Special Hearings — State Security Council Hearings — UNKNOWN

ADRIAAN VLOK: I can understand what the problem is.  I can see and understand the Commission's problem in that you say you used words like these and people died as a result.  Now I can't take it any further than saying that's what we intended, we never gave a direct instruction, that was ten years ago, we couldn't have foreseen that we would have to come and explain these words and phrases. The fact of the matter is things went awry and if you're saying that you say that a person was arrested and he then died, well things were never linked up in that way.  We gave a general instruction that for instance the position in the Eastern Cape should be normalised and there are thousands of people involved in the Eastern Cape and in the process somebody died and you would then receive a report on that person.  But you never brought those two together, I never saw the lists of people detained in the Eastern Cape.

CHAIRPERSON: Alex Boraine.

UNKNOWN: Thank you.  Mr Vlok let me try and sum it up this way.  We've heard from a number of people, very senior people who had hugh responsibilities, state presidents, ministers, generals, some, not all, who've said that really and truly we never gave instructions, it was never discussed, we didn't know about this illegal method to oppose the enemy.  On the other hand we're getting a lot of people, many more who are operatives who say of course they knew, referring to the generals or to the politicians. They just chose to close their eyes.  One person said it so strongly that even a lawyer tried to intervene because he said the reaction of generals, he was talking about now, not politicians, just makes me sick, makes me voel naar, not angry I just feel sick at the whole thing, they've dumped us, they've dumped us. Now the same people in many instances were getting medals, getting praised, getting rewarded for the good work that they had done.  We question the politicians again and the generals and what they're really saying, and what you seem to be saying, but correct me if I'm wrong, that they led us up the garden path.  We didn't know that they were doing these things, they misunderstood us, ja we may have used the language but really that's not what we meant, so in other words they defied you as minister, they defied the generals if the generals are to be believed, and these captains and colonels and brigadiers and a few others killed many many people, because I mean you know some of them come and talk about forty, fifty, sixty people in one amnesty application and so on. So they're actually, either they defied you as minister and government and were a law unto themselves, or there were just a few instances which I think has now been disproved, it's no longer a handful of operatives or a few bad apples.  Just too many, I mean we can't cope as an amnesty committee, that's how bad it's been.  And in Vlakplaas, to sum it up, and I'm nearly done, there seemed to be a pattern of taking people into custody, sometimes holding them in legitimate jails but sometimes taking them out of jails, now I'm talking about testimony before the Commission, not our ideas, their confessions if you like, as signing them out as being let free but actually being taken immediately back into custody, taken to a safe house, there questioned, there tortured according to them and then when they didn't get the results of that vital information which you referred to early which was so important, they killed them.
 Now it's our experience that this is widespread, that we go to small towns as a Commission, not big cities and huge townships or the whole of the Eastern Cape, and without exception people talk about torture, not as an accident or I was carried away or, but almost as part of a systematic approach.  That's what we're getting and what we're finding so difficult to understand is, how it is that senior people in charge with daily intelligence reports I understand, or let's call it weekly if I'm wrong on that, but certainly an enormous amount of intelligence, these things are happening, people in the community are saying, we know who did this, it was the police who did it or it was the security police, they now have been proved right, but you didn't know that and the generals, some of them didn't know it. What was going on, I mean were they running the show or did you really know and preferred not to know?

ADRIAAN VLOK: Dr Boraine is formulating it as beautifully as it was formulated in parliament and it's difficult to answer this question, but I'll try and put it this way.  He's now also referring to something which Mr Goosen touched on and that is that you become involved in or what he's describing is a situation on the ground, operational situation which you become involved in on the ground.
 Now let me start with the minister in this situation.  He's not aware of all these events or incidents and he never gets to hear of them unless perhaps there's a report in the newspaper in which it is reported that something's happened.  His communication line or channel is to ask the Commissioner of Police what is the situation, please give me a report, give me the facts?  And we have now heard that the Commissioner has said, but I was also not informed, I also received simply what was sent through the channels to me, there was simply no other system. We had no other way in which we could find out what the true facts were and in all the reports which found it's way to my desk over all the years regarding actions against people, detentions of people etc, there wasn't a single case in which it was said that we tortured the man he gave us the information. Never ever from these quarters did we receive the information that people were tortured before information was obtained, so I couldn't know about it. These disappearances, I ask what has happened to these people, there were many excuses.  For instances this person was taken out of the country, the ANC saw him as a traitor and could have perhaps have part of STRATCOM's operations. So that is the kind of information which found it's way to the minister and that which found it's way to the generals table, well I'm not aware of what that was, but I accept that often the full and true facts also didn't reach him but in the line of command, he decided what he would then give to the minister and the minister was dependent on that. That's why I'm saying today that there could have been these cases where these things actually happened of which I was not aware and I'm very sorry about that and I'm apologising for that, it was a mistake, we could have done better, we could have implemented better systems to ensure that it didn't happen.  I will concede that wholeheartedly, we could have asked more questions, we could have dug deeper and perhaps said that the commissioners shouldn't just inform me, there should be other systems to obtain the necessary information. I think  that's what's happening in the country at the moment, that there are other channels and independent bodies to do certain investigations but in the old South Africa, that's not the way it worked, it was a mistake and it left the door open for doing the kinds of things for which we have to account for today and I'm sorry for that.

MR GOOSEN: Mr Chairperson could I follow that up?

CHAIRPERSON: Okay.

MR GOOSEN: Thank you very much.

ADRIAAN VLOK: Chairperson it's not fair, he has had a rest now he's going to ask me tricky questions.

MR GOOSEN: You will be pleased to know that it's a ...(intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: I will allow Wynand also but you could put your question and then let's allow Wynand.