Human Rights Violation Hearings — Moutse — 1996-12-02

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.  We are, obviously, very grateful that you, in this very, very short space of time, since Friday you were able to have taken so much trouble to try and provide us with what you have given us.  Obviously, I think my colleagues here will be, I do not know whether peppering you with questions.  They might not do that actually.  They might be nice or something.  Wynand.

MR MALAN: Mr Meyer, will you not spend some time on the different approaches to Moutse.  First the exchange of land between Lebowa and KwaNdebele idea, the incorporation of Moutse and, perhaps also, reflect on whether that was not a change of policy.  I mean did you have any knowledge at the time or would you talk a little about Moutse and the role of Moutse in both the failure of independence and the conflict generally.

ROELF MEYER: Chairperson, I again, have to say first of all that I have no direct or personal knowledge because I never dealt with the issue in any capacity.  So I have to rely on
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information that I could obtain over the weekend.  It seems to me that the whole Moutse issue, again from different perspectives, were very important to this whole sad development of the situation here because on the one side if, one can probably say if it was not for Moutse there would, in any case, not have been a homeland such as KwaNdebele.  That is probably true.

INTERPRETER: The speakers mike is off.

ROELF MEYER: On the other hand it is also true that by taking Moutse away from Lebowa and establishing it as part of KwaNdebele and making it, in fact, part of the KwaNdebele homeland was, certainly, a factor that gave rise to part of the conflict as it thereafter developed.  I am afraid to say that I do not have the detailed information available.  I guest some of it is, in any event, already produced to the Commission, but if there is any chance that I could help the Commission in this respect with more information, I would certainly try to do so.  My conclusion would, however, be that Moutse was, definitely, a very big contributing factor to the violence and the conflict in the area.

MR MALAN: Mr Meyer, if you will allow me to just pursue this a little further.  From our research what came to the fore was that the incorporation of Moutse was really a departure from the concept of ethnic independence.  The independence of people because at that stage it was clearly not a Ndebele majority, or it was not understood at the time to be a Ndebele majority.  Was there discussion about that in the party at the time?  I was there, but I do not want to give my evidence.  Maybe I should make my own statement at some time, but would you not reflect on that.  The change in policy and whether that did contribute to a total loss of
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belief in policy and whether that, perhaps, contributed to the changeover.  Would you not reflect a little on that.  Change from ethnic to geographic independence and consolidation.

ROELF MEYER: I tend to bow to the superior knowledge of the Commissioner, Chairperson, because as he correctly stated if I recalled correctly, he was directly involved in some of the work that was done.  Not negatively, but in a way that he a particular knowledge of the issue.  I think I can just say the honourable Commissioner is absolutely correct, Chairperson, in a sense that was, to my mind, a departure from the previous position that was held.  As it was also indicated by Verwoerd that the general objective was to create homelands and independent territories for people coming from the same nation or ethnic group.  That in this case. and this actually puts a question mark about the whole KwaNdebele, not so much on an issue of whether it has any substance in terms of its existence, but the question of what was the moral idea then behind creating a homeland like this one.  I think the honourable Commissioner was correct in making the deduction that it was a change in policy at that time.

ROELF MEYER: Chairperson, I would like to put one further question, but with your permission, I will do that later.  Let us first purse the policy line.

CHAIRPERSON: I took over from Fazel.  I am very sorry to have stolen your thunder.

DR RANDERA: Mr Meyer, I want to incorporate in my question something that was included in your submission, the submission that you talked about earlier on.  Mr de Klerk, when he spoke in Cape Town, talked about different periods
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in Nationalist Party policy and talked about the post 1978 policy in his term as a period of reform.  You said, also, in response to Mr Malan's question that there seemed to be a change in policy in terms of what Mr Verwoerd thought about homeland policy and what happened in the 1980s.  I just want to know in coming to those sort of decisions what methodology, if any, was used by the party in trying to determine what people's thinking was because today we have heard already the result of that policy change.  We also heard that for the people of Moutse, at any rate, there was a court case where they clearly, actually, said that they did not want to be incorporated into KwaNdebele at the time.