Amnesty Hearings — Durban — 1999-08-23

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: J5.

MR LAX: Mr Maharaj, can I confirm?  I've just numbered these pages while we've been talking from 1 to 18, is that correct?

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: You mean the whole batch?

MR LAX: The whole annexure.

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: Correct.

MR LAX: The it'll be easy just to refer to the page reference to find whichever.

CHAIRPERSON: Right are we all ready.

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: If I may therefore with your permission Chairperson, then go through it in this order that's over here.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: If we then look at the first document, 14th of February 1988, you will see that the report has been filed by Sgt Wasserman and it deals with the visit of a Lucky, paragraph 1 says that the reporter or the informant is PN 664.  That agrees with the general view and my own view that PN was the prefix for an informer working with Port Natal Security Branch and you would see that that informer was under the command or directly reporting to Mr Taylor, Maj Taylor.  The visit is a visit of MK, of Lucky, agent 665 sent by Lucky.  On paragraph 2(8) page 2, you would see that this agent says that he and a Lulu travelled and met a Mr MK Zandile.  He is identified as Charles Ndaba and on the column on  the side, the margin, is the file no. S4/52573.  Of particular importance here Sir is to note that Charles Ndaba's name appears without any PN number.  You then go through to the page 11, which is still that same report and you have paragraph 40.  "Uitkenning persone"  Under that you will see the name of Jabo and Lucky and Zondi with an observation, not of security importance.  so there were two ways to cover the identity.  If a person featured and you wanted to block it out from attention by others, you said not of security importance or you identified the person as PN 66 whatever and no recipient would know the identity of the PN except those working with it.  You will see there that Charles Ndaba as at the date of that report, has no PN reference number but has an S4/.  At the end of that report was ...(intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: PNV number.

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: PNV, yes, I don't know the significance of PNV, maybe the experts who were giving those file numbers would know.  It's the "Afdelings" reference.  What we know for certain Sir, is that PN on its own was a reference number, as testified by Mr Steyn, that PN was the prefix for a confirmed informer.

MS POSWA: Mr Maharaj, may I just interject at that point?  We had - Mr Steyn gave evidence to the effect that they had no way, no-one had any way of knowing who the informers who were in that they had two parallel systems whereby they could not divulge an informer and when I asked him, "Why not remove him from the list?" the response was that that would then make him, expose him to other members of the Security Branch as being an informer.  What is your view?

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: My view is simple, based on this, their own reports.  As  you see in paragraph 41, if the name Jabo appears, and Jabo is not a complete name, does not enable you to identify.  I will show in the subsequent reports how they would follow through to reach the identity of the person.  Get photographs, do searches to identify the real name of the person, but here they are actually saying, "not of any security importance" and you see on the next page that that report had the distribution list, there are 14 groups to which it was distributed.  Anyone of them reading it is seeing Jabo is not of any importance, don't waste your time.  On the other hand if the person is a confirmed agent or informer, the person would feature in the report as PN, as you see on page 1.  Page 1 says the informant PN664 has established the following information.  So no name appears there, no identity appears and it is distributed to these 14 groups, but they have no way of knowing the identity.  What they have is the content of the report.  That's my response to that, that measures could be taken, but I will show other measures that could be taken because you then turn to the next report J2, which is page 13.  There you will find that the report has been filed on the 14th of September 1988 and it has been filed by Capt H J P Botha, the man who says he recruited Charles Ndaba to be his informant.  He compiles this report and what he does in the report is to say, I'm confirming that the photographs circulated to all of you is a photograph of Charles Ndaba. And Charles Ndaba's name appears in paragraph 2 as Z Ndaba - FA4190 PN, but the distribution list for that is to 15 different sections.  If Charles Ndaba was Capt Botha's informant, would he hand him over to the wolves deliberately, when he has the mechanisms to conceal his identity?
	The next report Sir is a report dated 18th of July 1988.  And this one is handed in by Sgt Lodge Labuschagne, page 15 and it deals with a black woman called Ellen.  On page 16 once more paragraph 2 the identification is Charles Zakhele - Charles Ndaba FA 4190 Port Natal, file number S4/62573.  Not a PN number and its distribution list is at the bottom of that page.  And then if you look, Sir, because of the character of Charles Ndaba, to Exhibit J4, page 17, that report is dated 1987.  Why have I brought it?  I have brought it here to say that that is how seriously Pretoria saw Charles as a military adversity, that it is not an accident that at Piet Retief and in the ambush in Swaziland in June 1988, efforts were made to get Eugene de Kock's unit to eliminate him.  That's June 1988.  It's no longer two divisions not knowing what they were doing because this distribution list includes in some of the documents C20, it includes C10.  
	I then turn to page 18 and there the report is dated 31st of August.  That is where again in monitoring all people that they come across in Swaziland, they say in paragraph 2(4) that Z C Ndaba, also known as Charles, has been deported to Lusaka.  But just above that Sir, you will see 2(3) R P Lalla, permanently resettled in Maputo.  Both of these comrades of mine, because of the sterling work that they were doing in Swaziland and because they were seasoned in Swaziland, were withdrawn and subsequently re-entered South Africa in 1990 as part of Operation Vula.  Lalla was arrested at 1 o'clock at the safe-house at the Knoll, but I'll come to that later.  I thought I should put these reports to show Charles' background, his calibre, the nature of the monitoring by Pretoria, the fact that his identity was being circulated with 15 sections by Capt Botha and those sections included sections that would try to eliminate him and therefore I certainly challenge the view that his deportation was arranged to Zambia in order to save his life.

CHAIRPERSON: Before we go away from these reports, I notice that on page 11 paragraph 39(10), reads
"Documents marked B,C and D are all written by Charles Ndaba."

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: Yes, Sir.

CHAIRPERSON: A handwriting test is...(intervention)

MR LAX: Handwriting sample.

CHAIRPERSON: Handwriting samples is compared with the documents and the writing agreed.

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: Yes Sir.

CHAIRPERSON: I haven't had a chance, nor the time, to see what sort of documents they are.