Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 1998-03-30

GEORGE BIZOS: That made them enemy organisations?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: That is true, at that stage, it is a fact.

ADV BOOYENS: This was not the Prime Minister of the National Party.  My learned friend is really now moving into a terrain expecting him to answer questions, it was the Nationalist government that banned these organisations, not Sergeant Niewoudt.

GEORGE BIZOS: Well, perhaps my learned friend will consider calling one of them as witnesses.

CHAIRPERSON: I will appreciate that.

GEORGE BIZOS: Yes.  This hosepipe, it seems to have had the tendency to appear on the basis that it was just there, when needed.  How did it happen to be there when you assaulted Mr Jones?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: As I have explained, the office which was used was used by Mr Coetzee, he was on coastal patrol, that was his job, and he used this hosepipe to syphon off fuel, and it was there, and I used it.

GEORGE BIZOS: Where was it in the room?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: It was on the window sill at the entrance to the office.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Niewoudt, this instruction to use all means at your disposal in order to protect the political order of the day, you testified that that included illegal activities such as assault, etc?  I am assuming that Mr Biko and Mr Jones were not the only people who were assaulted in that office in the name of insuring the survival of the State?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: I did assault another person, and I applied for amnesty for that case.

CHAIRPERSON: That is not what I am referring to.  I am not going to ask you at all who the other people were that you assaulted.  What I want to find out, the procedure at the offices of the Security Branch at the time, in the exercise of their duty to protect the State, did they bring in certain instruments to hit people with and beat them with?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: Not as far as I am aware, I didn't use any such instruments.

ADV DE JAGER: Apart from any instruments brought in, certain methods were used?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: Yes, I heard about those methods

ADV DE JAGER: Methods to, by means of force, extract information from people?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: Yes.

ADV DE JAGER: And it was known that illegal methods were used to extract information?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: That is correct.

ADV DE JAGER: Did your seniors or the Minister or the then government, did they admonish you in any way about this?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: No, there was this tacit approval.  They didn't say anything about it.  I got an instruction Mr Chairman.

ADV DE JAGER: If you didn't report to them that you had hit Mr Jones in this case, with a piece of hosepipe, how would they have known that you had done this, and how could they have either approved or disapproved of it if they hadn't known about it?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: May I speculate on that point once again or perhaps give an example.  What if this man went to court and he made those allegations in court, it would have come out then, and then it would have been investigated.

ADV DE JAGER: Was it investigated?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: I don't know, nobody ever approached me and afterwards Mr Jones wrote about these methods in his publications, these methods of assault used on him.

GEORGE BIZOS: Let's just take it a bit further.  Mr Jones published a statement of what happened to him.  Did anybody ask you whether this was true or not?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: I don't recall that anybody ever asked me.

GEORGE BIZOS: Well, you have seen Mr Jones' public statements.  They were substantially true, were they not?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: Some of it, I wouldn't say all of it.

GEORGE BIZOS: Well getting beatings with a hosepipe was true?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: Where I did it, it is correct.

GEORGE BIZOS: Yes, well I am going to suggest to you that he is also correct when he says that your colleagues did it, but that you are protecting your colleagues here because of this conspiracy of silence amongst Security Policemen, that you don't blame one another for what the other is not prepared to admit.

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: No, I deny that strongly Mr Chairperson.

GEORGE BIZOS: We will examine you more carefully in relation to Mr Jones' evidence later.

ADV SIGODI: Mr Niewoudt, in which room was Mr Jones interrogated?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: In the same room.

ADV SIGODI: In the same room?

GEORGE BIZOS: Separated by what period?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: Please repeat the question?

GEORGE BIZOS: Separated by what period of time, when Mr Jones was interrogated and when Mr Biko was interrogated?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: It was about a week I would say.

GEORGE BIZOS: A week to ten days?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: Yes.

GEORGE BIZOS: And was this hosepipe on both occasions on the window sill?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: Yes.

GEORGE BIZOS: In room number what?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: 619 if I am correct.

GEORGE BIZOS: Now, we had the sad experience of going to that room.  Do you agree that - did you say that it was ten metres by what?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: I mentioned two by ten.

GEORGE BIZOS: How much?  Two by ten?  It is more rectangular than that, isn't it.  It is a very small room.  At most four, four and a half by six or six and a half?  Isn't that?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: Yes, it could be.  I said I was speculating.

GEORGE BIZOS: Yes.

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: Plans were handed in.

CHAIRPERSON: We will take five square metres Mr Bizos.

GEORGE BIZOS: Yes, and also it is a room which is isolated, you can scream as long as you like in that room, the people in front and around won't hear a thing?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: No, there are windows that show to the centre area of the building.  And below us, floors five and six, and there is the janitor on the 7th floor.

GEORGE BIZOS: Who had control of that small, inner courtyard?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: It was open.

GEORGE BIZOS: You could drive into that small courtyard, when Sanlam was the Headquarters, or portion of Sanlam was the Headquarters of the Security Police?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: Yes.

GEORGE BIZOS: What floor was it on - this room?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: It was on the 6th floor.

GEORGE BIZOS: Yes.

ADV DE JAGER: (Speaker's microphone is not on)

GEORGE BIZOS: I think that it was the 6th floor, if we remember correctly.

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: Yes, it is correct.

GEORGE BIZOS: It was the 6th floor.  Everybody agrees that it was the 6th floor.

ADV BOOYENS: I think in fairness to my learned friend, I don't know whether it is still the case, I think when we wanted to hand this in, my learned friend indicated at some stage that they do not necessarily accept the correctness of this.

GEORGE BIZOS: Of the subdivisions.

ADV BOOYENS: Yes.

GEORGE BIZOS: At the time that we saw it at any rate.  This was used regularly as an interrogation room, was it not?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: Yes.

GEORGE BIZOS: And during this period of a week or thereabouts, to ten days, how many people would you consider were interrogated in that room during this period of a week to ten days?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: Is this after Mr Jones?

GEORGE BIZOS: Between Mr Jones' interrogation and Mr Biko's interrogation?  How many people were interrogated in that room?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: If I can recall, six persons.

GEORGE BIZOS: About six persons?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: Yes.

GEORGE BIZOS: And each one of them who came to that room, must have seen this hosepipe on the window sill?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: They could have seen it.

GEORGE BIZOS: Did it occur to you or your senior officers, that seeing a piece of hosepipe on the window sill at the Headquarters of the Security Police may have possibly been misinterpreted, not to be used to fill motor cars, but rather intended for their backs?

GIDEON JOHANNES NIEWOUDT: It is possible, I don't know whether anybody...