Special Hearings — Armed Forces Hearings — 1997-10-10

MR NTSEBEZA: Thank you Chairperson.  I think, let's just forget about the terminology that is being used, I have no, personally, I have no problem accepting your explanation and distinction between what constitutes and what does not constitute a terrorist, but I think since we are dealing with trying to find out what were the motives and perspectives of all the armed forces one of the views that has been indicated to us by other armed forces who have come to us is that what they call terrorists, which you would define otherwise, use the people as their bush, which in classic terminology conforms to a revolutionary strategy, Maoism and all that sort of thing.  Now, and I think what the question seeks to establish is what - how would the security forces distinguish, or how did you expect them to distinguish between trained freedom fighters, who obviously in the nature of terror warfare would not appear to the ordinary person as trained persons, they would be ordinary civilians like yourself in that white suburb, now how would they be able to distinguish between yourselves and other persons who were not trained combatants?  In other words who were not trained freedom fighters amongst whom they found themselves.   See it from their perspective, and see it most probably against the background of an attitude of mind in them that said well when you are going to eliminate or neutralise or whatever, all those words that they used, you must not only deal with trained persons you must deal in the same way with their fellow travellers and all those who associate with them, because in the end they are all of the same mind.

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: Chairperson it is important to recognise that often we've had to try and locate ourselves in the enemy's mind.  That's the only way you can lead them into an ambush so I will try to make that effort.
 If they were genuinely saying that they were looking just for the trained MK cadre they would recognise that their fundamental premises has to be changed because they saw all black people as enemies, and they saw every white person, as the struggle developed, who stood up in any vague way to speak against the injustice towards the black people, they saw that person as the enemy too.
 In the recent evidence coming up before this Commission one security force member now says that in Pretoria, as part of his covert operations, he bombed white houses in Pretoria and made them appear as if they were houses bombed by and attacked by the ANC.  I think it is Eugene de Kock who said that.  
 So when they try to maintain that they were seeking to find the trained MK operative they are not speaking the truth.  They saw blacks and any white who in any way supported any, opposed any form of injustice, they saw those as enemy.  Because if they wanted to make the distinction very carefully then they would use their 
intelligence capacity more intelligently than they did.
 The evidence is clear that from the fifties, even before the armed struggle, they were infiltrating the ANC and the Congress movement, both as provocateurs and as sources of evidence to try and pin us, in terms of their law, to be guilty of crimes in prosecuting the struggle.  And it is now known that they had an extensive intelligence capability.  They had spies sent into our ranks, into our camps reaching all sorts of positions in the ANC and therefore they would use that information to sift out if they did not make the assumption that every black person is the enemy.  They didn't do that.  
 In fact they did the opposite.  They always assumed that if a person was speaking and standing up against injustice that person must be a threat to the State and must be a member of the ANC and must be possibly MK. 
 You now have the same justification put by them when they say how they and why they killed Mthimkulu in the Eastern Cape.  They say that this young man was the gravest threat to the security of the State, therefore even after he was released from detention, poisoned and virtually confined to a wheelchair they still had to go and kill him and kill him in a way that looked like he had gone to join the ANC.
 Now let's put ourselves in their minds from the arguments 
that they are using and from the reality of the way they were conducting themselves.  If we only confine ourselves to their statements then I say there would have been a clear, sophisticated mechanism which says the majority are not with them, these are just troublemakers, we need to cream off the troublemakers.  We need to be systematic.  Because if we hit more people than the troublemakers we damage ourselves, those mass of the people who are happy will become disaffected.   But when we put their practice on the scale we realise it doesn't conform to the justification.  This is a rationale that they are putting forward, justifying their actions and seeking to garb it in a way that makes it acceptable and I reject that.
 So I have made this effort, I can go on and on about how racism has been their instrument but their greatest downfall, their greatest downfall.  In prison in communications, when they had severed all our communications with the rest of the sections and when we were using the toilets in the isolation section, the rim of the toilets as the communication mechanism, and they found that mechanism, they broke our communications.  We had no way to reach our comrades in the rest of the prison, but analysing the officer we put our excreta into that rim and we watched the officer when he went and put his hands there, he never went back to touch that rim and we resumed communications.  (Laughter)

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Modise

MR MODISE: Thank you Mr Chairperson.  To respond to the question that was put by Mr Ntsebeza, the excuse that has been given that when they come out against the people they are looking for MK because MK is hiding amongst their people.  The question of June '76 when those schoolkids were drowned in their own blood were they looking for MK?  Was MK dressed in school uniforms, gym dresses?  It was not.  It is the same attitude that Minister Mac Maharaj has explained here.  The enemy was the black person and when they came out to come and butcher the oppressed they were indiscriminate in many instances.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Goosen.

MR GOOSEN: But Mr Modise is it not so that when you mobilise an irregular army you exhort people to arm themselves, to utilise whatever arms, mechanisms are at their disposal, to attack, to go on to the offensive, that you unleash forces which ensure that the, if you like, from your perspective, the disciplined guerillas are no longer the sole group responsible for armed action, but that armed action embroils whole communities, armed formations that develop?  Does that not carry with it the consequence that those armed formations become targets themselves, legitimate targets from the perspective of the security forces for military action or security force action?