Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 2000-06-23

WOUTER J BASSON: No, Chairperson, I'm not aware of any such in-house presentation.  Apart from the monitoring of Lubowski internally, I'm not aware of any presentation to which Mr van Zyl is referring in respect of Mr Lubowski.

MR KAHANOVITZ: I must also put it to you that what you say was a monitoring project in relation to Lubowski's visit to South Africa, went far beyond that.

WOUTER J BASSON: No.

MR KAHANOVITZ: The intention at the time was to attempt to assassinate him.

WOUTER J BASSON: No, Chairperson, that is not true.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Now I assume you are then also alleging Aitchison being placed in Namibia, had nothing to do with the Lubowski project.

WOUTER J BASSON: That is correct.

MR KAHANOVITZ: He was just a sleeper who was going to be used sometime in the future.

WOUTER J BASSON: The planning was to establish him there for utilisation after the elections.

MR KAHANOVITZ: And what was he going to be doing after the elections?

WOUTER J BASSON: Chairperson, we can speculate about that, I can't tell you that.  It wasn't discussed.

CHAIRPERSON: So he was going to be a sleeper?

WOUTER J BASSON: If you want to regard it like that, yes.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Now turning to your diary, just to get this on record, you kept this diary in your capacity as the Co-ordinator of Region 6, and you made entries in that diary in the execution of your duties, correct?

WOUTER J BASSON: Correct.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Now this is Exhibit M.  You heard yesterday me taking Mr Burger through a whole lot of entries concerning ammunition.

WOUTER J BASSON: Yes, Chairperson.

MR KAHANOVITZ: I don't want to take you through each one of those again but I can tell you that between the 18th of January and the 19th of April, you ordered ammunition on seven different occasions.  For what purpose were you ordering that amount of ammunition?

WOUTER J BASSON: Chairperson, that was for the members' own use, in respect of pistol shooting.  The ammunition was available and they repeatedly asked me to get it.  I often didn't attend to that and then they would remind me of it again and I - well from the calibres stated you can infer what they were, I obtained cartridges for them for their own private shooting exercises.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Were these their personal weapons?

WOUTER J BASSON: That's correct.

MR KAHANOVITZ: So for instance, someone would tell you "I've got a 9mm pistol, please supply me with ammunition"?

WOUTER J BASSON: It's possible, yes.

MR KAHANOVITZ: I'm not asking you whether it was possible, is that what you're saying happened?  This is why you were ordering all this ammunition?

WOUTER J BASSON: That's correct.

CHAIRPERSON: You did say earlier, I've forgotten to whom it was, that they asked you for a gun because he had to - was it Mr Botha, had to hand his back to the Police and then you got a handgun for him, but for his personal use you said and that would, when he eventually left, that would be deducted from his ...(intervention)

WOUTER J BASSON: Yes, that's correct.  Chairperson, I just want to say that I think Messrs Burger, van Zyl and Maree had their own personal weapons but Mr Botha at that stage didn't have his own personal weapon and whilst the other people had weapons and practised target shooting, he asked if the system could actually help him to also get a weapon.

CHAIRPERSON: What about the question - just while we're dealing with this, of him having a licence for that firearm?  After all he was now for all intents and purposes a civilian.  Let's assume that the police picked him up and he had this handgun and he's got no licence, would they trace it back or what?

WOUTER J BASSON: No, Chairperson, it wasn't a weapon which was unauthorised or which had no registration, or papers or whatever, it was money, an amount of money given to him to apply through the normal channels for a weapon and to register it in his own name, but the weapon just like the cars, would remain the property of the organisation and upon retrenchment the amounts were deducted by the State.

CHAIRPERSON: I was under the impression that he was actually given physically a handgun.

WOUTER J BASSON: No, that was not the case.

CHAIRPERSON: He was given money to buy one?

WOUTER J BASSON: That's correct.

CHAIRPERSON: ...(indistinct) a pistol scheme, a handgun scheme type of thing.

WOUTER J BASSON: That's correct.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Thank you.
	At page 9 of Exhibit M, your entry for the 14th of February, you'll see on that post-it note down the bottom there's an entry:
"Mugabe dead.  Proposals:  Mrs Behan (I assume that's spelt B-e-h-a-n)
you with me?

WOUTER J BASSON: Yes, Chairperson.

MR KAHANOVITZ: And you did that with the next page, the 15th of February, your note where it starts at the bottom of the page
"Letters written:  British Ambassador, Maggie, Pope, Queen"
you with me?

WOUTER J BASSON: Chairperson, I could refer you to the fact that this also relates to an external operation.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Well I'm going to tell you what project it was.

WOUTER J BASSON: Very well.

MR KAHANOVITZ: There's also an entry
"Jane Woods still visits different cells.  Jenny speaks to her brother in Zim.  Possible Chief of Prison to get detail.  Family becoming impatient and restless."
Now in January 1988 an unemployed man was hired by the CCB to park a car bomb in front of an ANC transit house in Bulawayo.  The man who was hired was blown up.  Five people linked to the CCB were subsequently convicted, arising out of this incident, and three of them were sentenced to death.  Kevin Woods, Michael Smith and Conjwayo, C-o-n-j-w-a-y-o - I don't have that person's first name at the moment.  Subsequently, on 28th June 1989, Dennis Behan was found guilty of conspiring to bring about the release of these people who'd been sentenced to death.  Correct?

WOUTER J BASSON: That's an external project, you know what my stand is on that.

MR KAHANOVITZ: The reference to - just for sake of completeness, the reference to Jane Woods is a reference to either the wife or relative of Kevin Woods.  The reference to Mrs Behan is probably a reference to Dennis Behan's wife.  Now I assume you don't want to answer.

WOUTER J BASSON: Correct.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Page 11, the entry
"Derek - Internal target list"
is that what you were referring to in your evidence-in-chief?  You said you received this list of names on a print-out.

WOUTER J BASSON: Chairperson, I refer to it in my diary as an internal target list because I was aware of a real internal list of targets which was in existence and that's in fact not an internal target list, it was purely a priority list in respect of internal activists.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Why call it a target list?

WOUTER J BASSON: Chairperson, that was the way I used to refer to it.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Yes, but normally your "spreektaal" in this diary is somewhat euphemistic.  You normally talk about so and so must fall over.

WOUTER J BASSON: That was my style, Chairperson.

MR KAHANOVITZ: So one assumes that when you call a spade a spade, it's a spade?

WOUTER J BASSON: Chairperson, yes that's the way I was trained, that's the way I referred to it.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Alright.  Page 12 ...(intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: Sorry, if I could just get some info about these lists.  What is a priority list?

WOUTER J BASSON: Chairperson, that was for argument's sake, it was an interpretation of intelligence of a whole series of, let's say organisation like for instance the UDF and all its subsidiary organisations.  There was a process in terms of which prominent people were identified and those names were minuted, listed.

CHAIRPERSON: And what's the point of a priority list?  What's it used for?  You know once you've got this list of names, what's...?

WOUTER J BASSON: I would say that in normal vernacular it could be interpreted as the biggest thorn in the flesh at that stage.