Amnesty Hearings — Boksburg — 1998-03-18

UNKNOWN: As I've understood Mr Derby-Lewis' 
evidence and if Mr Walus was not arrested so quickly who would 
have gone to clear this out with the Caucus and if chaos had 
developed, they believed, and if I understand his evidence 
correctly, after this incident the Volksfront was established and 
here all the right wing groups joined forces.  The Volksfront was 
established and later on the Freedom Front, it was a political 
party was established but according to the evidence, if I 
understand that correctly, this incident led to the establishment of 
the Volksfront.

BERNARD MAKGABO NGOEPE: It would have been an assumption bordering 
on naivety to just assume that well he killed somebody and well 
the two of us, just the two of us agreed to kill him without telling 
anybody, the two of us would kill him and even though we have 
not canvassed this thing, we have not made any contingent 
arrangements with anybody, the Right Wing will step in and take 
over.

UNKNOWN: Well I believe that during that time in the 
country there was chaos. If you look at the evidence of Mr 
Hartzenberg and the exhibit, one or other research where the 
political violence of those times, if you look at that I believe that 
Mr Derby-Lewis who was well acquainted with the politics could 
have believed that through that chaos the right wing groups 
would have become one united group, and they could have taken 
over the government of the day without any further arrangement 
with other people.  This just followed naturally, yes if things did 
not go wrong, they could have approached the right wing in this 
regard. 	
	But regarding your initial question that Mr Walus just 
drove away and he did not panic, there is no evidence, and it's 
also no other person assisted him.  Mr Mpshe asked him whether 
there were any road blocks, he said no he didn't see any road 
blocks. I don't know what the intention of that question was, 
whether the police or somebody else would have helped him, 
there were no road blocks.
...(tape ends  - no further argument by Ms van der Walt

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Bizos.

GEORGE BIZOS: May I first give  members of the Committee an 
overview Mr Chair before I start to argue the matter in detail?  
Firstly I would like to indicate to the Committee that my learned 
friend Mr Malindi and I have agreed to share the argument that is 
to be advanced with the Committee.  Generally I will deal with 
pages 1 to 20, my learned friend will deal with pages 20 to 45, 
and I will deal with the rest of the argument.  But having with 
respect listened to the argument of Counsel for the applicants and 
the questions that were posed by the Committee and some of the 
answers have been given, we would like to make certain 
preliminary submissions.
	Firstly that before we can try to apply the facts to the 
provisions of Section 20, the committees onerous duty is to try 
and determine the facts and the facts obviously cannot be 
determined without meaningful submissions having been made to 
the committee about the credibility of the witnesses that have 
given evidence before you. And before we get to the application 
of the facts to the provisions of the Act we would like to make 
certain general submissions.
	Firstly for the purposes of these preliminary submissions, 
we submit that the evidence of Mr Derby-Lewis, Mr Walus and 
Mrs Derby-Lewis can be grouped together and what I am about to 
say about each one of them as witnesses applies although not 
squarely in general terms to each one of them.  
	Firstly that they are witnesses who on their own version 
have admitted that they are not strangers to lies.
	We start with Mr Derby-Lewis.  Although he did not give 
evidence at his trial, he thereafter made an affidavit in which, not 
only did he say that he was innocent of his crimes, but he also 
tried to hold himself out as a most unfortunate victim of the 
administration of justice; he not only lied about his participation 
in this murder, he lied about having been not properly defended 
and complaining about his attorney and counsel, and when this 
untruthfulness is drawn to his attention, he says well I committed 
perjury because I considered that it was still part of the struggle. 
We'll examine that a little later but for the purposes as to whether 
he is to be believed as a witness on his own, we would submit 
that that is sufficient to approach his evidence with considerable 
caution.

BERNARD MAKGABO NGOEPE: Sorry Mr Bizos, I'm going to say something 
here at this stage, an observation.  We in all, almost all and 
perhaps all applications for amnesty, we deal with people who 
were convicted and who would have said, oh I didn't commit this 
offence, under oath and then he's obviously disbelieved and 
convicted.  When they make applications for amnesty we expect 
that they would say now I'm telling the truth, last time I lied 
under oath.