Amnesty Hearings — Benoni — 1997-06-23

UNKNOWN: We have an application to make to the Committee Mr Chairperson for a postponement.  You are no doubt in receipt of an affidavit filed by us setting out the reasons and a lengthier document from the applicants' representatives headed "Heads of Argument", indicating that they will oppose that application.
	Before proceeding with the application and as a necessary preliminary step, in view of what the applicants say in what they call Heads of Argument suggesting that we are really seeking time to no good purpose, I consider it our duty to put before the Committee what it is that we intend trying to prove before you in order that you may more reasonably assess what they say and weigh it against what we have to say as to why this postponement is required by us.
	First of all there are no pleadings in this case and therefore it will be necessary for us to indicate to you what we believe the main issues are going to be in order to motivate the application for a postponement.
	There are four main grounds which we want to inform you, Mr Chairperson and members of the Committee, on the basis on which you will be asked to refuse this application.
	The first is that the applicants did not make full disclosure either at the trial where they were convicted, or in their amnesty applications, more particularly in relation to the role played by others, and more particularly Mrs Derby-Lewis.  We will show that her evidence at that trial was false, and that the instructions given by the applicants to their Counsel to put questions to her were based on an untruthful version.
	The second ground is that they did not act on behalf of or on the order of any known political organisation.  And that we will show by the production of documents, if need be oral evidence, that they falsely allege that they acted on behalf of the Conservative Party.  Indeed evidence will be led that the leaders of the Conservative Party distanced themselves from the killing perpetrated by the two applicants.
	The third ground is that their admitted motive was to create chaos.  This makes, we will submit, having regard to what happened, and having regard to the efforts that the leadership of the ANC, the South African Communist Party, COSATU, and many other men and women of good will, from preventing the chaos that came about as the result of the assassination of the late Chris Hani.  And for someone to kill a leader of an organisation who was at the time actively engaged in the reconciliation process in order to bring about a democratic election and a democratic South Africa is completely disproportionate to the objective which they wanted to achieve.
	In their most recent amendment they introduce another ground, no doubt picked up, we will submit eventually, from other applications that it was in order to kill military targets.  So the introduction, we submit, that the late Chris Hani was a military target and that is why they chose to assassinate him, is false, partially because the assassination took place after the suspension of the armed struggle and during the period of negotiations that were well-advanced at that time.
	Those are the issues which we believe will be the main issues and other subsidiary reasons as to why amnesty should not be granted.
	Mr Chairperson and members of the Committee, the documents put by the applicants before you consist, in the main, from cuttings from Die Patriot and the letters of one Ada Parker.  There is evidence in the documents themselves and evidence will have to be led, that this is a circular position that the wife of the first applicant, Mr Derby-Lewis, was in fact the author of many of the articles that have been put before the Committee and this attempt to pull oneself up by one's own shoestrings is hardly admissible, but evidence will have to be led in relation to what the correct position was.
	Now I want to turn to the affidavit that we have filed in support of the application for a postponement.  In paragraph 3 Mrs Caroline Nicholls says,
"I have been instructed by Mrs Hani to apply for a postponement as she has to go to the United States for personal reasons and will be unavailable for the hearing".
There are, however, further reasons.  
	Let me deal with this reason.  Much is made in the applicants' heads of argument that Mrs Hani does not give details of what her personal reasons are.  Mrs Hani is leaving for the United States this evening.  She is in the auditorium.  I would strongly urge the Committee, because there are so many cogent grounds why a postponement is to be granted, that Mrs Hani should not have to explain publicly the reason, the personal reason for which she has to go to America where her daughter is.  Her husband's murder plays heavily on her and her children and her attitude to the applicants and indeed this process, is, with respect, somewhat ambivalent.  It's a great mental shock for her.  	She is the head of the Parliamentary Committee in relation to Prisons and the Committee was invited to America to go in April of this year.  For reasons that she, or anyone else could not foresee, that meeting or that trip for the purposes of gaining information for the purposes of the legislature, was postponed in April to this time.  She is booked to leave this evening.  Her daughter is anxiously awaiting her arrival in the United States.  
	The question may well be, well she doesn't have to be present, which is an attitude taken by the applicants.  It may be that if this was a claim for a paltry sum of money or some other civil case nobody could say that she is entitled as of right to a postponement, but where human emotions are involved, admittedly brought about by the two applicants, one would have expected a little more generosity in their so-called heads of argument, in relation to the position of Mrs Hani.  We will leave that aspect there Mr Chairperson.

JUDGE WILSON: You know that she wrote a letter to us giving her reasons for wanting an adjournment?