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

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Kasrils can I just say that one of the disadvantages of having a panel, rather than one particular person, is that we may stray into the possibility of having many answers to one question, so if you could restrain or confine yourselves, I know it's difficult and I know the questions we are asking are not pleasant, but it would help us.  Thank you.  Mr Kasrils.

RONNIE KASRILS: Thanks.  I am just going to make one sentence in a statement here.  General Viljoen is being duplicitous, he's being duplicitous, because Chairperson the SADF of Viljoen, of all the generals, they were in two minds about how to handle the situation.
 We all remember them using that phrase coined by the Americans in Vietnam, "we ought to be winning the hearts and the minds of the people".  They were split.  They were schizophrenic.  Because the struggle built up they tried naked terror and violence Mrs Burton, in response to people attacking houses etc.  They realised that was just breeding more resistance to them.  
 So the generals, and we remember it was the generals, said we ought to be using the approach of winning hearts and minds.  But of course the people of South Africa weren't prepared to accept that formula.  The sweets that were given to kids etc whilst at the same time people's rights were being crushed.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.  Yes, Mr Lax.

MR LAX: Thank you Chairperson.  I want to just focus on - you made reference to the 1988 speech, in August 1988 in fact, and inherent in that was a statement that said that where civilians were the sole object of an operation that should be avoided at all costs.  Now how was it going to be possible to differentiate between sole object, general object, people caught in the crossfire and so on?
 And what mechanisms did you as an operational command have in place to try and ensure that that didn't happen or to in some ways censure the fact that it might happen?

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: Chairperson in our presentation, main presentation we have said that there was always, throughout the
struggle, a tension between the easy route and the principled policy route that we had articulated, and the matter would often be debated.  Part of the benefits of that debate is that every generation is being schooled through that debate.  And all MK cadres, their schooling and military training started with political training.  
 But the statement that was made in August '88 by the National Executive Committee is in the context that what was happening in the country that it looked like civilian targets were being attacked, as pure civilian targets, and it looked like it was being done by us.  That's what the media was saying.  And we were no longer sure.  Today we know, today we know many of them were false flag operations carried out by the security forces that General Viljoen is talking about.  Nonetheless in that situation we have to give a political guide, and I am saying, we repeated it, we said the NEC -
"...expressed concern at the recent spate of attacks on civilian targets".
And in that context reiterated its position.
 However, at an operational level, and we've explained this previously, in great detail, taking the Church Street bomb in Pretoria.  Target - South African Air Force headquarters, located in a commercial area, timed, now we can't say because the headquarters is located there at that stage of the struggle leave them 
alone, they are bombing us from Maseru to Gaberone to Matola.  They are bombing township after township in the country and we have to get to them.  So we targeted it at a time when they knock off and come out into the street.  As it happened the bomb went off prematurely.  But even if it went off on time I accepted there was a possibility that some civilians would have got killed, be it a stray passer-by, somebody from across the road coming there if there was a bus stop, or had arranged private transport to give them a lift.
 Now Kabwe had said you need to op against the enemy forces, the restraints that we have put on ourselves are actually restraining us from advancing the struggle, but very calculatedly you need to go forward.  So that's where the problem arises.  
 But for the public now, the question that Mr Goosen has been asking, you were mobilising the masses to go into uprising, one clear guideline came up.  If the target is solely civilian - no.  Then the refinements arise operationally, and there is no book of rules and regulations that you could have written to encompass every situation that would arise operationally.  That would arise from the way we linked up with the masses and what leadership we take, and even there operationally problems would arise where you would need to sit down and very carefully analyse what you are trying to do and what are the likely consequences.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Lax.

MR LAX: If I could just follow that up, I hear you, I hear the difficulties of operational command, we heard that from Apla themselves and we heard how difficult that became as the struggle intensified, as more and more people were recruited and training became less intensive and more difficult as the struggle intensified.   But what we are trying to gain an understanding of in essence is, take for example the so-called notorious Magoo's bomb where the vast majority of victims were civilians in that particular instance.  We've heard that that was a last minute decision to change the nature of the target, the specific place.  Cadres on the ground made those sort of decisions, what sort of censure in the light of what subsequently happened came from the high command when it became apparent that this was a bit of a mistake in a sense, what steps were taken?