Amnesty Hearings — Durban — 1999-08-30

ADV BOSMAN: I may just tell you that is the strange aspect of the evidence that you cannot recall such an important facet of it.

HENDRIK JOHANNES PETRUS BOTHA: No, that is not my manner of doing this thing if I can explain it as such.

MR LAX: Did you arrange it or did you ask it of someone?

HENDRIK JOHANNES PETRUS BOTHA: Do you refer to the equipment?

MR LAX: The equipment yes.

HENDRIK JOHANNES PETRUS BOTHA: I would have asked for a blanket.  I cannot recall if the blanket was brought from the cell or who brought it but I would have asked for it.

MR LAX: And the bag or whatever it was?

HENDRIK JOHANNES PETRUS BOTHA: Whatever was used I would have used what was available there.  If there are towels in the toilets and blankets in the cells.

MR LAX: And there would have been a tube or something to that effect because it was used often?

HENDRIK JOHANNES PETRUS BOTHA: There would have been but I cannot recall that I used a tube.

CHAIRPERSON: I think while Mr Botha is here, Mr Gordhan mentioned earlier that he felt that he was curtailed in his questioning and I made a ruling and I've just now been reconsidering, I think that I might have been acting too much like a judge in a trial situation with regard to relevancy.  This isn't a trial and I don't think there will be any prejudice if the question Mr Gordhan wants to ask to the applicant, I think I'll allow him to ask the question about what was found - what was it Mr Gordhan?

MR GORDHAN: ...(inaudible)

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.

MR GORDHAN: But before that could I could intervene in the current interaction just to reinforce two points, Chairperson.  The first is that there was no towel wet or dry that was used.  This was a substance through which you couldn't breathe and Mr Lalla has confirmed that in his evidence as well.

CHAIRPERSON: He referred to it as plastic and one of the other witnesses referred to it as a rubber type plastic.

MR GORDHAN: Something that's fairly firm, elastic, not easily porous and therefore no air would be available.  In other words it would be pointless using that to suffocate any individual.
	The second is that the necessity to have a rope and put around the blanket is to immobilise ones limbs and obviously if one is being suffocated one would resist that suffocation and it makes absolute sense to me that such a device was actually used to mobilise me but let's leave that for the record, Chairperson.  I'm quite surprised that after all the details Mr Botha remembers that one he can't remember.

MR VISSER: Well Mr Gordhan can give evidence and he can be cross-examined about it, Chairperson.

MR GORDHAN: Well that's a choice I have, Mr Visser.

MR VISSER: But evidence is now given not under oath, Chairperson, as if it's fact for the record.  It's not so.

MR GORDHAN: As any lawyer will do, Mr Visser, and you know as well, I can put that to the witness and it's for the Committee to then decide but I don't want to engage in any debate with you, I'm here to question your witness.
	Let's talk about the Brickfield Road flat and the fact that some days before the arrest took place on the 12th July you claim that the flat was raided.  My question was what information did you get from that flat?

MR LAX: Sorry, if I could just clarify the question?   He's not saying the flat was raided, he's saying it was burgled.

HENDRIK JOHANNES PETRUS BOTHA: I've already given that evidence, Chairperson, it is available on the record.

CHAIRPERSON: I don't know what it is, what evidence, what was obtained?

HENDRIK JOHANNES PETRUS BOTHA: Information with regard to Operation Vula which gave me a better indication as to what the operation was about, Chairperson.

MR GORDHAN: I put it to you Mr Botha that no information on Operation Vula specifically was in that flat.

HENDRIK JOHANNES PETRUS BOTHA: Chairperson, once again I support my legal representative.  It is easy for him, for Mr Gordhan to say that there weren't things and there were things, I know what I found there and I have given complete evidence about it on a previous occasion.  The information was more supplementary to what the informant had reported with regard to the content of the operation as it was known to him.

MR GORDHAN: I put it to you Mr Botha that you might have found it, I actually put it there and I'm saying to you that I put no information which gave any details about Operation Vula in that flat.

HENDRIK JOHANNES PETRUS BOTHA: Chairperson, it is clear that Mr Gordhan is trying to cover up his negligence.  They were sophisticated but they were negligent in their information.

MR GORDHAN: Chairperson, I'm unfortunately now tempted to say to Mr Botha that I've been an ANC operative from the early '70s.  You've had me in detention three times as the security branch in Durban for a period of over a year in solitary confinement and until that moment you didn't find out anything about me and my involvement in the ANC, so let's just leave the question of sophistication there.
	I again put it to you, Mr Botha, that that flat provided you with no detail on the question of the operation.  All you found there was general political literature about the underground, the role of the underground, the role of political and military struggle and structures and that your real information came from a host of disks and documentation that you picked up elsewhere?

HENDRIK JOHANNES PETRUS BOTHA: What is your point, Mr Gordhan.

CHAIRPERSON: He is asking what your comments are on that statement, do you agree with that or disagree with that?

HENDRIK JOHANNES PETRUS BOTHA: The completeness of the operation came from the information which we obtained from the computers.

MR LAX: But just, sorry ...(intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: Those computers weren't in that flat, were they?

HENDRIK JOHANNES PETRUS BOTHA: There was a computer, Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: Was the information obtained from that computer that was there at that flat?

HENDRIK JOHANNES PETRUS BOTHA: There was one document that was on there, Chairperson.

MR LAX: That's exactly what I was going to ask on as well, it's fine.

MR GORDHAN: But you're using choice words like completeness, lets not let that dilute the facts for now.  The core data about what Vula was, the reports that went out of the country and came into the country came from another computer, it wasn't in this flat and came from disks which were not in this flat were in some other place where you found them, true?

HENDRIK JOHANNES PETRUS BOTHA: Once again, the completeness of the operation came from all the computers, which one exactly, which computer obtained which information, we'd have to go back to the investigation reports.

MR GORDHAN: So you can't place any clarity on the question that this flat and that computer in that flat and the documents in that flat didn't actually lend too much of core detail to your investigation about who was involved and what was happening?

HENDRIK JOHANNES PETRUS BOTHA: Chairperson, about the who was involved, we already knew that and more complete from what my knowledge was up to the moment we entered the flat led that we could inform Pretoria as to the better picture of the operation.  The more complete fact of the operation came from the time when all the information was taken from the computers and this continued up to months after the ...(intervention)

MR LAX: The problem here, Mr Botha, is this.  Is that initially your answer to Mr Gordhan was emphatic, now your answer is not emphatic, now your answer is that yes, the totality of information - initially your answer was emphatic.  From that house you got very definite information.  Now it's not emphatic any longer.  That's my difficulty because I heard your previous evidence and your previous evidence was in line with what you're saying now, not with the fact that it was emphatic information, so that's the difference.