Special Hearings — Armed Forces Hearings — 1997-10-09

MR LAX: Thank you Chairperson.  One last issue just struck me and that was yesterday when General Viljoen gave his address and his input he characterised the SADF as a politically neutral organisation, would you comment on that in the light of what you have said earlier?

UNKNOWN: Mr Chairman I think the SADF was far more politically neutral, but now I am talking about the SADF as the huge organisation, the SADF was far more politically neutral than the South African Police.
 I think if you study the history of the South African Police, going back to the Transvaal Republic, and it's got a proud tradition which it takes right back to that time, to the South African Constabulary, it's a military, was a military force and it was in support of political aims and objectives, and the Security Branch particularly was a political organisation.  
 But I must add that special force elements, covert counter-insurgency, counter-revolutionary war elements in the defence force were also very much political in the broad sense.  But the organisation itself was far, far more politically neutral than the South African Police.

CHAIRPERSON: Major Williamson thank you for attending, for your frank answers to our questions and if - we have all the documents that you've given us, we obviously will study them very carefully and I hope that if anything occurs to us that we could follow that up and perhaps get additional information from you, and in particular with the one question that we left undone.  Thank you very much indeed again.

UNKNOWN: Thank you Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: I call now Brigadier Oosthuizen and whilst he's coming to the podium could I excuse myself from this hearing, unfortunately I have other things I have to attend to now and I've asked my colleague Mr Ntsebeza to assume the chair, thank you.

MR LEVIN: Mr Chair may we too be excused?

CHAIRPERSON: Yes of course, thank you very much, and thank you for your attendance.
MR NTSEBEZA TAKES OVER THE CHAIR

CHAIRPERSON: Advocate Visser are you representing Brigadier Oosthuizen?

UNKNOWN: Indeed and as well as Brigadier Schoon who is still to come.

CHAIRPERSON: Oh yes, thanks I just wanted to establish that.

UNKNOWN: Yes Mr Chair, Mr Oosthuizen, Brigadier Oosthuizen is available to give evidence now.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes we will go straight into your testimony Brigadier Oosthuizen and I will ask Commissioner Lyster to swear you in.

UNKNOWN: (sworn states)

MR GOOSEN: Mr Oosthuizen doesn't have any statements as we intimated this morning, he can go ahead straight and answer questions Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: Very well, Advocate Visser. Advocate Goosen?

MR GOOSEN: Thank you very much Mr Chairperson. Brigadier I'm going to ask the questions in English as I've indicated.  I hope that that is okay with you.  If you want me to ask any question in Afrikaans please indicate it and I'll repeat it in that. But obviously you can answer in Afrikaans if you wish to.  Thank you very much.
 Brigadier Oosthuizen I'm not going to deal, and we've made this quite clear and we've kept to it, I'm not going to deal with the substance of factual matters or anything in that nature or even identify the instance in respect of your amnesty application.  I'm going to deal however just with the motive or perspective that you put forward in that, just so that, and that's really the essence of these inquiries.  You indicate in that particular document and in respect of the matter that you've sought amnesty for that -
"Normal legal options regarding arrestation of student leaders was impossible due to the intimidation of witnesses and fears of informers and police officials to take any further actions against these leaders became the focus of new activities which anyway increased the intensity of activity of other unrest related actions",
 Now that is indicated as a background and in consequence of that certain acts were authorised. I'm not going to go into the detail of that. Would you give an indication to the Commission about the authorisation provided for the conduct of what would otherwise be unlawful or illegal activities in your experience of that within the Security Police, in the period that you were in the Security Police in D Section.  How did that authorisation work and come about?

UNKNOWN: Mr Chairman, to answer the question I would have to go a bit wider. In the first instance it was true that against the background of the threat at that stage the legal option was always considered the first option.  Depending on the degree of threat it was also true that other options were also executed and these included illegal actions.
 It is also true that the operatives on the ground like myself, we also served on various security committees.  The documents discussed here were not made available to the operatives but the heads serving under these joint committees returned with specific orders and the orders were very broad and vague and it would be something like, the situation must be controlled at all costs.  It wasn't that authorisation was given to kill people but it meant that a variety of options could be considered and this variety of options included legal and illegal options depending on the nature of the threat.
 To answer your question it is very important in this case that you refer to that at that stage the legal options had been used up and the execution of the option did not occur inland or internally but even if it should have happened internally then the actions of the people involved, I don't want to go into any detail, but if the lives of police were being threatened, and some of them had been killed, then illegal options were used after the legal options had been exhausted and this included killing people.

MR GOOSEN: Thank you very much.  In those circumstances, given how you would understand how a particular instruction or authorisation would emerge, how could you as an operative then be sure that you would, in exercising an option which was unlawful, how could you be sure that that action would in fact be authorised?