Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 2000-03-14

GEORGE BIZOS: I want to suggest to you that this is a sort of adding untruth upon untruths.  Were you questioned about a number or only one "kleuterskool", or kindergarten or creche, whatever it may be called, were you questioned only about one such a school in Athlone, only one, or did you believe that there were others that you didn't know about and you chose to speak about the one you didn't know about and withheld the one that you knew about?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: Mr Chairperson, I think that I have already answered that question.

CHAIRPERSON: I think the answer - the thrust of it, correct me if I'm wrong Mr Verster is that when you made this statement, you were aware of the bomb at the Early Learning Centre.

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: That is correct.

CHAIRPERSON: When this question was put and it looks like these questions were received from the police to your advocate who was going to do the statement, privately I take it, just the two of you present?  You didn't have a policeman standing listening?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: I do not think so, Mr Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: And then he said well you'd better not admit - or if he didn't say it to you, you must have understood him to say:  "You'd better not admit being involved in the Early Learning Centre bomb, let's play around with this word "kleuterskool" and say that you're unaware of it.  Is that ...?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: No, he did not say that Chairperson, the attitude was that the question was put very badly, so you do not have to answer it like that.

CHAIRPERSON: But if an Early Learning Centre is referred to as a "kleuterskool" and the building that was blown up was the Early Learning Centre, where's the ambiguity in the question?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: That was the advice at that stage and this statement was prepared just like this.  I did not prepare it and I signed it at that stage, due to the infighting that was happening.

CHAIRPERSON: So you were being - you believed that the other structures were making a scapegoat out of the CCB, they were putting all the blame...?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: In all the documentation that is available to you, this can be seen in declarations and in statements, Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Bizos.

MR LAX: Just before he does, can I just clarify this for my own benefit?  You knew that this question was directed at the Athlone Learning Centre.  However, because it was poorly constructed, as your advocate described to you, you saw a way out of not answering the question.

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: No, I did not see the way out.  There were circumstances within which there was a first phase of the legal team that was appointed and then I was told to go to the second one and what happened then is that it could have happened that my legal team was withdrawn from me and he gives me advice and I acted on the advice.

MR LAX: The simple question is, what do you think that question was designed to ask you?  I mean looking at it in plan English, or plain Afrikaans, what do you think it was designed to ask you?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: If I look at it now then it looks as if it is just about the explosion at the specific point, but technically, legal technically ...(intervention)

MR LAX: I'm asking you in plain language, not legal technicalities here, you understood it as a lay person when you read that question, isn't that so?  As a professional soldier what did you think they were asking you?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: Exactly what stands there.

MR LAX: Yes and what were they referring to, which explosion?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: It is the one that we are now applying for amnesty for.

MR LAX: And the fact of the matter is that on legal advice, you didn't answer it truthfully.  Yes, or no?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: I answered it on advice, as they told me to.

GEORGE BIZOS: Well there is a great logical difficulty in your answers about this pressure to be untruthful.  If I understood you correctly, the pressure on you was to admit things in order to exculpate the army, I'm sorry, in order to exculpate the police and the Intelligence people and all the other shenanigans that they may have been committing, that was the reason for the pressure that you have spoken of, isn't it?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: That is the case, Mr Chairperson.

GEORGE BIZOS: Yes, so they wouldn't have put pressure on your to deny that you do something.  If they wanted to put pressure on you, that would be to pressurise you to admit rather than deny.  Doesn't that follow logically?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: No, that is not the case.

GEORGE BIZOS: Well we speak of logic in different languages and worlds, but the reason why you lied was because you and others decided that you were going to deny that you committed anything internally and you relied on an interpretation of the Commission's terms of reference, that you were not, it was okay to speak about the outside but you - the inside, but you would not speak about the outside, but in order to avoid liability, you lied to His Lordship Mr Justice Harms in the statement, you lied in your evidence that you gave before his Lordship Mr Justice Harms and that for the purposes of furthering the big lie that we did not wrong within the country.  What do you say to that?  Have you got any comment to make?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: Yes, I do, Mr Chairperson.  That was the whole reason and the whole dispute why the Harms Commission existed.  That was the reason why the police's deeds was given to the CCB and this is why the financial plan was changed and distorted so that it could look as if there was a distinction between internal and external operations and this is the reason, and this is what the dispute was about.  Well we treated it as a counter-insurgence war and when it was made public, it was pretended that the CCB had committed the police acts and everything else and everything was blamed on the CCB and within this dispute, this situation was then created.

GEORGE BIZOS: "They finished up with ...(indistinct) and that is the reason why I lied".  That would have been the complete answer, wouldn't it, but you left that out.  That was the reason that you lied deliberately, in order to hide the fact that you committed acts of terror within the country, to use your own language.

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: That is not the case.  I worked within an approved structure but the politicians did not want to accept responsibility for this.

GEORGE BIZOS: Yes, but that is the reason why you lied, in order to hide the fact that you've committed acts within the country, yes or no?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: I have already answered him Mr Chairperson.

GEORGE BIZOS: You appeared to be a proud Colonel who would not let your men down, have I characterised your attitude correctly?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: I don't think I have to answer that.

GEORGE BIZOS: Well, I'm going to submit that that is how you presented yourself up to now, but in denying that you knew anything about this, you let your men down because your men had truthfully said that they committed those acts on your orders.  You lied in order to put them into further trouble as having committed unauthorised acts and now you admit that you did authorise it, so where is this proud, truthful Colonel who served his country with such distinction?  Any answer of comment?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: No comment.

GEORGE BIZOS: Yes I thought you wouldn't have.  But you see it goes further that it isn't only question 51, but question 52, 53, 54 is more specific.
"Who initiated this project?"
		Answer:  "See question 51."
I should really say:  "See question and answer 51", which was a repetition of the false denial, correct?  Let's get on with it.  It is correct, it's obvious.  Don't you want to give an answer?

PIETER JOHANN VERSTER: No comment.