Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 2000-09-28

FERDINAND BARNARD: Well Mr Chairperson, I did not want to make any revelations, initially I said I was not interested in that.  I looked at the whole issue surrounding Dullah Omar and Bishop Tutu, that if Slang van Zyl incriminates me in any way, I would then create a safety net concerning the TRC process, that was my whole idea, I would support him in all his applications, up until the second appearance in front of the Commission.
	I am not proud about what I did, not about anything.  I was misled, I am disappointed in myself, in my naivete and it is something that I have to live with, but at the end of the day, I am in a situation currently where I spend 97 percent of the day in solitary confinement.  This is the situation for the last 27  months.
	I have been in prison now for three months, longer than three months and where I have spent 27 months in C-Max, which is South Africa's Alcatraz.  I am detained under these circumstances.  You can compare it with sitting in this berth in which the interpreters are sitting, to be let out between eight and eleven in the morning for three hours' exercise, you have to wash your clothes, you have to shower and you must come back.  The point that I am trying to make is that psychologically all these issues started bothering me, but I wanted to play the game as I did before, I wanted to continue with the fraud and the lies, still up until the second part of the sitting.  Something happened here that really touched me, and if you will allow me, I will quickly describe this to you.
	By nature of the situation, when something like this happens to one as had happened to me, I played the game, all the way with everyone, and then everyone left me.  I am in the situation where I received an instruction from Slang van Zyl, but he himself came and testified against me and I got ten years' imprisonment.  No one forced him to do so, no one made any threats against him.  He came to me that morning at the court and said "good morning", went and sat in the bench and put me away for ten years.
	This wasn't the only evidence which caused damage.  There was the Judge and he is not stupid.  This is a man, he could see, who came from the system, who knew what was going on, so he would make the link with Webster and all the other things that he was testifying about, by nature of the situation.
	The same with Lafras Luitingh.  He did the same and Righ Verster, three persons who gave instructions to me, who were more senior in the organisation than I was.  All three testified against me in my criminal trial and sent me to prison.  And all of them are walking about freely outside.  For no moment would I want 35 more people to come to prison.  I cannot really see how that would promote reconciliation, and I do not want to be part of that.
	A large proportion of what I am doing here today, is because I know that this is evidence which cannot be used in criminal proceedings.   What made me come here to tell the truth is basically the straw that broke the camel's back.  Since the first session at the Head Office, as I was led in and out, I was the closest to the gallery where the victims were seated and I watched them closely.
	I saw that they were doubtful, that they were frustrated.  I could see that they were enraged when they saw that someone wasn't speaking the truth and I began to ponder these things.  What happened to me personally is when I walked passed them every afternoon, although they were angry at the witnesses, I don't blame them, I would have felt exactly the same way, perhaps even more so, every afternoon as I was led passed them, they greeted me in a friendly manner and wished me well.
	Most prominently Dullah Omar's wife, Mrs Omar.  At first I thought that they were being sarcastic, as if they felt that they had me in a position.  I thought that they were relishing in the moment, that was the impression that I had.  Indeed that was not the case.  Upon the second occasion, here, as you can recall it was in winter, and there were queries which were made by Mrs Omar, and she wanted to know why I didn't have a jacket.
	Upon a following occasion she wanted to know who was feeding me, and this doesn't come from my own people, they went to the hotel during the day.  No one here from my own people was worried whether I had anything to eat or not.  You will recall in the first session last time, Calla Botha wasn't here, there were only two people who were supporting me.  In three years no one from DCC or the CCB, no one from the entire Security set-up came to visit me once in prison, with the exception of Mr Calla Botha who came to see me every month and Mr Chap Maree.
	Both of them have supported me both financially and otherwise, and then it would take those who suffered as a result of my deeds and my offences, who came to me and put the coals on my forehead.  They performed acts of kindness towards me, while I hurt them.  They were worried about whether I was warm enough, whether I had enough to eat, and what I realised here is that these people were offering a hand of reconciliation to me.
	It upset me tremendously, I lay awake at night in my cell from that moment onwards, night after night.  When I arrived here the following day and walked passed again and Mrs Omar said to me that I must have a good night's rest and that she would pray for me, it was a dam wall that burst within me, and at that moment, I decided that under no circumstances could I ever return here and lie further to these people.
	I hope now that what I have said here today, will help to relieve the burden of uncertainty, especially when it comes to me.  By nature of the matter, I am deeply regretful regarding what I had done.   I am not trying to put the blame for what I have done, on anybody else's shoulders, I did what I did and I believe that there must be retribution for what I have done.  I took lives and there are irreversible consequences as a result of this.  I injured others, I tried to kill others and I have a deep sense of regret regarding what I did, not the fact that I was caught, but it has become so much more important than this for me.
	I do not wish to insult the amnesty process in any way, but if I were to be granted amnesty for anything that I have done, it would be of academic interest and there is only one place for me to go after this, and that is C-Max and solitary confinement.  There is no way in which I could walk out of these doors and go elsewhere, I know that.  For me it has become sufficient enough and significant enough, that I reconcile with the victims, that I have the opportunity to express my regret for what I have done to them.
	They are much better people than I am.   I would like to put all of this behind me, I want to do this for my own peace of mind, and for my own state of mind, and for my own conscience.  I have friends who are supporting me, people that were not part of the world that I was involved in, they have supported me since day 1.  They have stayed with me since I was locked up, to this very day.  They have told me to speak the truth, every single time.  They encouraged me to submit applications, I went against the advice of my parents and my friends because I was stubborn, because there was something in me that was preventing me from walking with you one day and selling you out, the next.  I simply cannot do that.  To me it is like climbing a mountain, what I have done here today.
	What Mrs Omar and the others did for me, awakened sentiments within me which meant that I could no longer see my way open to come here and lie.   For me it is not about putting Joe Verster in a precarious position, I don't want him to go to jail.  I don't want the spineless politicians to go to jail, although I must admit that someone like Roelf Meyer and Pik Botha would look rather good in one of the C-Max jump-suits.  I have thought numerous times that it would be quite pleasant to see them, just for a week in C-Max, so that they could see how it feels.
	But I don't want all of us to be sitting there, 45 in a row, every morning in C-Max.  What kind of reconciliation is that?  That isn't reconciliation, I don't want that.  I want the politicians who betrayed us and who sold us out, just to come forward and say, like Siphiwe Nyanda who is the Head of the Military, who had everything to lose.  I sit in my cell and I read what that man has done.  He accepts responsibility for his people who didn't even act under his direct instructions, collectively he comes forward and he says "that man did this and that.  I was in command at that point in time, in that area, and I will accept full responsibility for what he has done".  Why can one of these persons like Pik Botha who is a real chameleon, I have seen him running over to the ANC now, he is an adder, the ANC must be warned, "if you let that man into your circles, you will be bitten".
	Furthermore he is a war criminal and a diamond smuggler, along with Jonas Savimbi, he is also a war criminal.  Then there is Roelf Meyer who sold me out completely on TV.  He didn't even know that I was working for DCC, but what happened was when this whole thing burst with the Goldstone Commission, Roelf Meyer went and issued a statement and said that the Military didn't know anything about me.  But when he realised how big and how sensitive the thing was, that it had to be discussed on the highest of levels, they came to me with a document that I had to sign so that I wouldn't embarrass the Defence Force and so forth and just shifted me around.
	Roelf Meyer was the one who composed the documents.  I had to shift.  In the meantime he lied to Aziz Pahad on TV and I watched this, I watched him sell me out.  I watched him say "we know nothing about this man, he is a calculated criminal, he is a liar", they are the ones who sponsored the very likes of me.  But there he would sell me out.  I am not alone in this.
	Kevin Wood who was in Zimbabwe and who is being detained in a high maximum security institution, they all did these things for the same reasons as I.  They were betrayed in exactly the same way as I.  I have two of Kevin Wood's letters to me.   I brought them with, if you wish to see them, you can read them.  I will explain the essence of it to you.
	I just want to sketch to you what we are dealing with in terms of the politicians, such as Pik Botha and FW de Klerk.  FW de Klerk makes as if he didn't have anything to do with it, I would like to tell you that he is the biggest conman on two legs.   He is the biggest conman, he has conned the international community to such an extent that they gave him the Nobel Peace Prize, which I feel is a slap in the face to Nelson Mandela, if ever there was one.
	Slang van Zyl, who has been touring around testifying against everybody like the Boswell Wilkie Circus, who gave the same evidence in the Wouter Basson case; FW de Klerk who states that he didn't know about the existence of the CCB, it was the most interesting thing that I had seen in a long time, the following day in the newspaper, after Slang van Zyl gave evidence, I listened the afternoon before on 702, but the following day in the newspaper, there was a report which stated that FW de Klerk has come out of his corner and has stated that this proves indeed that he did not know about the existence of the CCB. 
	Chairperson, he would start off in such a way that would make even an Olympic champion jealous of such speed.  It is like two children saying that they didn't steal the biscuits.  He must have known.  How could anybody still believe to this very day that these politicians did not know what we were busy with?  But they refuse to admit it.
	Do you know why?  It is because they are sitting in the front rows with healthy pensions, no one can touch them, they system is engineered in such a way that nothing can be attached to them.  What is the problem?  They don't have a problem.  Kevin Wood writes to me that for 10 years he struggled to have his South African birth right recognised by the former National Party government, the very same people who abused him and put him in the situation that he is in today.
	When the ANC took over, in 1994, and this is in his letter, my Advocate has it in his possession, in his own words, he has written me this in the last two years, the ANC government was established, and within three to four months after the application, the ANC government came along and he writes -
"... then a black government did the honourable thing".
	He wrote a letter to Pik Botha.  Pik Botha was then the Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry, and he responded and he quotes in the letter to me on what date the letter of Pik Botha was sent to him and that Pik Botha wrote that it is regrettable that he is in the situation that he finds himself in, after justifiable official operations were conducted.  He sent that letter to Alex Boraine of the TRC and Mr Pik "Chameleon" Botha went and misconstrued everything and told Alex Boraine that he simply did that in order to improve the circumstances of the people up there.  	He didn't mean to give official recognition to such persons, and this is what we are dealing with.   
	Kevin Wood isn't even asking to be released, he is asking to be transferred to South Africa, that is all.  Our own people are betraying us, there is no way in which they will help us.
	The same with FW de Klerk and Roelf Meyer, Neil Barnard from National Intelligence.  He stands there with that little face of his, all he needs is a halo, he stands like a little "voortrekker" waiting in line for sweets, but he is actually the devil, he is the devil because he is the physical person who is responsible for the situation that Kevin Wood finds himself in.
	He isn't concerned with anything or anybody, he denies the very existence of these people, and that is how it continues.  I have deviated from the path somewhat.