Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 2000-06-12

MR KAHANOVITZ: Now, the strange thing is that Calla Botha also says that you offered Mr Barnard money to kill Adv Omar.  Please turn to page 6 of bundle B, the third paragraph.
	The third paragraph you will see, Mr Botha says in his statement, he is talking about the Omar issue and he is talking about what Mr Barnard had told him.  He says -
"... At a later stage I heard from Ferdi that he was approached by van Zyl to gather information relating to Omar, so that Peaches can then shoot Omar.  An offer was made by van Zyl to Ferdi for R50 000-00 to kill Omar."
	So we can accept that Mr Barnard has told Mr Botha about the offer, and Mr Botha is now repeating in his sworn statement, repeating details about the conversation that he had with Mr Barnard?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: It would appear so, yes.

MR KAHANOVITZ: And once again you would say that is not true?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: Absolutely.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Now, the Court in S v Barnard has found that Mr Barnard was indeed equipped with the Makarov pistol with the silencer, where did he get that gun from?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: I do not know Sir, you would have to ask him that.  He definitely did not get it from me.

MR KAHANOVITZ: What you will no doubt admit to is that considerable pressure was being placed on you to get the job done after Peaches had been delaying for several months now?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: That is so.

MR KAHANOVITZ: If you just needed someone to monitor Omar, let me, before I ask that question, you have already said in your statement or in your earlier evidence that you were aware that Ferdi Barnard was persona non grata in the CCB because Joe Verster had decided that he was a security risk?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: That is so.

MR KAHANOVITZ: If you just needed someone to monitor Adv Omar, why would you risk getting into trouble with Joe Verster, go out on a limb and hire Barnard?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: It was a decision I had taken.  I admit it was undisciplined, but I did it.

MR KAHANOVITZ: I am not interested in it being undisciplined, I am putting it to you your version doesn't make any sense.  I can understand circumstances where pressure is put on  you to make sure that Adv Omar is assassinated, you need a good man to do the job.  In those circumstances, you might risk bringing Barnard in, because you know he is an accomplished murderer.  But it makes no sense to take that kind of risk merely to hire Barnard to go and do monitoring down in the Western Cape?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: I differ from you, Sir.

MR LAX: Sorry, you didn't answer the one question which was, why did you make that decision?  All you said was you did make it, you didn't explain why you made it.  Can you remember why you made that decision?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: Naturally Chairperson, I wanted to execute the project regarding Omar and at that point I thought it good to involve Ferdi, so that he could help with the monitoring so that I could make adjustments if it were necessary in order to execute the project.
	This is the reason why I used Ferdi and Ferdi approached me shortly beforehand as I had already given evidence, and he offered me his services relating to information.  At that point I thought it good and I thought that this would be the suitable occasion to involve a person of his calibre at that stage, to help me.

CHAIRPERSON: Was he going to get paid for his services?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: I gave him a total amount of R7 000-00, Mr Chairperson, and out of this he could possibly have received R2 000-00 as compensation for his services, and the rest was for plane tickets and hotel accommodation.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr van Zyl, you were a successful policeman in your time, when you were at Brixton Murder and Robbery, a good policeman, why didn't you go yourself and do this simple act of monitoring?  You weren't worried about being a white person in Athlone, because you said that wasn't a problem with Mr Barnard, one would imagine it is fairly straight forward to monitor somebody, especially a policeman, a person with your background?
	Why spend R7 000-00, getting in somebody who your boss doesn't like, or trust, as it was put by Mr Kahanovitz, as a persona non grata, why not just do it yourself?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: Because it was prescribed to us specifically that we should not get involved in the execution actions, or that kind of action, we had to use agents to gather the information for us, and to give execution to approved contacts, because we wanted to determine cut-off points, because we did not want to run the risk of being identified ourselves.
	Myself for instance, being identified in Athlone.

MR KAHANOVITZ: But Mr van Zyl, that version makes no sense.  Mr Barnard couldn't possibly be what you would call a "cut-off point".  Mr Barnard is, if he gets arrested, is going to be immediately linked to the military establishment?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: I agree with you, he was not the appropriate cut-off point, because he knew my identity, but I think that at that stage, I trusted him that if it had happened that he would be identified at the house of Omar, that he would have been able to give an alibi without connecting me with the instance.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Mr van Zyl, I am not only talking about you, I am talking about the risk that using someone like Mr Barnard would have, to the interests of the military establishment.  In other words, I can understand if you say "well, if some gangster from the Cape Flats get arrested outside Adv Omar's house, you can say this person's got nothing to do with us, we know nothing about him", if Mr Barnard gets arrested outside Adv Omar's house, well, you cannot do that?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: That is so, but this is what I am trying to explain to you, that I was relying on it that if Ferdi had been confronted by the South African Police, because he hadn't done anything wrong, he couldn't be arrested, according to the instructions that I gave him, they could not arrest him.
	If he had been confronted by the South African Police, he could have given them an explanation so that it could not lead back to me or the South African Defence Force.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Mr van Zyl, this was the middle of the State of Emergency, correct?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: That is so.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Right, in the middle of the State of Emergency you hire a former policeman, who is a convicted murderer, who is on the payroll of the South African Defence Force as a safe person to have monitoring Adv Omar's house?  Is that your version?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: That is correct.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Hadn't Mr Barnard and Mr Botha, they had got into trouble already when they were monitoring the home of a certain Rowland White, do you recall that incident?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: That is correct.

MR KAHANOVITZ: The Police came around, they wanted to know from these two strange gentlemen what they were doing, sitting outside the house of Mr White?  Remember?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: Correct.

MR KAHANOVITZ: And I assume your superiors were not very happy about that?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: They weren't happy, but those are things that happen.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Didn't Mr Botha get placed on ice?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: That is correct.

MR KAHANOVITZ: So you were going to do a similar sort of thing again, a few months later?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: I did it.

MR LAX: Let's interpose for one second.  I am a bit puzzled here.  The reason you didn't do it yourself, because you had specific orders not to do that kind of thing.

ABRAM VAN ZYL: That is correct.

MR LAX: But you also had specific orders not t use Barnard?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: That is correct.

MR LAX: So what, either you obeyed your orders or you didn't, how come you chose to obey one and not the other?

ABRAM VAN ZYL: Well, I broke the one rule and I said it right at the beginning of my evidence, and I cannot deny it, and this is why I am giving evidence about it.