Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 2000-09-28

MR COETZEE: You have testified now that certain information that was known to you, or was conveyed to you, about why Adv Omar was a target at that stage, did you yourself make any enquiries or follow ups, concerning the situation and the information that you had received?

FERDINAND BARNARD: No, Honourable Chairperson, I was not allowed to do it, and apart from that I, because Mr Omar was a high profile person in the media, I read about him a lot.  Amongst others, that I can recall independently now, that there was a story that he had close contact with the Mandela family, that he knew Nelson Mandela and that he had UDF connections, but I had no information that I verified myself.

MR COETZEE: And then with regards to the costs and the remuneration that you received, can you explain to the Commission what this entailed?

FERDINAND BARNARD: Mr Chairperson, Mr van Zyl gave me an amount of R7 000-00 in cash to cover my costs.  It had nothing to do with salaries.  I made three trips to  Cape Town and I stayed in good hotels, so that R7,000 I used for that.

MR COETZEE: Did you receive any production bonuses for this action?

FERDINAND BARNARD: No, I did not receive a production bonus, but I foresaw that if this project was completed, and was done well, I would have received a production bonus.  Nobody told me this, but I just thought this myself.

MR COETZEE: Just to get clarity, at that stage, did you receive a salary from the CCB?

FERDINAND BARNARD: Yes, that is correct.

MR COETZEE: And you say that it seemed as if Mr van Zyl was under a lot of pressure to execute this project, do you know who placed this pressure on him?

FERDINAND BARNARD: Mr Chairperson, no, I do not know where the pressure came from, but that it was a large amount of pressure is true.  Mr van Zyl's got a specific type of personality, he is for example not a person, this is the way I summed him up, he is not the type of person who can be placed under that amount of pressure by somebody like Staal Burger.  I thought the pressure came from a much higher level, but he never made known a line of command to me, and he said that this comes from Staal Burger.
	At one stage I assumed this, because I knew how the system worked on their side.  He never told me this, he never reported to me concerning this.  He never made phone calls or he never discussed it when we were together, but I saw that there was a lot of pressure on him.  At one stage I thought that this pressure must come from a political level.

MR COETZEE: Mr Barnard, you were at that stage aware that you were not a member of the cell in which Mr Slang van Zyl operated in.  The fact that he made use of you in this project, do you know why you were used, why you were specifically chosen to be applied in this?

FERDINAND BARNARD: No, Mr Chairperson, nobody told me anything, but I assumed after my discussion with Lafras Luitingh during March or April, I am not quite sure, and then after the execution of the Webster project, that this could have led to the fact that I was now approached in this way to do this work.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Barnard, you said yesterday that Luitingh was your handler, did he know about your involvement at the time, in the Omar project?

FERDINAND BARNARD: No Mr Chairperson, at that stage I did not have contact with him.  The last time I had contact with Lafras Luitingh, that was in June, when he paid me the three months' salary.  He did not know about it.

MR COETZEE: Did you, after June,  or was there an opportunity where you could be contacted by the members of the CCB who wanted to make use of you?

FERDINAND BARNARD: Mr Chairperson, I still had the same contact number, the same pager that was paid up front, nothing changed.  I was contacted in that way so that other members, other CCB members, that had nothing to do with Region 6, could contact me in the same way.

MR COETZEE: You were also indeed during the criminal case, found guilty to attempted murder of Adv Omar?  The fact remains that at that stage in evidence, you denied that you had any part in it, and that you were only there on a monitoring basis.  Can you just explain this to the Committee and place this in context?

FERDINAND BARNARD: Mr Chairperson, I denied everything.  There were 34 charges laid against me in the High Court, and I denied everything.
	It was not that I, the Omar case was an exception, this was something that I did.

MR COETZEE: But today, you do know that you were found guilty of it?

FERDINAND BARNARD: I am not running away of the guilt.  Judge Els found me guilty because I did commit certain crimes, and I do know it myself.  From an investigator's viewpoint, I do know I actively tried to execute the Omar project and to kill Adv Omar with that weapon, and to reach that goal in the end.

MR COETZEE: If we can then look at another project which was known as the "Apie Project".  Can you just explain how you became involved and what did you do?