Special Hearings — Political Party Recalls — UNKNOWN

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: Chairperson I appreciate the question, but until a few weeks ago I believed that the three comrades who perished on the Phoenix railway line in 1988 perished while they were out on their way to an operation, all three died. It is through the work of this Commission that we have recently learnt that those three comrades had been apprehended by the Security Branch, shot in cold blood and taken to the railway line and then blown up with explosives. It's now clear, only now, almost nine years later through the work of this Commission that that operation was not an operation on the railway line. Yet if today we had not learned that information we probably would have listed the Phoenix railway line attack as an attack falling in category A of our list. That's one example. I could multiply that so many times over, but I am illustrating one aspect of the problem.
I want to give you an example that illustrates another side of the problem. Again through the work of the TRC Pila Ndandwe was kidnapped from Swaziland in 1988 was the acting commander of the Natal machinery, therefore she was privy to the knowledge of many individuals in the country and many operations which we would have never heard about because she disappeared in 1988. Even if she had a chance to meet one of us personally she may not have told us of some of the operations, and she left in circumstances where it appeared that she had gone to meet people from home. It is through your work, in fact after her disappearance reports were carried in the South African media suggesting that she was now an askari, and therefore the family and the ANC, many in the ANC lived in the belief that she had deserted the ANC to work for the enemy, it is through your work today we know that she died refusing to work as an askari and that she had been kidnapped from Swaziland.
Again you would say to me what was there in Swaziland in 1988? In Swaziland in 1988 we were operating in great secrecy. We knew we were being hounded by the enemy. We were at times operating in that territory as if it was part of South Africa. We have handed you reports that suggest a degree of collaboration between the South African forces and at one time the head of the police in Swaziland. Those were the circumstances we were operating. Inside the country I did not, even though I had a hot line to President Tambo, I did not list every bit of my activity, and if I had ended up the way Charles Sindaba and Mbusa Tshabalala ended up, as you have found, nobody would know what we had done. And many actions would be attributed to us.
The next point "false flag", Chairperson you now know through your work and through the work of many trials that an act that was portrayed throughout the world media and television which was a gruesome act, which was televised as the necklace murder was now, is now known to have been carried out by the regime's forces, but it was televised throughout the world as an ANC operation. The perception was there, until today, even when I speak to some people they are not aware of the finding and the confessions that show who did it.
The same thing has happened with many bombings and we are not sure. So what we have done is that we were prepared to say here is list 1, we are clear. List 2 we have described as uncertain. We are not sure whether it's bona fide, but we are saying that in any case if a bona fide ANC member says I am applying for amnesty I did this, we would look at that matter and try to verify the incident. So that's the cooperation we would like to offer you, that if at any time any applicant says I acted on the orders of the ANC we have given you over time the structures and the personnel who manned the leading structures and we will do everything to verify the particular act. But I thought I should explain the context in which these operations took place without going too long on the operational realities and the realities with regards to lines of communication.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Maduna.

MR ZUMA: Chairperson you know it's interesting that until we all got to know who were responsible for the bombing of Khotso House the powers that then were were blaming it all on the ANC, and assuming they hadn't come forward one Shelley Gunn would be behind bars maybe still today though she was very innocent, and two the ANC would have been blamed even today for attacking Khotso House. We now know that it was none other than a former Minister, Adrian Vlok and police officers whose main responsibility in this society was to ensure that all of us were safe who participated in attacking and bombing Khotso House.
The same applies to the Eikenhof operation. We now know who were behind it. So it goes to show that as we dig deeper into the truth a whole lot of these are indeed going to become clearer to all of us as a society.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Mr Kasrils.

UNKNOWN: Thank you very much. I just want to add a little bit about the statistics, because if you look at the numbers here Archbishop, there are approximately 95 listed operations under Appendix 5, that's about the number and that's over 11 years, 11 years in a major struggle which was becoming more and more intense. We've got the other list and that list is approximately 500 operations. So my arithmetic makes it approximately 16%, 15, 16% of operations here which we are very honest about - we are just not sure.
Comrade Maharaj has pointed out the difficulties we operated under and just to keep this in context for ourselves and what we at headquarters in Lusaka or from a forward area, be it Botswana or Swaziland were faced with in terms of keeping track and contact with our operatives who could be anywhere in the country infiltrated back some explosive material and arms, given an operation to carry it out over a period of a year or more to try and set up other cells, try and find ways of keeping in communication with us, it just broke down, and very often we weren't sure. And that is the case till today. And that's why we put this list in the way it is.

CHAIRPERSON: Okay. You are not going to say everything I wanted to say has already been said but I'm going to say it.

UNKNOWN: Not at all. I think there is an important context I would want to add here, which I think is important to look at why other operations would be described as uncertain. There was a very clear strategy from the regime, one, to distort some of the operations, in some cases to carry some operations themselves and pretend they were carried out by us, and one example was a very intense interference with operational material, so that it exploded prematurely, it kills cadres, it hits wrong targets. But also due to their infiltration to influence particular operations, to hit wrong targets deliberately.
There are two points that I would just like to make an example of, a car bomb in Durban wherein the police became part of the planning of that operation, to divert it from a military legitimate target ended up killing three civilians. At the beginning before we knew the information we thought it was a mistake, but later we got to know that it in fact it was deliberately planned by the police, and that two agents were operating, reporting to them differently on the same matter. So whilst instructions were given on a very legitimate target but they were able to influence the final results of it because of the information they had. And we could give a few of such.
Now I think it is important to take that context as well. It was not just because these actions were not known in the majority of cases, that in fact some of the operations you hesitated to claim if there was no clarity because of the interference that was done by the police. That was the addition I wanted to make.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. I had wondered whether we should let - Wynand Malan.