Amnesty Hearings — Durban — 2000-01-17

MR LAX: With respect, that evidence wasn't placed before us at all.  In fact something quite to the contrary was placed before us in Gen Steyn's evidence because Steyn's evidence was that he shouted in the radio, he was asked:  "Did you communicate with these people?"  You see, I've been through this record quite carefully over the weekend and Steyn indicated, yes, no he shouted, "We're following them, we're on this place, we're on that place" and he had no doubt, Steyn was quite clear in his mind that other vehicles were following behind him and the only way he could have been clear about that was if he heard them on the radio because he didn't see them, he was just aware that they were there.

MR VISSER: Chairperson, with great respect, Steyn's evidence was that when they noticed the car, he shouted over his radio that they're observing the car where they were.  He told you quite explicitly, he didn't know who heard him, he didn't use normal radio procedures, he just gave the information.  There is nothing on the evidence before you and Steyn was never asked whether anybody spoke back to him, whether anybody enquired anything of him or whether the Task Force came back to him and said to him, "Well, don't worry, we're right behind you."  What Steyn told you and what Botha told you and what Wasserman told you about the Task Force motor cars, you must accept was evidence which they realised and it came to their knowledge ex post facto.  Wasserman for example got out of the kombi and went towards the Cressida.  Then there was firing.  That's probably the first moment that he realised that the Task Force was even there.  The same evidence Botha, Botha couldn't tell you and he kept on saying:  "It's possible they were there, I don't know" and Steyn's evidence is in the same vein, Chairperson, with great respect.

CHAIRPERSON: The picture that you have in your mind, that the vehicle driven by members of the Task Force was close behind the kombi or close behind the car driven by Botha?

MR VISSER: On the evidence Chairperson, it seems that more than one vehicle of the Task Force were somewhere behind both, all three of those vehicles, somewhere behind.  The picture that the evidence creates to my mind, is one of a lot of cars on the road, members of the public and here is the Cressida and two vehicles trying to get to it.  It takes some time and then they get next to it by swerving through the traffic, they get next to the Cressida and the picture that one is left with, in my respectful submission, is that the Task Force is somewhere either closely or a little bit further away, but they're there.  That's the picture.  Because that would fit in with what we know happened, according to Wasserman later, because as that kombi came to a standstill and the Cressida had bumped into it and Wasserman and Lembede had jumped out and that must have taken a very short period of time, there was basically, on questions that Mr Lax asked, there was basically no time before Wasserman realised that there was going to be shooting, so they must have been just there, but behind, all three of those vehicles.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

MR VISSER: Yes.  Chairperson, Mr Webster appeared for three of the families he told you at the beginning.  It now appears that he is acting for all three the families, judging from the evidence led this morning and he made certain points in his cross-examination and placed some matters in dispute by doing that.  We have to deal with those in the sense of alerting you to those points and giving you a brief reply thereto.
	The first point that was made, Chairperson, was that Exhibit A, which serves before you, the general background document, is not applicable to policemen but rather to the South African Defence Force because policemen were not involved in a war.  Now Chairperson, it's not necessary for Stalin's organs and bombs to explode around your ears to be involved in a war.  This Amnesty Committee has found on more than one occasion that there was an intense war in this country during the struggle of the past, although not a declared war and that is our submission, Mr Chairman and as far as Exhibit A is concerned, that has been drafted specifically with policemen in view and that is specifically based on the evidence of van der Merwe and Vlok which had been accepted by the original Amnesty Committee in each of the applications of Jack Cronje and Hechter in their Amnesty Decisions, Chairperson, all of them at page 1 on the first page of their Amnesty Decisions.
	We also say Mr Chairman, that Exhibit A has been accepted as being applicable to policemen without reservation, by various Amnesty Committees thereafter and it deals entirely with the position of policemen, not the SADF.  We've never appeared for the SADF.  We have been given to understand, Chairperson, that all we had to do was to refer to the facts in Exhibit A, without the necessity of evidence and that was not only in the Cronje decision at page 2, lines 10 to 12, but also during a meeting on the 5th of February last year where Judge Wilson presided and to which we've already referred you and Mr Chairman you yourself, in the record at page 9 line 21 to page 10 line 3, also stated this position quite clearly and I don't intend to waste any further time on that issue.
	Mr Chairman, next, the issue of having been of the intention and having decided beforehand by the applicants to eliminate the victims and not to arrest them. Chairperson, I have basically now dealt with that issue and I can take it no further than that, other than repeating, Chairperson, that on the probabilities, this is not the way seasoned policemen would have gone about it, if they wanted to eliminate these people and least but not - another aspect which is not unimportant, Mr Chairman is the evidence of Wasserman.  I forgot to make a note of the page reference, but Wasserman told you that they thought, on the information which they had, that the victims would be armed with AK47's and with hand grenades and he says that if the intention had been and my attorney has just given me the passage, if the intention had been to eliminate them, he wouldn't have gone there with his service pistol, he would have taken his R1 rifle.  The reference to that is at page 694, at the bottom of that page of the record, 694, it starts a little earlier but I'm going to read from the bottom, Chairperson:
"

MR VISSER: If you knew that you were going to ambush and kill four terrorists, what would you have used as a weapon to do that with?"
Over the page at page 695,
"WASSERMAN:  Mr Chairman, I would have taken my R1 rifle.