Amnesty Hearings — Bloemfontein — 1997-05-12

PIETER JAKOBUS GOUWS: Chairman, the application of Mr De Ru, I have read about it in the press, I have heard about it through various means and ways, but the act as such or the acts that he is applying for, the detail about that, I don't know, so I am going to talk about the background, that is all I can give you.  Background relating to your question here specifically the police, the security forces, then in a broader term farmers relating to security and I think you are implying actually during that period 1989, 1991, 1992 perhaps that Mr De Ru referred to earlier here today and so I will then basically refer to that period of time.  Chairman, I became a Member of Parliament during the 1989 election in a rural constituency and I got quite a lot of support.  I became or I was a Member of Parliament representing the Conservative Party, it was the first time that the Conservative Party won that specific constituency and the basic reason I would say was that I got a lot of popular support.  Why am I saying this is that I made security, better living conditions, security of the people of the rural areas, etc, I made it a priority during my election campaigns.  Then as we, as a Member of Parliament I addressed numerous public gatherings right across the Free State and I would say most probably I have addressed every little town one or other time during the next two to three years, or addressed gatherings in these towns.
	And very often this question of security in the rural areas came, you know, as one of the pertinent questions, then secondly based on the strong viewpoint I had on security and other matters relating to the rural areas, I was elected President, no, I was not elected, I stood for President of the Free State Agricultural Union in 1990, I was not elected and then I was elected on that basis in 1991.
	So, the point I am trying to make is that security during that period of time and specifically security of the farming community, the older people in the farming community and then in the more rural communities, was stressed by me and by a number of other people.
	The reason for that is that we have had political slogans doing the rounds, like for instance Mr Peter Mokaba would come on TV so often and say "Kill the Boer, kill the farmer", and then I am talking about Boer with a capital "B", implying actually to my mind Afrikaners and farmers would indicate the farming community as such, in other words to my mind he referred to Afrikaners and the Afrikaners who would be in most cases then farmers as such.
	Not only Mr Mokaba, other people too.  Mrs Winnie Mandela made utterances that the farming community should not be taken lightly and when I am talking about lightly, that they should be regarded as enemies of the specific political party and so perhaps I can refer to other incidents.  Enough to say that the general perception was that specifically APLA but also MK amongst the farming community, would go for the farming community, they would make it their purpose to drive the farming community off the farms, I am talking about the White commercial farmers, to drive them off the farms.  To instil fear in the hearts of the farmers and to see if they couldn't disrupt the economic activities of the rural areas.  And about this I spoke very often.
	It was regarded so serious that we had a number of mass meetings where a total farming community of the Free State were called together, and I think the first ones could have been here in the early 1990's in Kroonstad.  We had during the next number of months other meetings where the farmers attended in mass and we spoke about security and the farmers were very angry about the lack of security that they had.
	Then what we did further was and specifically when I became President in 1991, we asked the farming community to protect themselves.  We asked them to unite with the police force and with the security forces and to form farm watches where we, to form farm watches where we could control the security situation within a certain limit where we thought that the security forces didn't do the job adequately.
	But during this period of time, and I am referring during 1989, 1990, 1991 specifically, we put a tremendous lot of pressure on the police force.  I, at many, many occasions said that the murders of the farmers, the attacks on the farmers based on the brutality of the attacks, based on the fact that most cases only weapons were taken, and thirdly that in most cases that we have been told or that I heard, very little else had been removed out of these homesteads, out of the farming communities.

ADV MADASA: Sorry Dr Gouws, if you could go a little bit slower please.

PIETER JAKOBUS GOUWS: Sorry.  Chairman, perhaps I should switch to Afrikaans then I could go slower.  I will do it, but perhaps then that would make the translation a little bit more difficult, perhaps it is better that I should continue in English.  Is there any specific ruling in this regard or preference?   No preference.

JUDGE WILSON: I think it might be easier from the recording point of view if you stayed in one language, but if you feel uncomfortable and want to change ...