Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 2000-03-15

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: Mr Chairperson, it was a whole run of events that came together which as I said started with Dirk Coetzee and then later on there was an incident I think where Mr Ferdinand Barnard was locked up etc., but where I came to the realisation and the reason why I mentioned it to you previously is that we had a meeting with the intelligence section in Pretoria where I met the chief of the army and one of the legal teams, I can't remember who, approached me with a document with something like thirteen folios of incidents which included things like burning someone's vehicle and throwing a handgrenade and all sorts of incidents and because I knew that we were only the initial phases of our development, I immediately realised that these thirteen folios, these incidents were the incidents of the police and they were then blamed on us and these were virtually all the things that Eugene de Kock's organisation had done and if one looks at the documentation of the Harms Commission you would see that it was an investigation against murder gangs and focus was then placed on us because we did this and it was concentrated on the CCB to cover up what the police really did and all the allegations that was made against us then later came out in the courts.  The attempt then at that time was to create another structure.  The word CCB, it was within my documentation.  I've said it so often, the CCB factually never existed other than inside the Defence Force but in the Stratcom plan of the CCB, the CCB was taken and it was then presented as a small sinister organisation that stood to the one side and in essence when all the members retired from the South African Defence Force, we as it also appears in the documentation, we became the organisation and in this way we functioned and this was a way to make a plan, there were a few ministers involved here, the higher structure of the Defence Force was involved, the cheating with the financial authorisation and this is the key to the whole internal problem and this is that the authorised plan in retrospect was then changed.  So it could appear as if the State never gave authorisation for internal actions.  In other words it was a planned activity and we by means of this, we became the enemies of the previous government and we are the enemy of the current government and we had to then stand in for many projects of the State.  If someone in Krygkor made a mistake I think there was in the press at some point the Masterbond incident and they alleged that it was a CCB operation.  In other words it was a plan that had been made due to the change in the political situation.
	I just want to mention an interesting point.  The CCB was started, if one reads the book of Nelson Mandela, when the CCB was started, then P W Botha started talking to Mr Mandela in jail in 1986.  In other words it shows you the double agenda and the manipulation that happened then.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.  Mr Hockey?

MR HOCKEY: Thank you Mr Chairperson.  Mr Verster, let me just come back to my question and I must just state that the indication is and the evidence is that you have previously admitted this during the Section 29 hearings that there were about 170 to 200 incidents of the CCB or projects of the CCB.

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: That is about how I remembered it.

CHAIRPERSON: That's internally, is it Mr Hockey?

MR HOCKEY: No, no.

CHAIRPERSON: Generally the whole world-wide.

MR HOCKEY: In total.

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: That is correct but I just want to qualify that.  I think that in that document I also said that this means that it is a project for someone to start a business enterprise.  A project is for someone to purchase a premises, a project is for someone to start a process.  In other words it is not war everywhere.

MR LAX: Can I just interpose for one second?  But whatever a project was it was something that ultimately you, as Managing Director had to manage in one way or another?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: That is correct.

MR LAX: So it was something that entertained your time or your energy and your managerial functions?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: That is correct.  I just have to add, Mr Chairperson, the political changes in the country happened so quickly that it was too fast for the development of the CCB.  There was an instruction that the CCB on the long term would have to dig itself in and that would mean that there was strategic planning to create a buffer around the republic of civilian personalities.  You would then prevent that the threat inside the country would become too big.  So things just started to develop too quickly.

MR HOCKEY: Can I just ask you Mr Verster, the operation in the then South West Africa, now Namibia, was that part of internal or external operations?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: That would be an external operation.

MR HOCKEY: Now of these projects that you mentioned, how many of them were for the fulfilment of the main purpose of the CCB, more or less?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: Everything was aimed at the disruption ...(intervention)

MR HOCKEY: How many were directly linked to offensive projects?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: I cannot say this off the top of my head.

MR HOCKEY: In the Section 29 hearing or it was held at least half of all the projects were not directly linked to offensive operations?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: If I said it like that then it is more or less at that time.

MR HOCKEY: For the record that is in paragraph 399 of the Commission's report.

CHAIRPERSON: Sorry, what page Mr Hockey?

MR HOCKEY: The pages are not numbered, Mr Chairperson, but the paragraphs.

CHAIRPERSON: It's Exhibit D you were referring to?

MR HOCKEY: It's Exhibit D.

CHAIRPERSON: Exhibit D that was handed out yesterday.
What paragraph number?

MR HOCKEY: 399.

CHAIRPERSON: Exhibit D, the extract from the Commission's final report.

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: That is a summary, that is not my statement but I can accept it.

MR HOCKEY: Especially the offensive operations were obviously discussed in your inner corps, do you accept that?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: No, it was only within relation of every region where it was discussed.

MR HOCKEY: When it came up to your level?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: That is correct.

MR HOCKEY: After the operations was the operation evaluated?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: We did discuss it afterwards, we called it an evaluation.

MR HOCKEY: How many deaths were reported during these operations?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: No, I cannot tell you.

MR HOCKEY: Were there deaths reported?  Killings in other words?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: There were.

MR HOCKEY: Can you give us an estimate as to how many deaths were reported?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: No, I will have to look at in total context so I'm not prepared to answer.

MR HOCKEY: The number of deaths, were they significant?  Are we talking about two, three?  Isolated deaths or are we talking out of deaths in excess of a hundred, thousand, can you please give us some indication?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: No Mr Chairperson, I told you that our aim was to bury ourselves in in the long term and it was very limited.

MR HOCKEY: Mr Verster, Sir, on Monday Advocate Bizos asked you who the Regional Managers of the different regions are and you couldn't name any.  Do you remember this?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: Yes but after that we discussed specific cases and then I gave an indication of their names.

MR HOCKEY: It was only when this Commission report, a paragraph from the Commission Report, Exhibit D, was pointed out to you that you immediately identified some Co-ordinators and managers?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: That is correct.

MR HOCKEY: Now besides these mentioned, Co-ordinators and managers mentioned in this document that was pointed out to you, can you today or did it come back to you who the other managers and/or Co-ordinators were of different regions that were not mentioned?