Special Hearings — State Security Council Hearings — UNKNOWN

CHAIRPERSON: I thank you very much, we have decided to adjourn for tea very briefly, we will resume at half past three.
HEARING ADJOURNS
ON RESUMPTION

CHAIRPERSON: ...tender handling of Glen Goosen.

MR GOOSEN: Thank you very much Mr Chairperson. Mr Vlok I'm going to ask the questions in English and you're welcome to answer the Afrikaans unless you've got a problem, please ask and I will endeavour to ask it in Afrikaans.

ADRIAAN VLOK: You're more than welcome. I'll try to follow you.

MR GOOSEN: Mr Vlok you indicate in the submission that you've made and it was also evidence that was tendered the course of the hearings held last week that in the period 1985-1986, there was a significant shift in the sense that the revolutionary forces as it were, not only shifted their strategy, intensified the onslaught against South Africa, but that in response to that the South African security forces and the South African police in particular, also had to intensify their counter-revolutionary activities. That that, that there was an upsurge in violence and a general realisation that the law alone would not contain the onslaught.  Is that correct?

ADRIAAN VLOK: In a certain sense that is correct that we acted in reaction to the escalating of the revolutionary onslaught against the country and against innocent citizens. We the police and the defence force and also our structures, we were geared to deal with the situation but it's not correct to say that we wanted to do certain things which were for instance illegal to deal with the situation. That time we believed that we could deal with the situation by just simply applying the laws of the land and the further steps taken by declaring the state of emergency.  The first state of emergency was declared in I think  12 June 1985 or '86, yes it was '86, so we utilised all the legal instruments at the disposal of the state. The state, the police and the defence force used those.

MR GOOSEN: Mr Vlok, you state at paragraph 6.9 on page 21 of your submission, in many such cases it meant that the violence was answered by violence in an attempt to protect the people, black and white, from acts of terror, especially when it was noticed that normal policing and normal juridical processes simply could no longer deal with the situation adequately. It was also necessary to engage in actions which at the time would fall outside of the ambit of what was lawful.

ADRIAAN VLOK: If that was the impression created by that, I want to correct it immediately and I would try and tell you what I actually meant in that paragraph.  I want to mention an example.  In many cases we had marches and demonstrations where thousands of people gathered and then started rioting and the police simply had to deal with the situation.  It happened in townships and in the central business districts of our cities and the police had strict instructions to use minimum violence and force and it escalated.  The police were present and they used tear gas, they used rubber bullets and so it escalated, but that was the violence which I had in mind when I wrote that paragraph.  There was no idea or intention that it should happen outside the confines of the law in an attempt to deal with the violence.

MR GOOSEN: Okay well then can I just refer you to two further passages, paragraph 6.13 where you refer to proactive in terms of the collection of information, proactive actions, and then paragraph 6.14 where you refer there at the bottom of that paragraph, what you were dealing with here was a life and death situation and in order to protect life and property, in certain cases a decision was made to strike the first blow to avert the threat. What exactly do you mean by that?

ADRIAAN VLOK: In this case use was made of informers who gave us information.  We beefed up our intelligence structures to gather intelligence, so we developed these structures and we were looking for more people to obtain information from and once we obtained the information we tried to, for instance obtain the information about terrorists present in Soweto and then we would send people to those places to try and arrest them but in these cases it often happened that the police went to a certain place, tried to arrest a person which according to our information was a terrorist, and that it ended in a shooting incident. And that's what I had in mind there. The attempt to act proactively, to try and arrest them and to apprehend them and if it wasn't possible to arrest them, then if there was a shooting, then they were often shot dead in an attempt to prevent them continuing with their actions.

MR GOOSEN: If you look at that section in the context of the whole paragraph you're indicating that it was also necessary to deploy certain operational structures inside the country was used within the borders of the country to act proactively in cases where it became known that such structures had staff or informers who were under threat as a result of leaks or the activities of traitors. The impression created there, and correct me if I'm wrong, was that in those circumstances where there was a significant threat to the, as it were, the intelligence capacity of the security forces, in particular because of lekasies of die bedruiwighede van veraaiers, that it was necessary in those circumstances, to proactively strike the first blow.  Now would that proactive action then in your evidence be confined to lawful means in all instances?

ADRIAAN VLOK: Yes in so far as it was possible to act within the guidelines of the law.  That would be our first option, but as I said, it could be possible that certain actions followed which then led to a shooting and which led to the death of people but as far as I was concerned it was still legal and within the boundaries of the law.

MR GOOSEN: So I would be incorrect then to interpret the thrust of your testimony thus far to suggest that as part of the escalation of the conflict that it was recognised that at a certain point, not only lawful means but also unlawful means would need to be employed in combatting the onslaught against the country.

ADRIAAN VLOK: No that's not what I'm trying to say.  I tried to make it clear what our point of departure was, namely to act within the law and in these circumstances things went wrong and people were killed. That's what I explained. Actions taken outside of the boundaries of the law I tried to explain to you what that could be linked to and I also explained to you where the misunderstanding relating to terminology could have arisen from.  I could have told you or have told you that STRATCOM projects and structures which acted in certain ways could have resulted in certain unlawful or illegal conduct but this did not mean that we went and sat down and decided that we would act illegally.  We never made such a decision.

MR GOOSEN: Mr Vlok would it be correct to describe you during your period of tenure as both the Deputy Minister and subsequently Minister, as a peoples' man. As a minister who was immediately concerned with and interested in the people who ultimately served under the command structures of the South African Police?  The troops on the ground if you like? Is that correct?

ADRIAAN VLOK: Mr Goosen is very friendly towards me in saying that.  I'd like to thank him for that but the rest of the Committee perhaps, you know me and you know that my door was not only open for the people with whom we had to work.  I wasn't only looking to motivate them, my door was open for anybody else.  They could come to me and they often did.  The Chairperson often came to visit me and I often recall those days when he came to visit me. So I tried to be accessible so that I could hear what people had to say to me so that I could see what I could do to resolve the problems which they brought to my attention.