Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 2000-03-17

ABRAM VAN ZYL: Mr Chairperson, I think that scenario number two would be more applicable in this case rather than the first scenario or the third scenario.

CHAIRPERSON: I don't think those scenarios cover each and every option available as there's three, there might be ten options?  It may be two and a half or one and a quarter?

MR KHANOVITZ: Can I just clarify Mr van Zyl, are you saying that at the time you agreed to comply with the plan to eliminate Mr Evans, can I just understand correctly, you're saying you did know that he was an enemy of the State?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: No, what I'm telling you is I accepted and assumed as I understood the system in the CCB, the way we worked, that when a name was given to me that I should concentrate on as in this case with Mr Evans that he had been identified properly as a target by the people who were working on that level and whose function it was to do that.  Mr Chairperson, I was an operator, my functions were to give operational execution, my primary task basically was to give operational execution to certain instructions and that is why I'm saying that I think scenario two is more applicable.

MR KHANOVITZ: There's a second leg here, the first leg is what we've discussed, is this person an enemy of the State.  The second leg is you'll agree with me not every enemy of the State needs to be killed?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: I agree with you.

MR KHANOVITZ: Did you know why Mr Evans had to be killed as compared to say having his window broken?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: No, I received my instructions in this way and I accepted my instructions as such and I tried to execute them in that way.  I do not know if there were alternatives, it was not discussed with me.  Unfortunately, I cannot answer that question for you.

MR KHANOVITZ: Mr van Zyl, you will agree with me that as somebody who is either not obliged to obey an unlawful command or as somebody who doesn't even fall under the concept of superior orders you have a choice as to whether or not to comply with an instruction to facilitate the killing of someone such as Mr Evans?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: Mr Chairperson, I tried to explain it this morning that we were an organisation and a cell structure who within that organisation was specifically created there in order to maximally disrupt the enemies of the then government.  It was not expected of us and I understood with this and it was presented to us during courses and it was said to us that in certain cases it could mean that such a person would have to be eliminated.  I associated myself with this and it doesn't take a very intelligent person to understand what was said to us during that course.  I accepted it like that one hundred percent that that was part of an approved structure and that under the circumstances the necessary protection would be given to us if we required it and that is why I executed those instructions.  We were not there to organise a tea party with the enemy.  We had to do what other forces, being the Police or the Defence Force or National Intelligence, did not have the competence or what they could not do, we were told that we would be acting against targets, against whom the other forces could not act in such an effective way, so we were seen as a more effective way to act against the enemy or the then enemy of the then government.

MR KHANOVITZ: But Mr van Zyl, how can you possibly justify agreeing to assist in the elimination of Gavin Evans in circumstances when you don't even know why it is that he has to die?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: I think it is a matter of obedience, I think it's a matter of naivete, I think it is a matter of we were all brainwashed to a large degree at that time when it was done.  I know today that what I did back then is wrong but I mean how can I sit here today and tell you ten years afterwards in a totally different South Africa and tell you about why I thought back then it was correct other than saying to you that I had an instruction and I felt that that instruction had to be executed within the set up that I was employed.

MR KHANOVITZ: Mr van Zyl, I want to put it to you that you personally had no political motive for wanting to murder Gavin Evans.  You couldn't have had a political motive because you didn't even know why it was that he had to be killed?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: I would differ with you in the sense that although I did not have personal knowledge of what the things were, the good things that Gavin Evans did and what the wrong things were that he had done, if he had done any wrong things. I'm saying that I accepted that as the system that had been created to act against the enemy of the Republic of South Africa, against the then National Party, if a person was identified by that structure and he was the pointed out to me as a target then I accepted that it was for a political reason, I accepted that it was done to protect the government of the day.  How can that not be a political reason?

MR KHANOVITZ: But Mr van Zyl, what you're saying amounts to the following.  If Staal Burger gives me a name and points me in that direction and says here's a name of this person, go and kill this person, I just accept that that person is a legitimate target, I don't even need to know why it is that they have to die.

ABRAM VAN ZYL: Let me put it in this way that in the case of Mr Gavin Evans, in the case of Mr Omar, in the case of the Early Learning Centre, I think sufficient proof existed that they were persons or that they were structured that form part of the then let's call it enemy, so I do not want to - I see myself as a reasonably intelligent person, I think if Staal Burger came to me in the early '90s or in the late 1980's and told me listen, go and kill F W de Klerk or go and kill someone who didn't give me any indication that he could possibly have been an enemy of the State then I would have differed with him.

MR KHANOVITZ: But Mr van Zyl, the truth is and I'm going to show you your own version, at the time that you agreed to participate in Mr Evans' assassination on your own version you knew next to nothing about who he was an what he did?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: That is so.

MR KHANOVITZ: Is that so?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: I say that I knew very little apart from the fact that he - my information was that he was part of structures who functioned against the then government but what he did exactly, all the nice things and all the bad things I was not aware of that.

MR KHANOVITZ: But on your own version you didn't even know that he was part of structures that were operating against the government?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: No, I made a statement in 1990 in which I said that he was part of the End Conscription Campaign structure and that there was connection between him and Hein Grosskopf, how could I have said something like that?

MR KHANOVITZ: Because you found out about that after you'd agreed to participate in the scheme to eliminate him.

ABRAM VAN ZYL: There is no evidence to that effect.

MR KHANOVITZ: If I might just have a minute?

CHAIRPERSON: Yes certainly.

MR LAX: May I just pose something that has occurred to me?  I just want to turn to the example you gave of say F W de Klerk as being a target.  What I have difficulty with is this.  If the very system you relied on identified F W de Klerk as a target, why would you have differed from it, why would you have refused to obey such a command?  It was your job?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: Let me explain it in the following way, Mr Chairperson.  I mentioned the name of Mr F W de Klerk as an example.

CHAIRPERSON: Let's say the target was a seven year old little girl, don't go an kill that, a little girl who you don't know anything about, what would your reaction have been, I think this is the thrust of Mr ...(intervention)

ABRAM VAN ZYL: I would have refused to execute that instruction.

CHAIRPERSON: What Mr Lax is asking you is why would you, because you've now been given an order to kill?