Amnesty Hearings — Johannesburg — UNKNOWN

ANSWER: I did feel obliged.   From my youth, throughcollege, on every course that we went as police officers we wereindoctrinated that apartheid was right and that we had to combatcommunism.   We had to maintain apartheid and combat communism.

<UNKNOWN>: (Inaudible)

ANSWER: Could you just repeat the question?

<UNKNOWN>: You've partly answered the question, I wantedto know why you felt obliged to carry out these unlawful instructions.

CHAIRPERSON: He's answered.
MR CURRAN (contd)

<UNKNOWN>: I'm going to ask you a few questions aboutthe security legislation and the emergency regulations.   Thesecurity police throughout the 80's, right up to the early 90's,made very effective use of the powers given to them in terms ofthe Internal Security Act and the Emergency Regulations, you weregiven extensive powers.   To what extent did you use those powersas a security policeman?

ANSWER: These powers were used until the state of emergencywas called after the instruction which I received from GeneralVictor, the situation changed entirely, it was a completely ungovernablesituation, it then...(side two of tape ends)..

<UNKNOWN>: ...right up until the early 90's there werethousands of people in detention and you know that too, the
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security police used those provisions right up until the end ofthe P W Botha era.

ANSWER: That is the case Chair, it was done in most casesonly with regard to activists who were involved in school boycottsand consumer boycotts and that manner of activity, it was notused against the high profile activist.

<UNKNOWN>: ...high profile activists were not taken intodetention?

ANSWER: Some were detained and then they could leave,at the end of their detention they could just continue.

<UNKNOWN>: ...high profile activists were under housearrest throughout the 80's, were detained without trial on manyoccasions throughout the 80's.

CHAIRPERSON: It seems those were the more fortunate ones.

MR CURRAN: That is correct but I'm just contesting thefact that they stopped using those regulations after 1986, it'ssimply not true.
MR CURRAN (contd)

<UNKNOWN>: Do you agree with that?

ANSWER: Certainly persons were still detained after 1986but not the high profile activists.

<UNKNOWN>: If you were not subject to the South AfricanPolice Act in regard to these activities, the emergency regulations,the security legislation, you worked outside all of those legalprovisions, was there anything that you established for yourselvesto regulate and to inform your duties and document that you wrotefor yourselves as a security police which would then apply toyour activities?

ANSWER: I don't understand the question.

<UNKNOWN>: ...began to operate completely outside of thelaw, what I'm trying to establish is whether at any stage
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you sat down and said we are operating outside of the laws ofthe land but we still need to regulate our activities to someextent, we need to establish lines of communication, accountability,do's and don'ts, certain actions will not be acceptable, did youever create any regulations for yourselves once you began to operateoutside of the laws of the land?

MR DU PLESSIS: : Mr Chairman I have to correct one thing,there was never any evidence that they in total acted outsidethe law in totality.   The evidence was that in certain instancesthey acted outside of the law so the formulation of the questionof my learned friend is not correct.   I think he should formulatethe question so that it pertains to those instances in which therewere actions taken outside of the law.

<UNKNOWN>: I would have thought that was obvious but thatis what I mean.

CHAIRPERSON: Well I don't think it was so obvious I gotthe impression that you said they were acting outside the law,didn't you have some other law within which you were working.
MR CURRAN (contd)

<UNKNOWN>: I am trying to establish whether in regard totheir unlawful activities, and in particular the tortures andthe assassinations which they were involved in, whether as a groupof people they established for themselves any norms, standards,regulations which they would comply with.

ANSWER: Chair as Mr Curran says, I was acting outsidethe law, I would have been a fool if I put that in writing.

MEMBER OF COMMITTEE: I think you must understand theintention of the question.   Mr Curran wants to know, you
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were acting outside the law, you of course didn't put anythingin writing but did you have some sort of code of honour or somethingwhich would have implied that you would not go beyond a certainpoint, that certain things were allowed outside the law but noteverything was allowed?

ANSWER: I believe that everyone who worked with me knewexactly what they were allowed to do and what they were not allowedto do.   We would have discussed it and we would have given ourselvessome kind of measure in terms of which we would have worked, someguidelines or framework.

<UNKNOWN>: That is the question, what kind of frameworkdid you have?   ...that were participating, you just assumed thatwithin each person there was that self-regulation, is that whatyou are saying?

ANSWER: After we had discussed it, yes.   Let me giveyou an example - children were not targets, innocent people werenot targets, activists who were involved only in school boycottswere not targets.
MR CURRAN (contd)

<UNKNOWN>: ...identified a high profile person that inyour view should not be detained but rather eliminated how didyou know that a detention and an interrogation would not havethe desired effect if you didn't at least try that route first?

ANSWER: We worked in terms of the reports of our informants,we realised that the person had to be interrogated, the personwas interrogated in such a way that we had to get the informationfrom the person.   If then this person was hurt and then detained,we knew that a magistrate would have had access and that we wouldhave been in trouble.
4.

<UNKNOWN>: /...
MR CURRAN 511 J H CRONJE

<UNKNOWN>: Many of our clients were never detained, theywere just assassinated.   In your evidence you've said the purposeof interrogation, the purpose of detention and interrogation isbasically threefold;
  (1) to intimidate the person, to stop that person from beingan activist
  (2) to try and intimidate that person to become an informant,and
  (3) to glean information.
That's the purpose of a detention and interrogation.   I wantto ask you why you did not first detain people on whose behalfwe are acting before you went out and eliminated them?

ANSWER: In the first place once we interrogated the personand once we gained the information, this person's, the peoplewho gave this person instructions would have known what informationthis person had access to, they would therefore have changed theirplans.   Terrorists of whom they knew would have escaped and goneinto hiding in different places.   We also had to protect ourinformants because the person would have been able to point outour informants and we had to protect our informants.

JUDGE WILSON: : Could I interrupt again?   The questionbefore this, as I understand your evidence and I would like youto tell me, you said you worked on information from informantsand after that you had to interrogate people and that if thatperson was hurt and then detained he would have access to a magistrateand "we would be in trouble", did you say that?

ANSWER: That is what I said.

<UNKNOWN>: By that you mean that you would kill someone
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because he happened to have been hurt during interrogation andyou didn't want to be in trouble with the magistrate?

ANSWER: That partly is what I am saying.
MR CURRAN (contd)