Special Hearings — Caprivi Hearings — 1997-08-06

MR LYSTER: The Fraser document as well also advocated the creation of guerilla forces as an important adjunct to a government's strategic force.  Now it's plain to see that the government adopted this strategy.  The political and military support supplied to Inkatha and other ant-revolutionary groups within and outside South Africa fell squarely within this strategy.  The SSC at its meeting of the 12th of May 1986 tasked the then Ministers of Defence and Law and Order to create a Third Force to effectively wipe out terrorists.  The security forces were further tasked with countering the underminers using their own methods and I think we should stress that particular passage out of the SSC Minuted, "using their own method".  It is entirely in line with what counter revolutionary writers have been advocating.  The SADF in an earlier document compiled by one Brigadier Ferreira of the office of the Chief of Army set out to a lesser or greater degree where this Third Force already existed and according to paragraph 6 of his document this Third Force was situated within the following organs.  The SADF's counter insurgency forces;  the SADF's Special Forces;  the SADF's Special Tasks;  the SAP's Security Police;  the SAP's counter insurgency forces and the SAP's Special Task Force

MR LYSTER: /elements.

MR LYSTER: 3A elements.  It was indeed the SADF's Special Tasks which supplied the offensive support to Inkatha, amongst other things.  It was also the DST that supplied military and political support to other counter revolutionary groups within the country and outside.  These included Renamo and Unita, the Lesotho Liberation Army and the Xhosa Resistance Movement in the Ciskei.  Now DST and the other departments mentioned in the Ferreira document set out to counter the revolutionaries using their own methods as directed by the SSC and in pursuance of this plan, leaders, activists and supporters of the ANC and UDF and allied organisations were targeted for elimination.  By way of an example, an aspect of Operation Marion involved the elimination of enemy targets and this I will deal with in some detail later and we have seen through amnesty hearings and other documents that have come to light that similar actions were carried out by DST's Operation Katzen in the Eastern Cape;  and operations of the SADF's Special Forces, the CCB and the SAP's C10 Unit or Vlakplaas and C4, Trewitts, which played a co-ordinating role.  Moving to the sub-heading, "The UDF as an internal revolutionary threat".  The UDF was seen by the State at the time as part and parcel of the revolutionary onslaught and the mass offensive orchestrated by the ANC.  Little distinction was made between the external and the internal threat and the UDF and its activists were accordingly targets for counter revolutionary actions and just as the State in those days hit using the harshest action against targets in neighbouring countries, they did the same within South Africa.  To give you an idea of how the UDF was perceived, I am just going to quote from a couple of

MR LYSTER: /State

MR LYSTER: 3A State Security Council documents.  Firstly, a 1985 document declared the UDF to be an organisation that was dangerous to the State which had to be neutralised.  It was further accused of fomenting unrest and directly and indirectly promoting the aims of the SACP and ANC.  According to another document produced in April 1986, the UDF was accused of being responsible for the systematic wiping out of recognised leaders.  Another document produced during that month, the UDF was singled out as the most important body in the internal revolutionary onslaught and I quote from that particular document -

MR LYSTER: "... although the UDF publicly distances itself from violence, the violence that flowed from UDF arranged actions was so intertwined with ANC terrorist actions that it was difficult to differentiate between them".

MR LYSTER: A strategy document that was produced and circulated at the 12 May meeting of the State Security Council also claimed that UDF members were trained in the handling of weapons and explosives and that the UDF had spoken out in favour of violence, so, Chairperson, it is clear how the State regarded the UDF and certain internal organisations at the time.  They were really in the same camp as the ANC and SACP, the outlawed organisations, carrying out their work internally, violently and politically and to expand on this, under the next heading, "The internal threat:  A spiralling revolutionary war situation".  The State at the time perceived itself to be in the midst of a war, a revolutionary war.  See for example a July 1986 State Security document quoting from an ANC paper that it had

MR LYSTER: /announced

MR LYSTER: 3A announced that it had taken the strategic initiative internally and was now in the final phase of a mass- offensive, a (people's war), but according to another document produced in April 1986, radical organisations were already engaging in a revolutionary war pattern.  Now according to an SADF general, Marius Oelschig, who was called as an expert in the Malan matter, he referred to the phases of revolutionary war and he quoted from documents as to how important it was that a state facing a revolutionary onslaught needed to know what phase that revolutionary struggle was in, in order to be able to determine the counter measures to be taken against the revolutionaries.  Now he described South African during the mid 1980s as going through a phase of revolutionary war which was going from terrorism to guerilla warfare and perhaps let's pause and look at what these four distinct phases are.  The first phase is organisation or mobilisation.  The second phase is terrorism.  The third phase is guerilla warfare and the fourth phase is mobile war, almost on a scale of conventional war.  So the State saw itself in that third phase during the mid 1980s or going from terrorism to guerilla warfare.  The State then adopted equally drastic measures, equally war-like measures to counter this threat including terror and guerilla warfare.  But, I suppose, one could argue in their shoes that perhaps any state would have adopted those methods and perhaps kept quiet about them, but we're not here to discuss the justification of taking such methods in a war situation.  Under the next heading, "Inkatha as a counter revolutionary force", the State saw a number of organisations as part of its own counter

MR LYSTER: /revolutionary

MR LYSTER: 3A revolutionary capacity and according to a State Security Council document produced during February 1986 and I quote -

MR LYSTER: "Structures such as Inkatha must be built up to be an obstacle to radicalism".

MR LYSTER: And in an April 1986 document, anti-revolutionary groups such as Inkatha was seen as part of the country's capacity in countering the revolutionary war.    Now I want to deal briefly with Inkatha's own political and military objectives and I think you will see that during the mid 1980s these coincided with those of the State itself.

MR LYSTER: Sorry, Mr Varney, before you continue.  If there are areas where you think you could, in a sense, paraphrase the material, we would be indebted to you, because as we have said time is of the essence.  I don't want to rush you through anything, but if you think there are areas which you could concertina and draw out the main points, I think that will be important.