Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 1998-03-30

GEORGE BIZOS: Oh, I see, so at the time that you detained him, you didn't have any information to put to him, and he was - and you left him in the cell to rot, until such time as you might have obtained some information from somebody, is that what you are saying?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: No, we had information.  We had information - Mr Titi was already detained, and we just needed some supporting evidence to challenge Mr Biko as a leadership figure and we needed the necessary information to confront him.
	One could not just go and interrogate him and you know nothing of him, or what the circumstances are.

CHAIRPERSON: Was this interrogation not done to get a confession from him?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: That is possible.

CHAIRPERSON: Why else did you interrogate him?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: To gather information about his involvement.  Because Mr Chairman, he was under the Security Act, it was a further problem to get a confession from him.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Niewoudt, I don't understand.  Your instruction was to obtain evidence which would cause him to run certain risks and could end up with him in prison?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: Correct?

CHAIRPERSON: According to your evidence you already had some evidence against him, all that you needed was some corroborating evidence?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: The possible or probable corroborating evidence would have been the confession?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: Correct.

CHAIRPERSON: And you also testified that there were certain other people from whom you could have extracted other information?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: So the question is why did you continue with the interrogation of Biko, if there was other corroboration, corroborating evidence possible?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: Once again, I don't know.  You must see it in the context of what was happening at that time, I was only a Sergeant and I was ordered to help with the investigation.
	The next moment we were busy with Mr Jones, and we had to generate certain information from our questioning of him.  The next thing I heard from Snyman was that we had to now turn our attention to Biko.

CHAIRPERSON: All right, what type of charge were you actually investigating?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: It related to the unrest and it could have related to acts of subversion, sabotage and inflammatory pamphlets that were distributed.  All of which amounted to subversion if I look at it now, but that was for the Attorney General to decide.

CHAIRPERSON: I understand that, but you would have to submit certain evidence to the Attorney General?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: Yes.

GEORGE BIZOS: I want to return to the question of urgency.  He was arrested on the 18th, he was left in the cell alone until the morning of the 6th so that whatever interrogation you had to direct towards him, didn't have to produce results on the morning of the 6th?  18 days or 19 days of 20 days, would not have made any substantial difference?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: That is true.  Once again I don't know.   I was carrying out orders for Mr Biko for purposes of interrogation.
	I don't know whether my Commanding Officers thought that they had enough facts to confront Mr Biko or not.

GEORGE BIZOS: Now, please tell us how you felt in relation to Mr Biko's attitude to the senior white policemen who couldn't not bear the thought of a black man sitting on chair in his presence, how did you feel about that?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: It is clear that there was a conflict between the two of them.  I associated myself with Mr Siebert's decision.

GEORGE BIZOS: That a black man can't sit on a chair in the presence of a white Security Officer?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: No, I wouldn't put it like that.  That is not what it was about, not as far as I was concerned in any event.  The issue was that when he was in our presence at the Branch, he shouldn't try and enforce his dominance.
	He should not dictate to us what to do, it wasn't a conflict between black and white, although the ideology at the time was aimed at conflict between black and white.

GEORGE BIZOS: So that this argument was really about status, was it as to who had the right to sit on a chair at a Security Police office and who hasn't?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: It wasn't about status.  What it was about was that we wanted him to understand that he couldn't just do as he pleased in our presence, that is a short definition.

GEORGE BIZOS: And the insistence that he should get up from the chair and the leading up the quarrel, was it in order to show that your authority at least there if not everywhere in South Africa, was much greater than his?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: If you put it like that, yes.

GEORGE BIZOS: Right.  Well, I will use the word status if you don't mind as a short cut in my future questions, in relation to this.
	So that this quarrel was about the status of a white Security Policeman and a black man who had a leading position in the black community in the country, this was what it was about?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: Whether he was black or white, the detainee, I don't think that was the issue.  It would have been the same.
	I don't think it is quite correct the way Mr Bizos puts it.  The issue was not that he was black.  The issue was the fact that he was a detainee per se.

GEORGE BIZOS: Now, what political objective did you hope to achieve by hitting Mr Biko with a hosepipe on his back?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: As I said, at that stage it was necessary to generate information to protect the government, to ensure its survival and we had to use all methods at our disposal to try to neutralise the conflict which existed at the time, and to try and neutralise and control the unrest, Mr Biko.

CHAIRPERSON: I thought you testified that you hit him to actually get him out of the scrum so to speak, and for no other reason?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: But I am talking about my political objective.  That is the reason why I wanted to interrogate him.
	As far as my assault on Mr Biko is concerned, I perhaps exceeded my limits, it is possible, it is a debateable point.

GEORGE BIZOS: I am not talking about exceeding the limits.  When a person commits an act for the purposes of the application of this legislation and the function of the Committee if we understand it correctly, is that the wrongful act must be committed in order to achieve a certain political objective.
	What I want to know from you is what political objective did you hope to achieve by hitting Mr Biko on his back with a hosepipe, what political objective would you have achieved?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: As I interpret the Act, you have to place your act or offence in a certain context, you can't actually just judge it in isolation, you can't separate it from the political objective.
	He was under my control, I was there to protect the State within that milieu of the Security Police.  What I did there was in the furtherance of my political objective, because we were dealing with a total onslaught.  
	What it was about was protecting the political order, that is how I interpret it.

GEORGE BIZOS: How - what would you have prevented from happening, or what would you have induced to happen by hitting Mr Biko with a hosepipe on his back?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: I repeat, you have to see it in context Mr Chairman.  His interrogation was a method of trying to protect the State that in itself was a political objective.  Then the struggle ensued and once again, I acted in the interest of the State.
	So, I believe that in respect of the violation of human rights' that I committed it.

GEORGE BIZOS: I will try one last time and perhaps you could think of a political objective which you might have achieved by using a hosepipe.