Amnesty Hearings — Pretoria — UNKNOWN

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: Afterwards I found out about other members but we never had any contact with each other, it's only in extreme cases that two cells would have contact.

MR STEENKAMP: How many people in your cell?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: Two and later a third person joined.

MR STEENKAMP: If you had to give an estimate, how big was this organisation?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: I don't know, my force number was 31, I don't know how many were before me and how many after me.

MR STEENKAMP: You say that your purpose was to kill black political leaders and in your evidence you also said that you also planned leaders of the National Party.  Is that correct?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: Yes.

MR STEENKAMP: Could you explain to me how that would have contributed to the achieving the aims and political objectives of The Order of Death, the killing of leaders of the National Party or the governing party as well as the ANC members?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: I grew up with the perception that for instance the ANC, if they committed lot's of violence, the government yielded to their demands and that if you were not prepared to commit violence then they simply ignored you.

MR STEENKAMP: The actual question is, how would the killing of a national leader, National Party or ANC leader, how would that achieve you objective in obtaining a Volkstaat?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: Well we would have placed them under political pressure to yield to our demands.

MR STEENKAMP: Did you consider any other options or was that the only option?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: I don't think there were any other options available at the time.  As I've already said, my peoples ideals and striving for a Volkstaat, being suffocated and suppressed, it's only now in the '94 elections that some measure of consideration was given to an idea of a Volkstaat and how it was to be implemented but before that it was simply ignored and the National Party gave it no attention whatsoever.

MR STEENKAMP: Am I correct in saying that nobody supported you except for the members of The Order of Death itself, you didn't act of behalf of any other group?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: Yes we did.

MR STEENKAMP: Who were they?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: I said that our initiative was originally an AWB initiative from Terre'blanche and the CP were definitely involved as well, or that was the information conveyed to me.

MR STEENKAMP: What I don't understand is the fact that you've made this confession and there you say, or you say that this confession was incorrect?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: The Section 29 statement was to mislead as much as possible and to protect as many of my comrades as possible.

MR STEENKAMP: And the statement in your plea of guilty in court what about that?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: I am guilty.

MR STEENKAMP: Yes but is it the truth that what you said there?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: Yes except where I still tried to protect this Fanie Goosen person who was my co-accused.  I was trying to help him to be acquitted in court.

MR STEENKAMP: In other words you didn't tell the full truth there?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: If you can look at the start of the court record the statement is made that we accept responsibility for certain acts and it is spelt out there that Fanie Goosen was involved in the murder.  When we later realised there was a possibility that he would be acquitted I helped him to go free.

MR STEENKAMP: Am I understanding you correctly - the confession was a lie and your statement in court was also half truth?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: Yes.

MR STEENKAMP: If you lied in your confession and to a certain extent lied to the court when you pleaded guilty, can I ask you why must we believe you today?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: Well I did it to protect my comrades and to let them go free because it was part of my duty to try to get as many of my comrades as possible to be acquitted, part of the struggle.

MR STEENKAMP: The point which I'm trying to make is - if you look at your Amnesty Application - it's interesting that you don't mention these people, you don't mention Goosen, you don't mention this Binneman person, are you - please give me a chance to finish - isn't it so that you, in your Amnesty Application, you're trying to protect these people once again?  That's the impression I'm getting.

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: I didn't mention their names, then I would have protected them but I am mentioning their names, I'm not protecting them any more.

MR STEENKAMP: No but I'm referring to your Amnesty Application itself, the written application form.  Unless I'm mistaken, you nowhere refer to Goosen in your Amnesty Application?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: What I understood in terms of an Amnesty Application was that I had to ask for amnesty for the things which I did.  It's only here that I'm obliged to actually mention names and who was involved in the finer details.

MR STEENKAMP: But would you agree that the impression that has been created or the impression that I'm getting is that by means of your Amnesty Application you're once again trying to protect certain people who were involved in these crimes?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: No, I'm not protecting anybody today.

MR STEENKAMP: What I also want to ask you is something which I find interesting - I'm a little a bit in the dark on one point.  You were involved in four or five organisations, am I correct?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: Yes - or no.  Yes you wanted to say?

MR STEENKAMP: Could you tell me, who did you regard as the leader who gave you your orders?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: Dawie de Beer.

MR STEENKAMP: What status did he have?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: He was the leader.

MR STEENKAMP: Of what?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: The Order of Death.

MR STEENKAMP: Did you know that?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: Yes.

MR STEENKAMP: Did you know him beforehand?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: Yes.

MR STEENKAMP: How did you know him?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: I met him in the AWB.  He was the administrative head of Aquillo.

MR STEENKAMP: In you confession you said and also in your Amnesty Application you said that you did not benefit from the robbery personally but today you say you did get money, R900?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: Well we used it for our expenses.   If I wanted to make money, I would have committed many more robberies, I definitely wouldn't have resigned my job if money was my motivating factor.

MR STEENKAMP: Just to refresh your memory I would like to refer to page 3 paragraph (d) of your Amnesty Application.  Please have a look at that.  You say there "the robbery was to be committed to boost our organisation's finances."

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: Well that is what it amounted to basically it's just a way to put it more officially.

MR STEENKAMP: The point I'm trying to make is, that you would agree with me, that that differs radically from what you said in your confession and also what you said to the court.

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: What I said in my Section 29 statement it does differ from that radically, definitely.

MR STEENKAMP: The question is, that fact doesn't protect anybody, what you said in your confession, that does not protect anybody - why does that differ so radically from what you said today?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: What they wanted to do with Section 29 was in respect of the five of us who were all arrested together - they wanted to charge us jointly for all the things for which I'm now serving a sentence and then they came to me and said Binneman, specifically said, that we should not allow them to do it in this way and that the only way to prevent that happening so that we - and to minimise the number of people that were going to be convicted, was to just twist my statement in that way, to exculpate them.