Amnesty Hearings — Durban — 1998-11-10

MR VISSER: And you have a son and a daughter, the daughter being the eldest of the two children who would now be around 14 and the son would now be around 12, is that correct?

ADRIAN STEVEN ROSSLEE: My daughter is 15 and my son is 13.

MR VISSER: 13?  In whose custody are they?

ADRIAN STEVEN ROSSLEE: The children have been in my custody for I think it is about 10 or 11 years.

MR VISSER: All right, and Dr Matthews says at page 2, in paragraph 2.4.8 that you are intensely aware that there is something drastically wrong with you, because of certain things which you experienced, would that be correct?

ADRIAN STEVEN ROSSLEE: That is correct Mr Chairman.

MR VISSER: Part of which was that you have nightmares?

ADRIAN STEVEN ROSSLEE: Yes.

MR VISSER: You make excessive use of alcohol and you have backflashes and relive certain incidents which he refers to as "sluipmoord insidente", but certain incidents from your past in which there was violence, is that correct?

ADRIAN STEVEN ROSSLEE: That is correct Chair.

MR VISSER: And other things.  He describes you Mr Rosslee as a superior intelligent person who is extremely depressive at page 3, and he says in paragraph 3.2.5 and I quote "further it seems that the patient does not have a very high frustration level and he does not always, he cannot always control his feelings of aggression".
	Would you say and you must take the punishment Mr Rosslee, would you say that that is a correct description of your condition?

ADRIAN STEVEN ROSSLEE: Yes, I would say so.

MR VISSER: 3.2.7 the Doctor says on the Rorschach Test, the patient deliver responses which entails themes of war and death.  Is that a theme that is foremost in your mind, and which you cannot rid yourself of?

ADRIAN STEVEN ROSSLEE: It is something I would like to rid myself of, but I have not been able to Mr Chairman.

MR VISSER: And you compensate for this by, says the Doctor, by appearing self assured and we also know that you try to compensate for that by using alcohol in excess, is that correct?

ADRIAN STEVEN ROSSLEE: That is right, Mr Chairman.

MR VISSER: I am not going to repeat the rest of Annexure C2 and C3, they speak for themselves.  But as you say, you suffer from major depression which Dr Potgieter refers to, bottom of the page, and you are diagnosed as suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, is that correct?

ADRIAN STEVEN ROSSLEE: That is right.

MR VISSER: Mr Chairman, I am not going to go through the rest.  It speaks for itself.  In effect, Mr Rosslee, is it fair to say that you have tried your best to remove, expunge from your memory, your experiences from the past?

ADRIAN STEVEN ROSSLEE: I have tried Mr Chairman.

MR VISSER: And you may even have succeeded to some extent, but you are here today and you understand that you've got to make full disclosure, so painful as it might be, you are called upon to delve into your memory in order to place before this Committee the full relevant facts as you can remember it.  So, that is your duty today, painful as it may be, that is what the Act requires of you.
	Will you please Mr Rosslee, give the Committee some insight into how you experienced the political background to the incident for which you are applying for amnesty today.

ADRIAN STEVEN ROSSLEE: I will.  The political situation at the stage we are talking about when this incident occurred, was when the Security Branch and the Security Forces were being asked to do more and more in the conflict of the political struggle, which at that stage, I think most of us had regarded as being a war situation.
	We had to fight and the feeling was we were fighting an undeclared war, we were fighting against terrorists and soldiers and being expected to act as policemen within the parameters of the law.

MR VISSER: On the other hand, the forces that you were fighting, were they also fighting according to rules?

ADRIAN STEVEN ROSSLEE: Not from where we were standing, Mr Chairman.

MR VISSER: Yes, is that all that you want to say?

MR VISSER: No, at that stage, Mr Chairman, the feeling was also that with their (indistinct) and support if you like that the liberation movements had at that stage, "everybody" was, if he was a patriot, he was a combatant.
	Every black person at that stage, I suppose we regarded as being potentially MK cadres.

MR VISSER: In the words of the ANC, a worker by day and a soldier by night?

ADRIAN STEVEN ROSSLEE: That is correct Mr Chairman.

MR VISSER: Yes, please continue.

ADRIAN STEVEN ROSSLEE: It became apparent that we were losing grounding in the struggle, or it appeared that we were losing ground in the struggle, and that more and more pressure was being put on us to perform more, to do more, to curb the rising tide as it were.

MR VISSER: Yes.  To use the old cliche, if I may to normalise the situation?

ADRIAN STEVEN ROSSLEE: That is correct.

MR VISSER: Yes, please continue.

ADRIAN STEVEN ROSSLEE: The result was that I think myself and a lot of my colleagues, were acting more like soldiers than what we were policemen, because of the nature of the conflict we were in.

MR VISSER: Did you consider that that is what was expected from you, in effect was that what it boiled down to?

ADRIAN STEVEN ROSSLEE: Yes, it was my opinion that the only way we were going to curb what we were facing, was by fighting it.

MR VISSER: Please continue.

ADRIAN STEVEN ROSSLEE: Our role changed as I perceived it, more from investigations and criminal matters to dealing with political matters.
	The Security Branch, we were being exposed to all the political ideologies, etc, that we were made to study.

MR VISSER: Yes, the normal policeman being a person who should be there to prevent crime, investigate crime, and to take people to court to be prosecuted.  In the case of ...

CHAIRPERSON: To protect the public from crime?

MR VISSER: I hope I didn't say anything different.  I make the mistake of not listening to myself when I am talking Mr Chairman.
	In any event, and here you found yourself, is that what you are saying, embroiled in a political struggle which is very different from normal policing duties?

ADRIAN STEVEN ROSSLEE: That is correct Mr Chairman, especially in the light of the amount of time a lot of us spent in the bush and then coming back to what is referred to in those days, as Civvy Street.

MR VISSER: Did you find any difficulty in readapting after coming back from the bush as you put it, to normal Civvy Street, where rules and regulations applied and where you as policemen were expected to abide by the precise four corners of legal enactments and legal empowerment?

ADRIAN STEVEN ROSSLEE: Mr Chairman, I believe the difficulty to a large degree lay in that the people or the forces we were fighting in the bush, were fundamentally the same people we were encountering on the streets in towns and cities when we came back, and we had to fight them with a different set of rules.

MR VISSER: Yes.  Would you please continue?

ADRIAN STEVEN ROSSLEE: I also believe that because we have the changing scenario on South Africa and pressure put on us to perform, that to a certain degree, I know I did, you believe that if we operated not strictly within the law, that it would not necessarily be condoned, but that it wouldn't be wrong in totality.

MR VISSER: A blind eye might be turned?

ADRIAN STEVEN ROSSLEE: That is correct Mr Chairman.

MR VISSER: Yes.  Is it your impression that Gen Erasmus, who gave evidence before an Amnesty Committee in Port Elizabeth, was correct when he said that he never reported higher up, because there would have been repercussions, but he got the distinct impression that even if people higher up knew, they wouldn't have said anything, because it would have suited them if they thought that unlawful conduct was in fact assisting in fighting the battle at the time?