Amnesty Hearings — Klerksdorp — 1999-05-10

MR RUDOLPH COMMITTEE: Chairperson, thank you very much for this opportunity.  It is the first time that we have really been given the opportunity to put the case of our people.  At the outset, I want to tell you that I am here because I am a farmer, I am not an Afrikaner.  The word "Boer" in Afrikaans and Afrikaner is sometimes confused and that is why it is so that no notice is taken of the freedom struggle or liberation struggle of the Boer people.  Further, I also want to say that I am not a supporter of the government.  I do not trust the government and its structures, but I would like to make use of the opportunity to put our case here today.
	In 1996, after a television debate between the Minister of justice, Dullah Omar, I wrote a letter to him and decided to apply for amnesty.  Mr Omar thought well, in his debate on television, to divide people into two categories who are going to apply for amnesty, namely those who fought for apartheid and those who fought against apartheid and therefore I notified him that as regards the Ventersdorp matter, I was going to apply for amnesty because we were at Ventersdorp, not to fight either for or against apartheid, but for the liberation of the Boer people which was of great importance to us at that stage.
	I also told Mr Dullah Omar - and that is the matter I want to raise here, because then you will know where you stand with me, I wrote to him and told him that I would like to know whether, if it was for or against apartheid, who did Stompie Sepei die for, was it for or against apartheid?  Our motivation was the reinstatement of the Boer Republics, which in 1902 was taken away from us by Great Britain.
	Since 1902, the Boer people of which I am a part, have been involved in a freedom struggle and our Republic has never yet been given back to us.  For a second reason I want to refer to Mr de Klerk's meeting at Ventersdorp that evening and that was to speak to him about the political prisoners who at that stage were still in jail and some of them are still there today.
	Let me just remind you, Your Honour that on the 18th of March 1991, I was released after the Groote Schuur and Pretoria Minutes and I was definitely released mainly as a result of the inputs from the ANC.
	Sir, I also went there to speak about the squatters, but before I get to the squatters I just want to tell you that on the 6th of April 1991, Mr Chris Hani, the late Mr Chris Hani and Mrs Winnie Mandela had a meeting at Church Square in Pretoria and there Mr Hani was quoted as having said that there cannot be peace in South Africa before all political prisoners have not been released.  That was one of the reasons for the motivation which took me there.  Just before the meeting of Mr de Klerk at Ventersdorp, there was also the matter regarding the squatters at Goedgevonden.  It was, and is still today a very emotional matter, people who just squat on land which belongs to other people.
	This brings me to the point I want to make.  I do not think that your Committee will be able to see justice done if one of our requests, or my requests, is not complied with.  What I told, or wanted to tell Mr de Klerk that evening was exactly what I have just told you, and that is that we did not go there to fight for or against apartheid and to demonstrate against apartheid, but simply for our freedom.  Mr de Klerk chose to destroy us.  He employed his forces there and thought well to set the police on us in an unbridled manner.
	In the beginning, I told you Mr Chairperson, that the freedom struggle of the Boer people is a struggle just like any other liberation struggle, the same as the one the ANC had.  We can quite easily compare our struggle to that of the ANC.  In the activities of your Commission and the TRC, you have made use in certain cases, of minutes from the State Security Council in support of that which you envisaged and I quote from Beeld of the 2nd of August 1997: 
"86 meeting in which FW was present made public, Cape Town.  The TRC quotes from the minutes of the State Security Council in order to make its standpoint that Mr de Klerk should have known about the gross violation of human rights by the Security Forces."
And then the minutes are being dealt with.  I am not going to deal with the whole thing.  They were dealt with in  minutes of April 1986 in which, where Mr de Klerk was present and these are now made public for the first time at this meeting under the heading: 
'The Reinstatement of Law and Order'
... was referred to specific objectives under which, in order to neutralise enemy leaders, eliminate them and break the influence which they exerted.  According to the Commission, the ...(indistinct) positioning of elimination only means one thing, namely murder.  In order to, under this objective, they are referring to grabbing operations, turning operations, legal action, arrest and prosecution and detention without trial and linkings with the Security Council had to be avoided at all costs.  And then, furthermore to, by means of legal action, to place legal action on people and give out interdicts against Security Forces and to financially destroy them and get them involved in long and very expensive legal action.  
	On our side as well, so called right wing side, we were exposed to the same situation.  We were placed in the position by the freedom or liberation forces in which disinformation was spread about us, our labour spheres, in our places of work.  We were prosecuted by the Security Police, there was intimidation, our families were bothered and in some cases even led to divorce, where families were destroyed.  The same situation that we know today as a result of your Committee's proceedings which apply to the ANC, they have applied to us as well.
   On our way, Your Honour, and I want to make it very clear to you, we also had to deal with the Adriaan Nieuwoudt's, the Roelf Venter's, the Jack Cronje's and those who wanted to promote the objective of the National Party and denigrated us in the process.  We were also affected at Goedgevonden.  At Goedgevonden where I was not present at all, a card of mine was picked up and the newspapers made a great deal about this.  I am just mentioning this to show you how they acted against us.
   If we want justice today, then I do not think that with my appeal I can go much further than to say that if we are not going to make a plan to get Mr FW de Klerk to testify in front of this Commission, he must come and say why he went to Ventersdorp with so many policemen as well as the Defence Force.  He must come and say why the Town Council of Ventersdorp, which took a lot of trouble to try to neutralise the question, the matter of the Ventersdorp incident, why the Town Council of Ventersdorp were not given an answer.  
	I want to read to you a letter from the Town Clerk, Mr G R Herman, which he wrote on the 9th of August 1991, the day of the Ventersdorp incident which was addressed to the Police Commissioner:
"Action by Security Forces in Ventersdorp.  Now the town clerk says, amongst others, the Town Council acknowledges the fact that security measures must be limited but are these measures which are taken in Ventersdorp, out of order seen as the Honourable State President as acting on behalf of a political party and not in an official capacity as well as seen in the light of the fact that the general electorate will not have access to the meeting.  It is not a known thing that the Security Forces act in a town without informing the Town Council either in a formal or informal manner."
Unfortunately, I do not have copies of these but I can make them available at a later stage.

CHAIRPERSON: We can make arrangements for copies to be made at a later stage, Mr Rudolph.

MR RUDOLPH: Yes, surely.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, that will then be Exhibit A and the quote from the Beeld will be A and the letter will be B.