Amnesty Hearings — Bloemfontein — 1997-05-12

PIETER JAKOBUS GOUWS: Yes.  Chairman, they are basically part and parcel, it is not an abstract relationship, it is a housefriend type of relationship existing there.  I do think that it is much more personal and emotionally you probably get involved, I see it in my own personal smaller community too.

CHAIRPERSON: You are a lawyer, so I am going to ask you to look at a rather unpleasant picture.  Will you look at the, I am showing you from Exhibit 1, photographs 6 and 7.  I think you referred in your evidence to violent attacks, is that the type of attack you envisaged?

PIETER JAKOBUS GOUWS: Chairman, this is absolutely ghastly, it is brutal, this is what I am referring to.  May I add to this I spoke for instance, I would give you another example, to the widow of a person who had been killed near Vredefort, Grootkop, and I was at the funeral that specific day and that lady became totally hysterical and she grabbed my arm and she said when they kicked her and they were pulling her around by the hair, all the way around through the house, they said those specific people said, we will kill you all.  That is now her words I am relating, we have come to kill you  Boere.  And I became so emotional that day, I am supposed to be a person who is a little bit, who should be abstract looking at these things, I became so emotional that day that I felt like if I get hold of one of those people, because it is a defenceless person, it is a tiny little woman, to treat her, kick her, jump on her and those type of things, if I have found those people, I probably would have committed a crime myself.

JUDGE WILSON: I don't know if I said at the time the photographs shown were Exhibit A, photographs 6 and 7.

CHAIRPERSON: Dr Gouws I do not understand you as saying that every attack during that period on a farmer on a boer or on a farmer was necessarily politically motivated, I do not understand you to be saying that, or are you saying that?

PIETER JAKOBUS GOUWS: No, Chairman, I am not saying every attack was politically motivated, I say within the farming community you, when you hear about an attack, you work on the information begin given through the press, through personal inspection, whatever secondly you work on perceptions what is going on now and perceptions are extremely powerful within a community with no direct access and being kept out in the dark to a very large extent and then you work also with rumours.  And within a farming community and I would say even amongst the policemen and I will put it on record that I have asked station Commanders what is going on and that most of them had never had - being detailed briefed on precisely what was going on, so lots of them were also living on rumours and on perceptions what was going on in other parts of the Free State, that we got an idea that in general most of these attacks based on the three criteria, how brutal that attack was, what was stolen, the weapons involved, the way they entered the building, I should say three, four criteria, that we made or came to the conclusion that in I would say most of these murder cases, we came to the conclusion by ourselves that perhaps it was done on purpose to - through a political agenda, to frighten off the farmers and really to create havoc in the economic environment of the rural areas.  We might have been wrong, I - obviously we didn't have full knowledge and we most probably have been wrong in certain cases.

CHAIRPERSON: You are a lawyer yourself, would I be right to say that each case then would have to be looked on his own merits and in the light of its own facts and circumstances?

PIETER JAKOBUS GOUWS: Chairman, obviously as a Judge, as a person when one has full access to these, one will have to look at every case on its own merit and I didn't want to create an impression that I have looked at it in total yet, you know that I know the merit of every specific case, but I cannot judge on that and if I have created that impression, that is a wrong impression that has been created.  I am talking about the broader context in which it has been seen.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes, no I was not actually saying that you said so, but I was trying to get your evidence be properly contextualised.

PIETER JAKOBUS GOUWS: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: With regard to the police, don't you perhaps think that the reason why they adopted the attitude that these killings were not politically motivated was precisely that despite their investigations, they did not find indications to that effect?  Maybe they just didn't find any evidence of political motivation despite their investigations, isn't that possible?

PIETER JAKOBUS GOUWS: Chairman, that is possible, I am not able to judge that.  I as a outsider, who is not sitting in judgement now but trying to relive a period of time when you see leading political figures going on TV telling their followers to kill the Boers, to kill the farmers, I think it is creating a scene in your mind that you easily connect what is going on with a political orientation, because my experience is and as a leader of persons too, that through what you say and what you kind of indicate through saying it and the way in which you are saying it, your followers may interpret it as a direct order, very, very easily and they may not even be trained followers, they may be even people sitting on the sidelines - may see this as a ... (tape ends)  it is part of the total goal, the total broader goal, they are a very minor part of.

CHAIRPERSON: I just wondered though, there were a number of murders around the Verkeerdevlei area?

PIETER JAKOBUS GOUWS: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: During a certain period and somebody was trying the killing of about four people and the like and despite evidence to try and bring that out as a political killing, Judge Kotze in the end ruled that that was not a political killing and I think that court was always full with farmers and I am just trying to understand how, despite the police's attitude that they don't find any political motivation, despite even finding or a finding by the Supreme court, how the perception could have persisted that these killings were political?

PIETER JAKOBUS GOUWS: Yes, Chairman, with all due respect to Judges, you also know Judge Erasmus, what he found years ago.  We and I am perhaps a little bit on dangerous ground now ...

CHAIRPERSON: Don't be.

PIETER JAKOBUS GOUWS: But - I wouldn't do it Chairman - what I am saying is that in the case of Mr Fourie, it was also found that there was not a political motive involved by the police and by the Presiding Judge etc, and now we have the claim that it was a political murder, rightly or not, I don't know, so it probably depends on the situation and the way the Judge look at it, maybe it is dependent on the way the Investigating Officer would be looking at it, I am not in a position to judge that, but I do know that we look at the Verkeerdevlei murders, I personally look at them as a political motive involved there and when I say a political motive, Chairman, perhaps I should rectify it or I should put it in the right perspective, it doesn't mean an order from a person there, you go out and you kill now that farmer, it is the whole political environment of supporting also, let us for instance say the credo of kill a Boer, kill a farmer, it may not be that APLA is targeting the specific member of APLA and saying now you go out and you kill Mr Fourie, I see it in a broader context.

JUDGE WILSON: Would it be convenient for us to take a short adjournment at this stage?
COMMITTEE ADJOURNS - ON RESUMPTION