Human Rights Violation Hearings — Bisho — 1996-11-19

MR POTGIETER: Thank you Mr Sandi.  Can I just clarify something Colonel Nel.  You said that you were a member of the Ciskeian Intelligence Service until that was disbanded, and then you stayed behind in Ciskei, you and Mr Swanepoel.

UNKNOWN: Correct.

MR POTGIETER: And I assume you then formed the Ciskeian
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Military Intelligence?

UNKNOWN: Mr Chair if you can allow me just one minute to elaborate a little bit on the situation what existed at that stage.

MR POTGIETER: Certainly.

UNKNOWN: When I was recruited by Anton Nieuwoudt in May 1991 I was recruited to work for the National Intelligence Service of the Ciskei.  From Bophuthatswana I came to the Ciskei and I was appointed them in Ciskei Intelligence Service.  That organisation existed before I arrived there.  At the same time I arrived there in May, end of May, there was a Ciskei Military Intelligence Service which was under Colonel Gerry Hugo.  That was part of the Ciskei Defence Force.  Because I had no National Intelligence background at that stage we were detached from Ciskei Intelligence Service to the Military Intelligence, myself and Mr Swanepoel.  We worked with Colonel Hugo to help him put up a system.  There is a long tragic incident that happened there, that resulted in Colonel Hugo leaving the Ciskei for Transkei, later being charged for the theft of money, and he left the Ciskei and the Military Intelligence of the CDF was without a head.
 At the same time Colonel Hugo exposed a number of things about the Ciskei Intelligence Service in the press which I learnt about in the press, it was in July/August 1991.  This was in fact a month and a half after I arrived there.  At that stage it became a controversial organisation, a lot of it was written in the Press about it and people from Pretoria came down to close this unit down.  It dragged on from August until the end of October when this organisation, after it almost ended in a legal debate and a 
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court case, it was closed down.  So Ciskei Defence Force Intelligence was without a head and Ciskei Intelligence Services was closed down.  So General Ulshig who was then a Brigadier in charge of the Ciskei Defence Force went to the Head of State, asked him whether he could keep myself and Mr Swanepoel behind because we are not part of any problem that will implicate, or implications about the Ciskei Intelligence Service, whether we could stay behind and get the Ciskei Intelligence in the Military, Military Intelligence off the ground.  This was agreed upon.  We were appointed in the Ciskei Defence Force as contractual members, at a much reduced salary and we continued to get the Ciskei Defence Force off the ground that year.

MR POTGIETER: Thank you.  Would you just explain again, did you say that International Researchers was a banking account?

UNKNOWN: Ja the name International Research was in fact the name of the - if you run covert operations you sometimes register a company but it is just a dormant company to be able to do transactions with if you don't want to let your intelligence connotations be known, and the name International Research was in fact the name of the company that was registered to handle their financial transactions, but they were officially, I think in terms of the decree for their formation called the Ciskei Intelligence Service, the CIS.

MR POTGIETER: So that was a front company that was used for the activities of the Ciskei Intelligence Services?

UNKNOWN: Correct, that was a bank account that was kept in Standard Bank Bisho to, when they received money from the Ciskei Government they would pay it into that
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account and then whenever they have to pay people's salaries or whatever financial transactions, contracts, the house that they rented as an office they would pay it through that bank account.

MR POTGIETER: But what covert operations did the Ciskei Intelligence Service engage in, in order to want to register a company International Research as a front?

UNKNOWN: Mr Chair the operations of Ciskei Intelligence Service or International Research was unknown to me, but I would like to answer that, I wouldn't like to hold any information back, I learnt everything about this basically in the press, and what I detected in conversations with other people.  How any National Intelligence Organisation, NIA or SAS that's operating today as part of the legitimate government, I am sure if you do investigation there you will find the same practice, that in the collection of intelligence or information we work on a more-or-less a percentage that 80% of all information is overtly available, that you can get without using agents and sources.  But there is about a 10 to 20% percentage of information that you need to obtain, that information is only known to a small number of people, and for you to obtain that information you have to get somebody from that group to provide you with that information, or you have to get somebody into that group to provide you with that information.  Now you cannot take somebody with a defence force ID card in his pocket and that is known in a defence force to do that kind of work.  What is generally referred to is to "afdekking"(?), I don't know what the English word is, "bedek".

MR POTGIETER: Ja.
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UNKNOWN: To make the activities of that person appear to be non-military, non-intelligence, and then to get him to have freedom to work in an environment where he can get information.

MR POTGIETER: So was it for that purpose, was it for the purpose of getting that 10, 20% information via informers...

UNKNOWN: Yes.

MR POTGIETER: ...that this front company was registered?

UNKNOWN: I presume in this case it was like that.  The operations that I knew in the past, yes, that is how you perform covert operations.  If you want to register your vehicles you can't do it in a way that if somebody goes to the Traffic Department and does a traffic check on you and finds it's a Defence Force vehicle.

MR POTGIETER: Ja you are concealing the fact that this operation is linked to the Military Intelligence or any Intelligence.

UNKNOWN: Ja.

MR POTGIETER: Now covert operations, were those operations within the boundaries of the Ciskei or did they exceed those boundaries?

UNKNOWN: Mr Chair are you specifically referring now to the Ciskei Intelligence Service operations?

MR POTGIETER: Ja I am talking about International Researchers and the CIS.

UNKNOWN: Okay.  What I learnt about the operations from discussions and what I read is that their operations were in fact relating to the state security of the Ciskei, on the four legs of the military threat, the political threat, the socio-economic threat, so that if that threat originated from outside the Ciskei I presume they had the
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mandate to go and follow that up.

BONGANI FINCA: Thank you Chairperson for allowing me this interpolation.  If it was a Ciskeian covert operation why did the SADF officers come down to come and close it down?  What was the relationship?