Amnesty Hearings — Pretoria — UNKNOWN

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Mr Chairman, the reason why I tried to get it out, was to convey the message as to why the deed had been perpetrated as a part of achieving the objective which I planned to achieve with the deed.

GEORGE BIZOS: Yes.  Now I want to deal with the objective that you set out immediately before you wrote  "For God, my people, my country".  It is headed "The Objectives of the Attack" and if we can down to paragraph 5.
"The objectives of the attack: in the hope that the attack would activate Afrikaner leaders into united action, to save their fatherland and their people."
Did you write that?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: I wrote that, Mr Chairman, yes.

GEORGE BIZOS: Implicit in this objective is your knowledge that the leaders of the Afrikaners needed to be shown the way as to how they were to save their people. Is it not?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: It was the suggestion, Mr Chairman, yes.

GEORGE BIZOS: So that you committed murder in order that the Afrikaner leaders may wake up in order to save their people?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

GEORGE BIZOS: You therefore knew that the Afrikaner leaders, including your own Dr Treurnicht, Dr Hartzenberg and all the other Afrikaner leaders, were asleep and were not prepared to use assassination for the purposes of saving their people?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: That is not correct, Mr Chairman.

GEORGE BIZOS: Well, if they woke up, what did you expect them to do as a result of you murdering Chris Hani?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: It wasn't to do with waking up, Mr Chairman, it was to bring the seriousness of the situation home as hard as possible and Mr Chairman, the sequence of events which occurred after the assassination, confirmed that my assessment of the situation was right.

GEORGE BIZOS: We will come to that, but please answer the question fully. What did you expect them to do as a result of the example taken by you, by murdering Chris Hani?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: I expected them  ... (intervention).

CHAIRPERSON: The direction, what did you expect the leaders, not the rank and file or others.

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Yes, yes. I expected the leaders to forget about the divisions of the past, which were so prevalent in Afrikaner circles, and to come together as a result of the seriousness of the situation, to see what their future action would be, and that happened.

GEORGE BIZOS: Now let us deal with the Afrikaner leaders. I think that you missed the point made by the Chairman, with respect.  What did you expect the leaders to do, and you told us that you would have hoped that they would unite and see how - what did you expect the leaders to do as a result of your giving them an example by murdering Chris Hani?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: I expected them, Mr Chairman to mobilise the people and to step into the vacuum which was created by this chaos.

GEORGE BIZOS: Let me see.  First of all, can you please tell us on what page of your amnesty application we can find the, you disclosing that this as formulated in paragraph 5, was one of the objectives?  Is it in you - is it in your application?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Mr Chairman, it is not in my application, but it became very clear to me after the comments by a member of the Committee regarding the admissibility or the usability of Section 29 evidence, that I was in a situation where I had to declare whatever I could and I had to bring everything - everything possible to the attention of this Committee.  And I must apologise, Mr Chairman. I can understand that I may have even done it too extensively, but this matter to me, Mr Chairman, is of so serious a nature, and I am so really ignorant and was ignorant up to the time that Judge Ngoepe brought that to my attention, that I realised then that if - I must now come up - give every detail regarding the whole thing. I was not under that impression for the - in terms of the application that it had to be on that application, because I knew I was going to be given a hearing, Mr Chairman.

GEORGE BIZOS: Well, Mr Derby-Lewis, the heading of your document "The objectives of the attack", are a summary in effect of the direct question on the form, are they not?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: If I can just get the ...

GEORGE BIZOS: Yes, have a look at page 23.
(Laughter)    - of Bundle A - page 23, Bundle A, question 10(a).  Will you read out the heading, please?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Which heading, Mr Chairman?

GEORGE BIZOS: Page 23, let me - let's get on.

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Yes, I have got it.

GEORGE BIZOS: I will read it.  10(a)
"State political objectives sought to be achieved:  go back to E11.
		The objective of the attack: ..."
So you applied your mind at the time that you wrote Exhibit E11, what the objective is, is that correct?  That you were called upon to - not called upon, you decided to say what the objective is, is that correct?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Well, Mr Chairman, I believe that in putting the last sentence in
"Thus my obtaining an illegal weapon and passing it on to Mr Walus, was a deed committed within the counter-revolutionary and resistance climate at the time.  We all wanted to stop the coming into power of an ANC/SACP government"

GEORGE BIZOS: Please, Mr ...

MR DERBY-LEWIS: "...and that would help us."

GEORGE BIZOS: Please, Mr Derby-Lewis. The question is that the form asked you to state the political objective.

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Yes.

GEORGE BIZOS: You state the political objective under the heading of the objective of the attack on the 30th of the 4th 1993, paragraph 5, you state the political objective.

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Yes.

GEORGE BIZOS: That political objective does not appear in your application although in answer to it, you give us a long story from page 23, right up to page 26.  Why was that political objective not disclosed to the Amnesty Committee when you filled in your form?

MR DERBY-LEWIS: Because I, that document  ... (intervention).

BERNARD MAKGABO NGOEPE: Sorry to interrupt.  Mr Bizos, is this really a fair question?  The - what appears in E11, paragraph 5, is a method of achieving a political objective, and can't it be said that by framing in broad terms, the political objective in the application form, that already encompasses almost everything, and I mean, in an application form an applicant can hardly be expected to set out every method he will employ to achieve the political objective.  (Applause).

GEORGE BIZOS: Thanks, Judge, but this is not a person who just fills in a form.  He wrote from page 23 to page 26 the reasons why he did it.

BERNARD MAKGABO NGOEPE: I appreciate that, but I have difficulties in understanding E11, paragraph 5 as a totally new and independent objective,  so new and objective that it can be said that it is not encompassed under the general objective, political objective.

GEORGE BIZOS: Yes, but ...

BERNARD MAKGABO NGOEPE: To me, just one of the methods.

GEORGE BIZOS: Of achieving the political objective, but the question is
"State political objectives sought to be achieved."
The political objective to be achieved,  one of the political objectives is to induce the leaders of Afrikanerdom to do something to save their people.

BERNARD MAKGABO NGOEPE: No, he does not have more than one political objective.  He had only one political objective, and that is in his own way, to achieve politically what he wanted to achieve for the Afrikaners.  That's just one political objective.  How he goes about achieving that, that is a matter of detail and method and perhaps strategy, but the political objective I would have thought, is always one.