Human Rights Violation Hearings — Bisho — 1996-09-09

PIK BOTHA: It does certainly if we want to put all events in South Africa in proper perspective, say over the past 20 years, we will need a clinical gown analysis of how this tragedy developed.  That's why I called it a dream that turned into a nightmare.  I certainly believed that the original ideas, the original ideas to escape from the lack of a moral base for apartheid and to do so by the creation then of independent states where black people would indeed then be Prime Ministers.  Katie Matanzima once said to me, in other words if I want to escape from apartheid I've got to opt for independence.
 That was unfortunately the position.  That was unfortunately the position and then of course over the years it became clear that not only could it not work because of a lack of a moral basis but because it made no economic sense whatsoever.  
 But then there was also, I must say today here, a very sincere debate in the minds and hearts of many Afrikaners, and I'm one, how to get rid of this.  Maybe we should have moved faster, maybe we should have moved faster yes, and a human being is always inclined to find a scapegoat or to blame someone else.  It is the way we are.
 Even Christ was, you know, almost deceived by Peter when he said look I don't know that man.  It's part of our sinfulness but what I do want to say here today is, where is that perspective because even if you made Ciskei not independent or, and we didn't, there were really elections here, how representative they were is not for me to say, it's not.  But fact even if not a single independent state arose, you would still have had a need to manage the areas, the territories.  
 You would still have needed hospitals, clinics, roads, airports etc.  You would have.  Secondly, but even if you had not a single one, then clashes occurred in the Republic of South Africa. Sharpeville was not due to a, did not take place in the independent black state, it took place in South Africa, in South Africa.
 So I think while I partly agree with Dr Boraine's implication, history, our history is so full of complexities, perplexities, so full of cantorial moral claims, the Afrikaner having been defeated by Britain, his language in danger, poor, scarcely making a living, wishing his Republic, his country, his language restored.  
 It was a wish, desire, and when he obtained it he then forgot his own poverty and his struggle and did not somehow succeeded in seeing the parallel in the black people, in the black communities.  That would have been the historic chance for the Afrikaner to have noticed that comparison, and then to have done for them what the Reddingsdaadbond did for the Afrikaner but somehow tragically it didn't happen and it took a long time before it dawned I think, on the majority of whites that we are busy with something highly immoral in this country which could not be defended.  
 And then the negotiations, thank God, started and they went well.  This is the point I was trying to make.  The negotiations really went well.  I remember so well that first meeting with Mr Mandela and Joe Slovo and Alfred Ntsor in Groote Schuur.
 High hopes - we removed the obstacles, then came the Pretoria Minute, then came the D F Malan Minute, then came CODESSA 1.  It followed one upon the other, the whole world was here.  It was like a major celebration and then we were hit in 92 by that misunderstanding when a heated debate started between Mr Mandela and Mr de Klerk.  
 I myself tried to soothe tempers that day but saw that if tempers are high you better lie low, but be that as it may, there was a disappointment and what I was saying today, Mr Chairperson, was that it is a great pity because between that June and September, between that June and September, go and check the newspaper, was a morbid time in this country.  It was a morbid, dark time.  People were uncertain, selfish,  obdurate   because everyone was blaming everyone, fulminated against each other.  
 Of course in the end, yes Dr Boraine is right but then Van Riebeeck should have stayed in Holland and that would have saved us a lot of other problems but, but he came here and now we must just [indistinct] 
 To conclude, Mr Chairperson, looking back today I think I agree in miracoloco despite, and if then, if this tragedy, if the pain, the price the relatives and friends had to pay for Bisho 7 September, if that contributed towards the understanding eventually reached, maybe at least that would be some consolation to the families and friends.  That that shook the country.  
 It shook the leadership, I believe, of all the major parties.  It indicated to us, look we better get together, we better start to resolve our difficulties and go to the ballot box to get a new future for South Africa, but in the end yes.   A last, just a last word, it wasn't really, Dr Boraine, that easy.  Please believe me, when President Mangope built a power station, I think he spent 30 or 40 million on it.  When I asked to see him and discuss it with him and pointed to him that that power could never be fed into the grid, into the South African grid because it is too expensive.
 It would have been ten times more expensive.  Then his reply to me was look I'm very sorry, my Parliament is sovereign and I voted it and he said then to me look I don't know whether your government will not one day turn against me and cut my power and in that case I would have my own power.  
 He revealed his thoughts and ironically I was the man who had to fly to him to depose him in the end.  It was not that easy, believe me it was not that easy.  When President Mepepu was inaugurated in Venda that evening and he pulled out the wrong speech, the speech he had to make the afternoon, he used his evening speech in the afternoon and I then said to Dr Hartzenberg as we were queuing up to get our tickets for going to the stadium, I said to him this won't go, it won't work.

CHAIRPERSON: Order please!

PIK BOTHA: It won't work, I knew at that time a little bit of Foreign Affairs, it was my whole life.  I spent my whole life in it and [indistinct]

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.  I mean there is just one question that I will allow before I make a small remark.  Some of my colleagues are looking, I have to do this, we will discuss it afterwards.  Dr Ramashala?

UNKNOWN: Mr Botha, thank you very much.  My question is a two part question and the first part is a follow-up from Dr Boraine's question.  In order to deal with this question I would like you not to refer to your papers.  I would like you not to refer to events, strategies, tactics, activities.
 I would like you to speak from the heart, to speak from the heart in relation to this 33 year period, that is the mandate of the Commission.  To speak from the heart because the Bisho massacre was not an isolated event.  
 It was part of a pathway of policy making and decision making, and because you were part of the decision making process, I'd like to get a sense of you about the state of mind, and when I say 'you'  I'm talking about the royal you.  The state of mind in the decision making process that culminated in Bisho and other Bisho's after that.  Just, just from the heart, and then after you've done that I'd like you to share your thinking with us about where we go from here.  
 We have a divided nation not only divided across racial lines, but divided within its communities.  We Would like to get the benefit of your thinking about how this nation, in your opinion, is going to reconcile with itself and ultimately heal itself.  Thank you sir.