds of young soldiers by, for instance a conniving Gqozo who was protecting his position?