Special Hearings — State Security Council Hearings — UNKNOWN

ADRIAAN VLOK: Chairperson I wore two hats, that of minister sitting in Cabinet who was part of the executive or authority, but I also wore the hat of the political head of the police and I was of the view, maybe I was wrong, but if I was close to the policeman on the ground it would have been easier for me to lead them in the direction where they were supposed to go, but at the same time, I also promoted their cause in cabinet and that is why we exerted pressure as far as this third leg is concerned, that we wanted to make progress with this third component.  Mr Malan, my friend will know how we had discussions on this third component, he wasn't happy with our progress, it wasn't proceeding fast enough and I agreed with him, so I wore two hats.

MR MALAN: A last short question.  You also heard Mr Pik Botha referring this morning to where the power was vested and I also asked to follow up question and he said that it vested with the executive head, namely the state president, the elected head and that is where power vested. Now I want to ask you, is your concept of authority in fact a cabinet responsibility or is it in your view also so that power is seated to a large extent with the president than with the cabinet?

ADRIAAN VLOK: I don't want to disagree with my friend but if I heard properly he said that the power seated invested with the president and the cabinet.  I'm sorry if I misunderstood it but that's how I heard it and that is what I agree with, that is where the power is vested.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Yasmin and the Ilan.

YASMINE SOOKA: I think that we appreciate the sort of frankness with which you're dealing with your submission, but the real difficulty for me lies in where we put this or let this responsibility lie and it's too easy to say the president and the cabinet and then to go on to say but we didn't sanction anything that was unlawful.  The way in which you say, the kind of discourse that was used could give rise to this misinterpretation, the lower down the ranks you go. It's too disingenuous and I think I'm grappling with trying to understand whether anybody who lived in South Africa during that period, could not really have known about the manner in which the police were being implicated in the deaths of thousands of activists.  The newspapers were talking about it, the courts were dealing with people where detention was being used to extract confessions out of people and the police were said to be responsible for that. There were visits from so many different delegations, from international delegations into this country, newspapers talked about it. There were people dying in detention from Steve Biko down, right up until present day, there way Neil Aggett, there was the murder of David Webster and at the end of the day the police and the military were being implicated.  Now surely at a political level, there must have been some discussion.  You yourself could not have failed to realise that the state of affairs in the police was rotten to put it lightly.  Now how do you expect us to sit here and I really want to believe you because I appreciate the frankness with which you are disclosing the kind of detail you do, but I sit with this difficulty as an ordinary South African.  How could you say that you did not know?  Surely the coincidences became too much for you where at some level you should have said, we need to do something about this. Where, and you see what really frightens me is from the submissions that we're hearing, the politicians begin to distance themselves from this security portfolio of the police and the military.  So who was in charge of this country and where did the decision-making and the responsibility lie?  Help me please because I really want to know what could have happened, why didn't you say, this is rotten and we need to do something about it?

ADRIAAN VLOK: I have great appreciation for your view in this regard and more specifically about the distancing of certain people from the security establishment, I know that I experienced that first hand but in all honesty I must tell you that I when I looked at these things said, I can't run away from my responsibility.  The other colleagues in the cabinet and also looked at these words, it's for them to decide whether they want to accept joint responsibility, I can't do it for them, I can't do it for them, I can understand your concerns and with hindsight and upon reflection, I must state it that I think we made a mistake, we should have established commissions and independent monitors far sooner than we did, but you must remember that each one of these cases which you mentioned where activists were killed and people fell out of windows and people who died in certain circumstances, in all those cases, the existing system actually did launch an investigation.  The police for instance would investigate and they would then take the evidence further to the inquest court and certain findings were made. Now I agree with you.  We should have actually looked at these things more closely and we omitted to do that sooner than we should have.  It was only when Mr de Klerk appeared on the scene when he appointed Judge Goldstone to actually launch these investigations and a lot of things arose out of that commission and that is what is good as far as I'm concerned for the future that we should make sure that there are bodies and watchdogs who will ensure that these things don't happen again in future, but I have a great deal of understanding for your concern and for your worry as to how one can explain this.
 I can only say on my behalf it was a mistake. I will accept responsibility for that as far as I am able to do so.  I don't know what other people are going to do.

MR LAX: Chairperson it's really a follow-up question, and Yasmin's covered the thrust of it.  It just goes slightly further than that because it says that in essence there were people who were monitoring the situation.  They were the very people you were silencing.  They were the very people you were detaining and putting in jail.  They were the people who were saying to you, this is what's going on in your country.  People like Peter Kirchoff in Pietermaritzburg for example who when he was in detention they phoned his wife up and they said, your husband's had a heart attack. He hadn't fortunately.  It's people like that who had the guts to stand up and say this is what's going on in the country and you signed those orders detaining them. I saw them with my own eyes. So that's what we really struggle with.  Was it that you just ended up believing the propaganda and the situations that were being put to you to the extent where you objectively all these other people who were telling you that this is what was going on in your own country you just didn't believe?

ADRIAAN VLOK: We just have to look at the angle and the perspective which we had on Mr Kirchoff.  We said that Mr Kirchoff was a member of the UDF.  I don't know if that was in fact so, but let us use an example.  Now what was the UDF?   It was a front organisation for the ANC and they wanted to take over the country. And then we're right back to stage 1. We didn't listen to what those people were telling us and that's the tragedy that we didn't open our ears and listen to our fellow South Africans much sooner.  We didn't hear them.