Special Hearings — Armed Forces Hearings — 1997-10-08

MR CILLIERS: This is of course an objection, you are the author and responsible for your own procedure but we want to submit and we want to emphasise that it is of the utmost importance that you in fact listen to the submission of General Viljoen, and I understand the time limits that you have but it's very important that the submission of General Viljoen is presented to you before you listen to specific evidence on specific aspects in order to give you the understanding and enable you to understand and evaluate the evidence that you will receive in a proper perspective..  I would submit that it is really of importance that you rather proceed for a short further with General Viljoen after the tea adjournment, instead of proceeding after you received in fact, all the evidence.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.  We will consider that during the adjournment and will report back accordingly, thank you.

MR COETZEE: Can I just - my name is Etienne Coetzee and I appear on behalf of inter-alias General Geldenhuys and Admiral Putter.  They have been subpoenaed and are going to be witnesses I understand later on in these proceedings.  I support my learned friend's application.
 I think it is in the interest of my clients specifically that this panel gets a proper perspective, which is the intention of these hearings before specific questions take place at a later stage and I think it's in the interest of the whole hearing that a proper submission be made at this stage, it be heard in full and thereafter specific witnesses asked questions.  And I support my learned friend's application, thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.  That has been noted, thank you.
COMMITTEE ADJOURNS
ON RESUMPTION

CONSTAND VILJOEN: (s.u.o.)

CHAIRPERSON: Could we come to order?  We have considered the request made to us by legal counsel and a strong believer in negation politics, we've negotiated to compromise.  General Viljoen informs us that he needs another 10 minutes, I'm going to give him 15 but we will have to make that absolutely quite rigid otherwise we simply aren't going to finish today.  So General Viljoen, we're in your hands.

GEN VILJOEN: Chairperson, thank you very much for your leniency.  I ended by showing to you the development mainly in 1986 and I just wanted to say to you that this to us was a real worrying factor because previously we were fighting a military kind of was in bush, in isolated situations.  Here we found the war overnight or within a couple of months, completely transformed.  The protection was our responsibilities,  We could not send our troops in uniform into the townships because if you send a man in uniform there they are immediately seen, so, we had to find some other ways of operating in the townships but not being seen in the townships.
 The pressure of the Government was also heavy because the Government also had a responsibility especially towards their 3rd tier Governmental officials which were entitled to protection.  The revolutionary climate within the townships grew and the whole operation became most unpleasant.  And the flow of intelligence was very, very difficult and we had to do some special arrangements in order to get the flow of establishments going again.
 So we therefore found from 1984, but especially from 1986 onwards, a situation where the operations had a complete new character characterised by a total disregard of human values and thereby causing permanent damage to the human kind that we worked with.  I've shown you the transparency on the damage done, just think about the damage on education, the damage on the attitude of the people, just think about the damage done in reconciliation, the problem that we are faced with today.  
 This to us was difficult - how to approach this thing because in approaching this thing we have to be very careful because in the application of the just war tradition we had to bear in mind as to how do we react on this because if we now start fighting terrorism with terrorism, it would be equally bad as the terrorism itself.  I'm referring to a piece from the source material and I want to read this, it is a French peasant ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: Page number?