Special Hearings — Armed Forces Hearings — 1997-10-09

JOHANNES FELDE VAN DER MERWE: Mr Chairman I don't know of a specific incident, this is a very general statement.  Anything is possible but I am not aware of any facts in this regard.

MR GOOSEN: General in your opening statement, as well as in the submission that you made, in fact more-or-less a year ago to the Amnesty Committee at the time that certain applications were being heard, you paint a very clear picture of what the perception was at the time of the security forces as to the seriousness of the threats facing South Africa and what was required.
 That perception is consonant with views that were expressed also yesterday by various, some of the generals who presented submissions, as well as statements made by Ministers serving in the Cabinet at the time about quite how serious the situation was in the country.  I have no difficulty with the way in which you present it and I don't wish to challenge you in that regard. 
 One of the difficulties, and this perhaps goes back to the reason for having this enquiry, is that it is also presented at various times, both in political party submissions made to this Commission, individual submissions made to this Commission, that unlawful actions carried out by either members of the security police or members of the police or members of the South African defence force were never authorised and did not in any way form part of a policy or an acceptable practice of the government at the time.  Would you agree with that view or not?

JOHANNES FELDE VAN DER MERWE: Mr Chairman often during my evidence given to the Amnesty Committee and also before the Investigative Unit that there had never been a clear instruction by the previous government or the State Security Council that any unlawful deed which was a violation of human rights had to be committed which we can substantiate through facts today.
 On the other hand it is so that if you look at these various incidents that those circumstances were of such a kind that members of the State Security Council, not necessarily all of them did know that certain unlawful actions were approved.  Because of this approval explicit or otherwise which they have given to this that they accepted this fact and therefore that certain actions flowing from that were committed within a certain framework and the State Security Council and the members who were involved have to be accountable for that.

MR GOOSEN: If I understand you correctly you would say that there was not a general authorisation or necessarily a general policy that certain unlawful actions could be carried out, but that unlawful actions were carried out, were authorised in particular instances, and that senior members of either the State Security Council or senior members within either the police or the military or politicians in those instances would have been aware of that and that they agreed with that.  Is that I understand the thrust of your answer?

JOHANNES FELDE VAN DER MERWE: That is correct.  This is also presented in my amnesty application.

JOHANNES FELDE VAN DER MERWE: You see General that - calling you again to this forum is not in any way an attempt to harass you by getting you here for a third or fourth or fifth time, but one of the significant difficulties experienced by the Commission has been that when the question has been asked was there in any way acceptance of the fact that unlawful actions could be carried out as part of the process of combatting the revolutionary onslaught against the country the answer that comes back is "no".  And I can cite the instance.
 I will probably get into trouble in the Commission for doing it.  But when the National Party made its submission, when the former State President made his submission he said actions of an unlawful nature were never authorised, they were either bona fide misinterpretations of lawful instructions or they were bona fide actions as a result of people who were over-zealous or they were male fide.  Those people, you, he didn't mention you in particular, but you and your subordinates were bad apples and that that was never authorised. Can you comment on that perspective please?

JOHANNES FELDE VAN DER MERWE: Mr Chairman I have already testified before the Amnesty Committee and before the Investigative team and I've confirmed that certain instructions were given with the approval of the Minister, I do not doubt that at all, he would have informed the State Security Council.  Consequently if that is denied that the previous government in this case, specifically the State Security Council did not have knowledge of certain unlawful actions that is not true.

JOHANNES FELDE VAN DER MERWE: Thank you very much General.  Indeed in some of the documents that we made available to you as part of the package that we sent and also in other documents which we did not extract, terms like "elimineer", "neutraliseer", "om vyandelike leiers", "uittewis", to eliminate, to neutralise, to eliminate the enemy leaders, are scattered throughout the policy documents that were circulated at the State Security Council even before you took up your post there, and in approaches that the State Security Council adopted in respect of how to deal with the revolutionary onslaught.  Now it may be that the terms in and of themselves, "neutraliseer and elimineer" may be ambiguous and one may have to look in each and every instance at the particular context in which those are used, but would you agree that one interpretation of particularly the term "elimineer" when it is used in the context and the document that was provided to you, is that "vyandelike leiers" - enemy leaders should be eliminated or neutralised, one of the interpretations of that is that those people should be killed, would you agree with that?

JOHANNES FELDE VAN DER MERWE: Mr Chairman not if you look at the contents of the document, definitely not.  If you look at the contents of this document or most documents it becomes clear that it means that certain activities had to follow on this, but if you keep in mind that those documents were put into a system, the joint operations system, where members from the defence force served on that, people from grassroots level and many of those members were involved in a struggle for life and death every day.  From that viewpoint you would regard it and, yes, it could have meant to kill people.
 And if you ask me what I understood by that I would say no, at that stage and on that level it was not meant that people had necessarily to be killed.  Every person involved in the State Security Council has to explain what his specific viewpoint was. 
 But from this document I could not deduct this.  The member received this document and had to plan according to that against the background that he had the impression that they have to act violently and that he had to use everything in his power to combat the enemy.
And consequently I also understand the possibility that this person could be killed.

MR GOOSEN: Thank you.  And would you agree that the effect of utilising ambiguous language like "neutraliseer", "elimineer", "uittewis", terms which, perhaps for the people immediately involved in those discussions may convey one meaning, and for people who come to understand that that is the approach or that is the policy that is being put forward may come to mean something entirely different, that the effect of that was to create precisely the situation that lower order operatives within the security forces could interpret words like "elimineer" and "neutraliseer" to mean precisely that people should be killed and harsh action should be taken against the defined enemies of the State?