Special Hearings — Political Party Recalls — UNKNOWN

<UNKNOWN>: eeds massacre claimed in his amnesty application that the Nationalist Government used the police to do its dirty work. According to evidence led in the trial the events leading to the massacre began with the decision taken at the local Joint Management Centre and that the UD

<UNKNOWN>: presence in the area be undermined, would this be another example of police over-zealousness, or another category?

MR DE KLERK: Let me take that now as an example to just bring across a very specific point. He was charged. The police investigated the case, he was charged and he was condemned to death, am I right? That is my recollection. If the court thought that the picture which you have just pictured in your question was true, surely that would have been extenuating circumstances? 
So once again we have here a case where a court of law evaluated this and I haven't had a look at the specific case, I'm now talking just from own legal experience, and found that here there were not extenuating circumstances, hence that background in all probability, yes the order to destabilise UD

<UNKNOWN>: activities. UD

<UNKNOWN>: were then burning down houses. UD

<UNKNOWN>: were leading marches. UD

<UNKNOWN>: were at that stage staging actions which seriously harmed the economy and which seriously harmed the interests of millions of South African citizens. 
So, yes, participating in actions to destabilise, to upset their programmes, that would be in order and would be a reasonable interpretation. There was a fight to be fought against these activities which in themselves were part of the revolutionary onslaught aimed at making South Africa ungovernable. Aimed at overthrowing the State. But to promote Black on Black violence; to get people to kill other people; to get people to commit murder was not part of the policy and anybody doing that or ordering that would be mala fides. 
Once again people right down the bottom of the line of instruction fall in a different category if they have a clear-cut instruction from higher authority and the mala fides would be there where that order initiated against policy and falling outside the policy framework.

MR GOOSEN: Senior members of the South African Police, implicating also senior SAD

<UNKNOWN>: officers have applied for amnesty for a number of murders committed by SAP operatives when they supplied faulty handgrenades to COSAS members in the court of 1985. At least eight persons were killed and seven maimed. This operation was authorised and approved by the former Commissioner of Police and the Minister, would you classify this as a misinterpretation of what was required or a bona fide instance of over-zealous behaviour?

MR DE KLERK: Whoever authorised that was guilty of a very gruesome and totally unacceptable decision. It was wrong, it wasn't part of the policy and whoever authorised it was mala fides and was acting against the interests of South Africa. 
Can I say, however, that I don't know whether this allegation that a Minister ordered it was tested. We are dealing once again here with allegations made by people in amnesty applications who are trying to pass the buck. Sometimes it might be true but in many cases it won't be true as has been proven in a number of court cases. So I think it's a dangerous line of thinking to fall into the trap of taking for the gospel everything which is said in every amnesty application.

MR GOOSEN: Thank you. Just in regard to this and by way of background, an article published in 1977 in a journal called Militaria, which is circulated within the South African Defence

<UNKNOWN>: orce, an article published by current defence correspondent for Jane's Weekly, Helmut Roma Heitmann(?) entitled Some Possibilities in Counter-Insurgency Operations, this document was handed in during the Goniwe inquest, in dealing with certain types of operations which could be launched has the following to say in a passage which appears at page 63. I will make a copy of this available to you at the adjournment.
"Other operations can include the sabotage or doctoring of discovered arms or supply caches. The resultant difficulties will sap confidence and morale as well as creating distrust between the insurgency and its suppliers. Such operations should not, however, be overdone so as to avoid creating suspicion. They could range from doctored foodstuffs by mixing petrol with paraffin for lamps, and tampering with medical supplies to the placing of instant detonation fuses in, for example, every tenth grenade etc. The preference here would be to the infliction of illness or injury, not death, the former having the added advantage of sapping morale and straining logistics. The intelligence services can also create some havoc by the supplying of false information, particularly the type to create mistrust, thus a leader of the insurgency could be made to appear as a police informer by, for instance, paying him more-or-less secretly or less subtly by rewarding him publicly. Other misinformation could be aimed at frustrating the insurgency's later efforts".
Now you may be interested to know - would you have any comment to make about that first before I take that further?

MR DE KLERK: Who is the author of it?

MR GOOSEN: Helmut Roma Heitmann, current defence correspondent for Jane's Defence Review, published in Militaria in 1977, a journal circulated within the South African Defence establishment.

MR DE KLERK: Well I don't think that has any official status and I think it is a description of more-or-less the strategies which might have been used by the British in Malaysia.

MR GOOSEN: Yes. Strategies remarkably which fit in with the doctoring of handgrenades which occurs in 1985 on the East Rand in South Africa and involving special forces operatives and being authorised, so the allegation is, at the very highest level, involving a minister of State.

MR DE KLERK: If there is evidence I would not have condoned any such a deed and I would have been against it.

MR GOOSEN: Thank you. It's clear, just to stay on this issue, it's clear from the amnesty applications received, that the operatives who carried out the action were made aware that it was approved and duly authorised at the level at which I've suggested. How would this experience, knowing that it was authorised, have affected the ability of those operatives to correctly interpret other sets of instructions they might have received?

MR DE KLERK: That is part of what I've referred to also in my opening remarks this morning and in both previous submissions, part of the atmosphere which was created, which was conducive towards this and for which we do not shirk overall responsibility and moral and political accountability.

MR GOOSEN: You may be interested to know, Sir, that in the aftermath of the handgrenade incidents a girlfriend of one of the victims was necklaced because of rumours that she was an informer. Her name was Maki Skosana. Would you regard the persons responsible for the operation as bearing some responsibility for the tragic outpouring of anger and bitterness which culminated in that necklacing?

MR DE KLERK: There are certain things which happen in instances like this which can be described as being a direct cause and there are certain things which can be described as an indirect cause. If there is such a link where there were specific disinformation about the integrity of a person fighting on the other side which led to that, then surely some of the blame must be shared by those who spread the disinformation. But that does not exonerate those who actually necklaced such a person.

MR GOOSEN: Yes.

MR DE KLERK: And that doesn't make it acceptable.

MR GOOSEN: That's not suggested in my question.

MR DE KLERK: But it is suggested by others, not by you.