Amnesty Hearings — Durban — 1999-08-20

MR WILLS: As I understand from your description of what could loosely be described as your indoctrination, this must have been not just a disappointment, this might have been quite a fundamental blow to your very attitude as regards policing in the area?  It must have affected you deeply, in other words.

H J P BOTHA: Chairperson, if one had looked at what became known as Vula and what the objectives were and one recalls the time period of 1983, from the time I arrived in Durban, of acts of terror and people who were killed and injured and maimed and one looks at the objective of this operation which aimed at national resistance and more people would be killed, but the politicians were negotiating the country away, that is the impression that I received.

MR WILLS: You were very upset, understandably.

CHAIRPERSON: Well you put it to him that he was disappointed, that's how you formulated your question to him and he's agreed with that.  Are you going to take it a little further?

MR WILLS: I do, I do, thank you Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: Beyond being merely disappointed.

MR WILLS: You were very upset?

CHAIRPERSON: You were upset because of all the pain and trouble that had been taken in arresting these chaps and in the context of what was threatened by them, they were not to be prosecuted.

MR WILLS: Yes, that's exactly my point, Mr Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: Alright let's carry on I think we've covered that ground.

H J P BOTHA: Yes, that was the feeling Chairperson.

MR WILLS: Now you arrived back on the afternoon of the 13th and am I correct in that you were more or less living at the safe-house in Verulam at that stage, so you would have left the airport and gone directly back to the safe-house?

H J P BOTHA: That's correct, Chairperson.

MR WILLS: And you would have left Mr Steyn, he would have gone his own way?

H J P BOTHA: Correct.

MR WILLS: And when you arrived at the safe-house, you again met with Ndaba?

H J P BOTHA: Correct, Chairperson.

MR WILLS: And this is where you found him in this distraught state?

H J P BOTHA: That's correct.

MR WILLS: And you further - you then take a decision to eliminate him on the 14th?

MR VISSER: That wasn't the evidence, Mr Chairman.  It's clear from page 51 that that wasn't, paragraph 51 that that wasn't it, there was a meeting the next day, Mr Chairman.

MR WILLS: Yes, I ...(intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: I think you are skipping.

MR WILLS: I will go through all the evidence, I'm not denying, it's inconsequential to me that, I'm not denying that, I'm just wanting to know, I realise that other people were involved.  Sorry, if I, I'm not trying to mislead you, I'm trying to get to the bottom of this.  I realise that there were possibly other people involved.  That is your evidence.  I realise what your evidence is but when was that decision to eliminate taken?  That's what I want to know.

H J P BOTHA: Is the question with regard to Shabalala and Ndaba or, because I've already testified that the idea formulated with me with regard to Shabalala at an earlier date and with regard to Ndaba it was more specific.  After I had returned from Pretoria.

MR WILLS: Sorry, let's just for clarity, I can't remember that.  When was the decision made in relation to Shabalala?

H J P BOTHA: It was much earlier.  I think it was around the 10th.

MR WILLS: And Ndaba, on your return from Pretoria?

H J P BOTHA: Yes.

MR WILLS: The afternoon of the 13th, after you'd seen Ndaba?

H J P BOTHA: Yes.

MR WILLS: Now, you indicated in your viva voce evidence, which is basically your second statement yesterday that prior to you coming to this decision, Gen Steyn was not so much expressly but tacitly aware of this decision before the elimination occurred and that was as a result of the meeting which your counsel referred to, I think of the morning of the 14th.

H J P BOTHA: And earlier, that's correct, Chairperson.

MR WILLS: Yes, there was a whole build-up that you discussed with Gen Steyn about the possibility of this occurring?

H J P BOTHA: That's correct.

MR WILLS: Now what I find strange is that why didn't you discuss this with Zen de Beer?

H J P BOTHA: Chairperson, Zen de Beer was the investigating official of this Investigative Unit.  Firstly nobody else besides myself, du Preez, Wasserman and van der Westhuizen knew of these two people in my presence.

MR WILLS: So again what you were trying to do was to hide this murder from other people in the Security Forces?

H J P BOTHA: That is correct.

MR WILLS: So you couldn't have been acting within the scope and instructions of your duties in the police if you're hiding this from the very people who have been appointed to oversee this operation.

H J P BOTHA: The investigating team which had been put together and Gen Steyn will be able to testify about that in broad detail, that was all a scam.  They had to do a full investigation.  Gen Steyn told me that there would be no investigation.  The investigating team and Zen de Beer himself, didn't know this.  They didn't know that there wasn't to be any prosecution.  They worked full-out as if they were going to prosecute those people and each and every member of that investigating team knew...

MR LAX: Sorry, that there wouldn't be a prosecution?

H J P BOTHA: No.  they knew or they were of the impression that there was going to be a prosecution and they did a complete investigation.

MR LAX: Thank you.

MR WILLS: What I'm concentrating on and please, please correct me if my assessment of your evidence is incorrect, my understanding of your testimony, from reading your affidavits, is to the effect that you and Gen, sorry Col Steyn, flew to Pretoria to get instructions.  You got instructions.  One of them was that de Beer was to head up this investigation.

H J P BOTHA: Yes.

MR WILLS: That instruction was given at a meeting where the third most senior person in the Security Branch was present?

H J P BOTHA: Yes.

MR WILLS: Well, I want an explanation as to what made you feel justified in acting out of those instructions?

H J P BOTHA: In respect of what?

MR WILLS: The fact that you didn't discuss the matter with de Beer, you didn't even include him in any decisions.  You ignored him completely.

H J P BOTHA: In respect of what Chairperson?  de Beer's instruction as the head of the investigating team?

MR WILLS: No, in respect of your killing of the two detainees.

CHAIRPERSON: In respect of his decision to kill.

MR WILLS: In respect of your decision to kill and in respect of the actual actus reus, the actual murder of these two individuals.

H J P BOTHA: Chairperson, it was my decision and it was my carrying out of that action and I didn't notify de Beer or anybody else about that.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.  Can you just enlighten me?  What was the main purpose of this investigative team of de Beer's?  What were they to investigate?  Were they to investigate all those that had been picked up, the 14 odd people who had been picked up and to investigate how they should be prosecuted or was it to investigate something beyond that?

H J P BOTHA: The purpose of the investigation was to expose Operation Vula as fully as possible and in order to do that you had to have a full police investigation and if the members involved in that investigation were doing their work in a half-hearted fashion, they wouldn't perhaps have put in the same effort and consequently they were not told of the fact that all their hard work would amount to nothing in the end and that there would be no prosecution.

MR WILLS: So what you're wanting the Committee to believe is that the, despite the fact that there is this extreme high profile instruction, an order is given to this matter, that those were all just basically a con and that that wasn't really the real direction that the police were going to take?