Special Hearings — Chemical And Biological Warfare Hearings — 1998-06-08

MR POLSEN: I would just like to record that the original statement differed radically from the second statement and it was not put in the first instance to my client and therefore it must be valued in that light.  Thank you Mr Chairman.  It looks like an afterthought.

CHAIRPERSON: Well.  Mr Cilliers?

MR CILLIERS: Very shortly Mr Chairman.
 Doctor Goosen, we've already given a lot of attention to the fact that there were problems with the way you handled various company matters, the subsidy, the private projects, the private use of company structures for your own gain.  There were such allegations and some of those allegations are substantiated.

DR GOOSEN: Mr Chairman, we have already addressed that.  I told you what my involvement was regarding the substance and you will have to decide for yourself.  There is one other allegation which might be dishonest.  At a certain stage I replaced my car's shocks which were not replaced at the approved dealer and therefore there was also an allegation against me.  ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: Well, I think those are the sort of things that ...[intervention]

DR GOOSEN: Please, I can't exactly remember this.  I definitely don't deny having conflict in the company.  I had conflict in the company, in every company there is conflict etc., but in my time not one cent was spent in training getting consultants on how to manage the company.  When my successor came, thousands, hundreds of thousands of rands were spent in getting consultants to work out how the company should be managed.
 So if I had problems, and that was not the problem and I've accepted and I also testified this morning that I went to my superiors and said: "Look, if you have a problem and problems with the management I don't mind, replace me or train be or do whatever you want to.  I don't want to compromise the security of this cause we were fighting for".

MR CILLIERS: All that I want to achieve Doctor Goosen, and I'm not interested in the washing or dirty washing here in public today, this is not the purpose, all I want to put to you is that my impression is that there was, fairly or unfairly or whether the action against you was perhaps too strong, I don't want to comment on that, there were problems causing you to be replaced as Managing Director in the company and if got the impression from your evidence in chief, that it was an unsubstantiated action, my impression might be wrong. ...[intervention]

DR GOOSEN: Mr Chairman, I don't think that my friend can completely make final conclusions on the management of these companies because we have not spent time on what was my management problems.  We can spend - and we can get every company employee to testify and we can line it up to exactly what my management problems were.  So now to finally concluded here what the problems exactly were etc., I think would be a bit presumptions.  ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: I think what ...[intervention]

DR GOOSEN: There were some problems - in my mind in anyone else's minds it might be different, it is for you to decide ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: No, no, no, I don't even think it's a question for us to decide.  I think what is being put to you however is that if one takes the totality of your evidence before you were being cross-examined, it would have appeared from that evidence that there were sinister reasons for your replacement as a Managing Director.
 And they are saying because they are putting these things to you which you are now admitting, there are, whatever weight may be put to them as instances, but there would technically be instances which you have now admitted which in any company would have formed a basis for you having been replaced or removed.
 They are not saying those were the only instances but they by themselves could have been formative of a basis for you to have been dismissed.  That is what is being put.  Even if we were to take away all the other reasons, and we are not saying you must throw them out of the window, let's say the only things that had been in existence are the ones that are now coming out under cross-examination, the use by you of the facilities, this, this, this.  
 They are saying, would you accept that they do constitute a basis for a person to be replaced as a leader or to be dismissed, in themselves.

DR GOOSEN: No, Mr Chairman, they were not given at that time as the reasons for my dismissal.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes, but I think what is being put to you is, if for instance on your evidence you say they were not given as the reasons but on their instructions as I understand them, those are the basis' on which you were dismissed, is that ...[intervention]

MR CILLIERS: That is exactly the crux of the matter.  The impression was created by the evidence in chief that there were no reasons or background regarding confrontation or conflict between you and the company, if that was the wrong impression I gained.

DR GOOSEN: Mr Chairman, yes, I haven't in my testimony touched on the dirty washing side at all.  I've heard some of these allegations yesterday and I haven't referred to them and therefore you should not blame me for not bringing these things out in the testimony.

MR CILLIERS: I'm not trying to blame you, all I'm trying to say is that there were reasons, good or bad, it's not for this Commission to decide they are not going to rule on that.
 Furthermore, is it not so that after the handling of one of these cases of alleged dishonesty and Doctor Swanepoel's handling of that, that you wrote him a letter to thank him for the way he handled that?  You named it the sensitivity in which he approached this matter, can you remember that letter?

DR GOOSEN: Mr Chairman, I can't remember that distinctly, the wording of the letter and the exact circumstances surrounding it.  If I can remember correctly it was about the extensions at my house.  And those extensions I started initially buying a bath and trying to improve the house.  I could not handle that any further financially and I applied for the subsidy and after I started with some of these this subsidy was approved.

MR CILLIERS: You needn't give the detail to the Commission.  My only point I want to make is, and the impression that was created by your testimony, was that Doctor Swanepoel was this insensitive inhuman Manager and he treated you in an inhumane way.  This does not seem to be correct if I look at the letter which you wrote to him in which you thanked him personally for the way in which he handled you when you could have been charged with fraud and it could have turned out in an ugly criminal case if Doctor Swanepoel wanted to do that.

DR GOOSEN: The terms which are mentioned now, I can't agree to but that there was a good relationship between me and Doctor Swanepoel is true.  We worked in a positive work environment and also from his side I have a few letters on record thanking me for my inputs, my services and for attempts to restore these projects again, where he asked me again to come back to RRL.  We worked together in a very positive way.  I don't have a problem with Doctor Swanepoel as a person, as a human being, as a Manager.
 From the beginning I felt he did not have the correct background to manage a scientific environment.  I'm sorry if I created the impression that he was a inhuman person or whatever, that was not what I wanted to achieve.  We only had a confrontation after I had told him that we have to go and speak to all the sponsors, at the end of 1988.

MR CILLIERS: A further aspect, you told the Commission that this fertility project was aimed at black women.  If I understood you correctly the effect would be that it could be used or possibly used to control the numbers of black people in South Africa, was that correct?

DR GOOSEN: Yes, that's correct.  That was the purpose of the research being done.  That is how I understood that.