Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 2000-06-22

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: What is that?

MR KAHANOVITZ: You've told us that one of the reasons that Mr Evans ...(intervention)

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: I didn't say that was one of the reasons, I said he was the Chairman of the ECC.

MR KAHANOVITZ: But when you gave your evidence ...(intervention)

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: And the objectives of the ECC, were you familiar with those, the End Conscription Campaign?

MR KAHANOVITZ: Your lawyer, yesterday in chief, when you turned to the Evans matter he was leading you and you set out various factors that, I was certainly under the impression, that you'd taken into account in deciding to target Mr Evans which is why you were referring to those factors.  You gave evidence that you'd received information that he was Chairman of the ECC, you then gave evidence as to what you thought the role of the ECC was, you went on to say that he was involved in Five Freedoms Forum and JODAC, what was the purpose of that evidence?

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: To confirm his involvement with the front organisation of the enemies of the State.

MR KAHANOVITZ: But you're telling us that's not the reason why you decided to assassinate him.

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: Yes, those are the reasons why he became a target.

MR KAHANOVITZ: So therefore, because he was the Chairman of the ECC was one of the reasons why he became a target, on your version.

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: That's the way you're putting it, I'm saying it was one of the reasons and I believed he was the Chairperson, although I can't deny the fact that he might not have been.

MR KAHANOVITZ: All I'm putting to you is that one of your members could have gone to any number of End Conscription Campaign meetings and established for themselves who were in leadership positions on the End Conscription Campaign.

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: Or read the papers.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Would you care to comment on how it's possible that you get this information wrong?

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: It came from the information and Intelligence structures.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Well I'm also putting it to you that at the time that you say that Mr Evans was involved in planting bombs in collaboration with Mr Grosskopff, in the first place he'd never met Mr Grosskopff, in the second place he wasn't planting bombs, nor was he involved in any military activities against the apartheid State.  You're not in a position to dispute that?

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: No.

MR LAX: May I just ask something?  What were the strong indications that you refer to here?  You say there were strong indications that the said Evans and the said Grosskopff were involved?

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: That was based on the information which we got from the information structures.  Now you have a certain amount of trust that you place in your information schedules or channels to the extent that you believe that it is verified information and not unqualified information.

MR LAX: Ja but you see this doesn't say he was involved, it doesn't say he was involved, it just says there were strong indications that he was involved.

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: That's correct.

MR LAX: So even on your own evidence it was a supposition, it's not direct information that says he's definitely involved in this, therefore eliminate him, there are just indications, however strong.

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: The statement reads strong indications.  Once again it was written in 1991 and the indications were the information and intelligence which I had at my disposal.

MR LAX: The point I'm just trying to ask you is really, were there actually strong indications or is this just another indication of how you were trying to make sure that you could cover up sufficiently well for the CCB and the military by having reasonable cause, a reasonable causa to kill this man?

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: I can only say that the intelligence didn't come from my side, it came from the structures and ...(intervention)

MR LAX: I'm not interested in where it came from, you understand, the thrust of my question is this, you've already told us that you lied about the involvement of the police and the consideration that the police, you couldn't use them to prosecute the man.  That therefore is setting a basis for why you went on to some other sort of action against him, correct?

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: Yes.

MR LAX: Similarly, these strong indications that he was involved in bombings is another reason why you could then take action against him, right?

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: Yes, it is a reason.

MR LAX: And it sort of justifies your action in a sense.

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: Yes.

MR LAX: And what I'm asking you, is this - if this is absolutely untrue and from what we're hearing Mr Evans denies this in its totality that he ever was involved in any such thing, is this not another part of you chaps at that time trying to show yourselves in a good light by justifying your actions?

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: No, Mr Lax.  I understand your question to be saying that we tried to condone or justify our conduct and acts, but the intelligence came from the structures to us, so we simply reacted to that intelligence.  We reacted to the fact that he formed part of the infrastructure of the ANC and that by means or via the ECC, whether he was the chairperson or not, he undermined the image and the morale of the force and that made him a target.

MR LAX: You see you can't tell us a single indication.  I understand it's a long time ago, but at least one connection maybe you might have still remembered, one indication that he was strongly involved.

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: No.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Mr Burger, if we forget about your foreign targets, if we look at your South African targets and I'm going to take you, or potential targets, I'm going to take you through at a later stage, a list of names of other people, what strikes one is that you don't talk about having targeted Mr So-and-so, who was involved in Umkhonto weSizwe and you'd had information from a spy that had in MK that this person was a person who was trained in Czechoslovakia and so on and so forth, those aren't the kind of targets you were interested in, correct?

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: Yes.

MR KAHANOVITZ: The kind of people that you were interested in were people who were broadly speaking involved in opposition politics in the extra parliamentaries here, UDF, ECC, Five Freedoms Forum and so on, Laurie Nathan, Jay Naidoo, Essa Moosa, Andrew Boraine, Anton Roskam.

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: I only know about Roskam.

MR KAHANOVITZ: The point I'm trying to make to you is that you seem to have had a target list where, to become a CCB target, it was good enough to be someone who was involved in a high profile manner in one or other organisation which you had identified as being part of the enemy.

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: That's correct.

MR KAHANOVITZ: It didn't matter whether there was any evidence which linked you to bombings or shootings or anything to do with military activity.

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: From this aspect, or from the target?

MR KAHANOVITZ: Yes, in order to be targeted, there didn't have to be evidence.

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: No.

MR KAHANOVITZ: That you were involved in military activities, correct?

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: That's correct.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Yes, when you come to attempting to justify your decision to, for example target Mr Evans, what you endeavour to do is to falsely link him to bombing in order, or to Mr Grosskopff, or to some or other form of violent activities, in order to justify your decision to eliminate him.

DANIEL F DU TOIT BURGER: Yes, that is your opinion, Mr Kahanovitz, but that was the information at my disposal.