Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 2000-06-23

WOUTER J BASSON: Correct, Chairperson.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Page 22, 28th of June
"Region 6 - Training"
what's that about?

WOUTER J BASSON: Plans were made to present another course for Mr Burger and his people, the date was scheduled but for some or other reason the course never took place.

MR KAHANOVITZ: You can't remember why?  You discovered they didn't need training, or what?

WOUTER J BASSON: No, I remember there was a specific person in the CCB and it was his task to deal with a training and it's possible that he wasn't ready or prepared to start with it.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Page 23 appears to be a reference to Joe Verster being in Europe until the 7th of August, is that correct?

CHAIRPERSON: It's in the dark strip in the middle, Mr Basson.

WOUTER J BASSON: I see
"3 to 7 - leave"
and ...(intervention)

MR LAX: What the Chair's referring you to is the ...(intervention

CHAIRPERSON: Sunday the 16th.

MR LAX: ... third dark stripe, Sunday the 16th.  It says
"Jack to Europe tot ..."

WOUTER J BASSON: Oh I beg your pardon, I couldn't see it.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes it's not easy to see because it's under the dark strip there.

WOUTER J BASSON: In other words, from the 16th of July to the 7th of August yes, he planned to be in Europe.

MR KAHANOVITZ: What was he going to be doing there?

WOUTER J BASSON: Chairperson, I can't tell you.  Mr Verster was also the Regional Manager of the external region, the European region, or the Managing Director of the region because the region didn't have a Regional Manager.  I think it refers to Region 5, the external region.

MR KAHANOVITZ: When he was out of the country, if one needed approval for a project, who would you go to?

WOUTER J BASSON: He had a second-in-command, Dawid Fourie who stood in for him and I don't know exactly what the method of working was in such a case, but there would have been liaison with Mr Verster if important decisions had to be made.  There was a procedure, but I don't know the details.

MR KAHANOVITZ: You never had occasion to need to obtain approval while he was out of the country?

WOUTER J BASSON: No I never, not from Mr Fourie, no.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Now there are various entries on page 24, it's the 10th of July, and the 26, the 11th of July, relating to the forthcoming elections in Namibia.

CHAIRPERSON: It's page 25.  I think you said 26 by mistake.

MR KAHANOVITZ: I'm sorry.
	Now this page should also be read with the entry of the 25th of April, which refers to Nico Bessenger.  Let me tell you what Pieter Botes told the journalist, Jacques Pauw about what projects were planned around the Namibian elections, and I'm going to quote here from Pauw's book, "The Heart of the Whore" at page 187 to page 188.

CHAIRPERSON: "The Heart of the Whore"?

MR KAHANOVITZ: Yes.
	Botes told Pauw the following ...(intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: It's reported in the book that Botes told Pauw the following, we don't know how accurate the quote is.

MR KAHANOVITZ: This witness will know.  And the reason I'm reading this here, you will find corroboration for certain aspects in the entries in the diary.

CHAIRPERSON: I'm not saying it is inaccurate, I'm just saying it's from a book, so ...

MR KAHANOVITZ: He was to assassinate senior SWAPO officials, Hidipo Hamutenya, today's Namibian Minister of Information and Danny Tjongarero who became Deputy-Minister after independence.
"The murders had to look as if they were committed by fellow SWAPO members unhappy with the "soft-line approach" of Hamutenya and Tjongarero, in order to cause dissension within SWAPO.
			Botes was instructed to plant bombs at SWAPO meetings and explode handgrenades amongst the spectators.  The CCB devised a plan to put cholera bacteria and yellow fever viruses provided by an Army doctor, into the drinking water of SWAPO refugee camps at Dobra (D-o-b-r-a) in Northern Namibia.  
			A printing press ordered by SWAPO and a waiting delivery at Walvis Bay and 54 SWAPO vehicles were identified for sabotage.  Botes said the CCB was to use a special oil that would seize the engines.  Not even Untag, the United Nations Peacekeeping Force overseeing the independence process, was to be spared, although Botes was instructed not to harm officials. 
			The cars of United Nations special representative, Marti Atassari and Chief Administrator, Cedric Thornbury, were to be fire-bombed however."
Would you care to comment?

MR WESSELS: Mr Chairman, may I come in ...(indistinct) in you coming to an answer as to amnesty for the matters that have been applied for here, this is completely irrelevant and it's a waste of time.

MR KAHANOVITZ: With respect to my learned friend, if he now looks at the diary entries, he'll become acutely aware of the relevance of that passage.

MR WESSELS: ;   Whatever the diary entries are it concerns outside matters where the witness has said he's not talking about it, so whatever he says is only portions what might have happened or might not have happened there and you're not going to be asked to deal with the correctness of those allegations.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Once again the point is simply that the applicants haven't begun to tell you what they were involved in.

MR WESSELS: Well Mr Chairman, that argument can be made, it could have been made after the first day's evidence already.  We don't need to go through this to make that argument at the end of the day.  If it's a good argument, they made that point long ago.

MR KAHANOVITZ: With respect, Mr Chairman, for us to be able to argue that coherently we need to attach it to something that has substance, we can't just make that as a general allegation.  We wish to point to specific circumstances that would allow you to make that as a finding.

CHAIRPERSON: Anything else you want to say?

MR WESSELS: Mr Chairman, as far as my client is concerned who was the Managing Director of the CCB, he said that he's not talking about matters outside the county because it might incriminate him and that is enough for my learned friends to make their argument that they wish to make at the end of the day.  We don't have to go through the detail of all this and spend hours and hours on something that's already been made and conceded.  That they're not making full disclosure of events that took place outside the country.  The argument at the end of the day is, are they compelled to make it or are they not compelled to make it?  The basis has already been laid for either argument.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Mr Chairman, I don't know if you're being asked to make a ruling.  If you are about to make a ruling I just would also like to point out, you have a situation where you have witnesses who are telling you "I'm not telling you about external operations, you don't need to hear about them because everything I did there was innocent."  And that being so, I'm entitled to test that evidence.

MR P DU PLESSIS: No, Mr Chairman, with all due respect to my learned friend, that is not correct.  There was one certain point or one certain person, where Mr Basson chose to follow that route.  He was asked about it and he did answer and for the rest he has said he's not saying that he wasn't involved in those projects, he's refusing to answer because it may incriminate him.  So it's not correct to say that he chose to say he didn't do anything wrong or he wasn't involved, rather than say that he wasn't involved in those projects.  That's not his evidence.

MR KAHANOVITZ: It was Mr Burger's evidence though.

MR P DU PLESSIS: That may be so, but my learned friend didn't follow it up with Mr Burger.

MR WESSELS: ...(inaudible) not dealing with Mr Burger, my objection is to the line of questioning that's taking place at the moment, Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr du Plessis, do you want to say anything?

MR H DU PLESSIS: ...(indistinct - no microphone)

CHAIRPERSON: Okay.  Mr van Eck and Mr Coetzee?

MR VAN ECK: I've got nothing to add, Sir.

MR COETZEE: I've got nothing.