Special Hearings — Helderberg Flight Special Hearing — 1998-06-01

CHAIRPERSON: Ja, okay, before you proceed, as is customary, I will ask Commissioner Wildschut to swear the witness in, but before we do that, Mr Van der Veer, let me welcome you to these proceedings.   For the record and for your own benefit, the panel consists of, to my left, Commissioner Glenda Wildschut, who is the commissioner and a member of the Reparations and Rehabilitations Committee.
 I am a Commissioner, I am in the Human Rights Violations Committee and I'm head of the investigative unit.   
 To my right is Mr Magadla, who is head of special investigations in the operational side of the Investigative Unit.   
 To my extreme right is Christelle Terreblanche, who I believe you possibly have been talking to.   She is assisting in placing all evidence before us in this matter, and with her is Dr David Klatzow, who is a forensic specialist and who has been contracted to come in on as a consultant to the TRC.
 I need to indicate that this is an investigative inquiry, it is not a tribunal, it is not a hearing, it is not a court of law, it is not a trial, it's an information gathering exercise.   All evidence that has been taken down in this inquiry, which is of a probing and investigative nature, will remain confidential.
 If and when a finding has to be made, and there are persons who might be prejudiced by evidence that has been led in this inquiry, an opportunity will be given to them to make written representations and if needs be to have the witnesses who have made allegations detrimental to them brought before this inquiry for purposes, or brought before the commission for purposes of limited cross-examination.   However, for the moment any evidence that has been taken in here remains confidential.   For that very reason, therefore, only members of the staff of the commission and those conducted by the commission, and people invited or subpoenaed to be present and/or their legal representatives need and are permitted to remain during the course of the proceedings.
 The proceedings are taken seriously, evidence is taken under oath, and persons who give evidence in terms hereof are committing themselves to obey, and therefore we expect and always, in the majority of cases, have been able to get people who have given evidence to us with due regard to the seriousness with which they must convey and supply information to us.
 I will, therefore, unless you have something you want to put on record, Mr Van der Veer, before we commence, I would like to ask Commissioner Glenda Wildschut to administer the oath to you.

GLENDA WILDSCHUT: Mr Van der Veer, do you have any objection to taking the oath?

GERRIT DIRK VAN DER VEER: No, I don't, but I have a question (inaudible).   Oh, that will help.

GLENDA WILDSCHUT: Yes.

GERRIT DIRK VAN DER VEER: Sorry.

GLENDA WILDSCHUT: Please will you direct the questions before we take the oath?

GERRIT DIRK VAN DER VEER: My question is that obviously there will be a recording of the proceedings, will I have access to that after this session?

CHAIRPERSON: Ordinarily, no, but if, as a consequence of any, as I indicated earlier, if we are going to be making findings on the basis of any information that we have collected here, and it may be findings of a nature that have, on the basis of which adverse inferences may be drawn about you, for instance, then in that event, it would be necessary for you to be provided with all the information, including a transcript of these proceedings, together with whatever else has been said to your detriment, so that you
have an opportunity to rebut whatever allegations are made against you, and in fact to cause such witnesses as may have given evidence about you and against you, detrimental to you, to be called so that you can subject them, either by yourself or through your legal representative, to limited cross-examination.    So it really will depend, but ordinarily, and I think the commission has the power to do so, I wouldn't find any reason for a well motivated case, that you should not be given transcripts of the proceedings.

GERRIT DIRK VAN DER VEER: Thank you.   Another question please, and that is that it says here in the document that I got that you may want, or I must submit to having things, or the evidence published.   Is that correct?

CHAIRPERSON: Sorry?

GERRIT DIRK VAN DER VEER: I say that somewhere in the document here it says that you reserve the right to make, it says that
"The commission may require you to take the prescribed oath or to make an affirmation that the proceedings shall be recorded and may, subject to the provisions of section 29.5, be made public by the commission"?

CHAIRPERSON: Yes, ja, that is what the law says.   As I have been indicating to you, this is the process.   Ordinarily, and I want to emphasise that, this process is a process where evidence taken from deponents is confidential, that is why it's restricted, it's not a public session.   However, the commission is empowered by the law, sub-section 5 of section 29, to make all or some aspects of the evidence collected in terms of this process, public, but before this happens, all who would be affected by such publication are given an opportunity to make representations, and it may well be that one of the representations would be, for instance, by you to say, "I do not consider that it would be either in the public interest or in my interest that such information should be made available to the public, for these reasons", and you set them out, and a decision will not be taken until an opportunity has been provided to any person who might be adversely affected by the publication of evidence gathered in these circumstances is given.   So, for instance, if you are asking the question, will you be confronted tomorrow by anything that you have said here, my answer is no, there would have to be a commission meeting, and the next commission meeting will be somewhere in June, and at that commission meeting a decision would have to be taken first as to whether evidence gathered during a section 29 process into the Helderberg ought to be made public.   The commission would then take that decision and then a resolution formed, but then it does not mean the following day it would be in the public domain.   We would then say, "Who has given evidence here?   Dr David Klatzow, Mr Gert van der Veer, etcetera, etcetera".   We would then now send notices to all of those people, "Look, we are about to publish the information that was gathered from you on a confidential basis.   Do you have any representations to make?", and then you make your representations.   So it is going to be a process.

GERRIT DIRK VAN DER VEER: No, I'm not worried about the publication, sir.   What I'm only saying is that if it is published, then it mustn't be selectively published, and all the evidence should be put.

CHAIRPERSON: Very well.

GERRIT DIRK VAN DER VEER: I'm sorry, I haven't got a legal adviser, but I just want to satisfy myself on these points, because we talk about transparency... (intervention).

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.

GERRIT DIRK VAN DER VEER: ...and then one would like to see that.

CHAIRPERSON: No, I haven't got a problem, Mr Van der Veer, we would really like to you to be well aware what the process is and we welcome you having made the inquiries that you did.

GERRIT DIRK VAN DER VEER: Thank you.

GERRIT DIRK VAN DER VEER: (sworn states)

CHAIRPERSON: May I just also indicate that if you want and you are at home with Afrikaans and you would like to give your evidence in Afrikaans, feel free to do so.   We have a group of translators here who do simultaneous translations and we would therefore be - they would indicate - but if you are happy to testify in English - what I'm saying is, our preference in the commission is that people should testify in the language in which they best feel they can do so.