Amnesty Hearings — Boksburg — 1998-06-17

MR LE ROUX: Not publicly Mr Chairperson.

MR LANDMAN: Do you consider Mr Terreblanche to be a brave leader who is able to speak his mind?

MR LE ROUX: I consider him as a very good speaker.  Just with regards to your previous question, the Sweepslag did acknowledge that the Bree Street explosions, they accepted responsibility for that and the Sweepslag was the mouthpiece for the AWB, it was the paper of the AWB.

MR LANDMAN: Who is Mr Rundle?

MR LE ROUX: At that stage he was the Secretary General of the AWB.

MR LANDMAN: He was on the Executive Council, the ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: Did you not say it was Mr Prinsloo?  I thought ...[inaudible]

INTERPRETER: The speaker's microphone is not on.

CHAIRPERSON: ...[inaudible]

MR LE ROUX: Excuse me?

CHAIRPERSON: Was Mr Prinsloo not the Secretary General of the AWB?

MR LE ROUX: Yes, I know Mr Fred Rundle had a position, he was Liaison Officer or something to that extent.

CHAIRPERSON: Perhaps he was on the Secretariat.

MR LANDMAN: Is it not correct that Mr Rundle was in fact a member of the Executive Council, "Die Uitvoerenderaad?

MR LE ROUX: You say that so I accept it as such but I do not think he was part of it.  We basically had the Staff Generals and he was not part of the Staff Generals, he had more of a secretarial position.  He worked with the media and he made the media statements for the AWB.

MR LANDMAN: He would know what was done on behalf of the AWB, would he not?

MR LE ROUX: He would have known that Chairperson.

MR LANDMAN: Mr Chairman, may be hand up certain bundles of documents which we have prepared in the course of yesterday, to which we will make reference in the course of this examination?

CHAIRPERSON: We will mark this Annexure A.  Yes?

MR LANDMAN: Now if the AWB wanted to inform the public that these bombs were exploded in order to, inter alia create chaos, Mr Rundle would be the person to say that wouldn't he?

MR LE ROUX: I do not think Mr Rundle had anything to do with the bombs himself, it would go through the Staff Generals.

CHAIRPERSON: No, but Mr le Roux you have testified that you accepted that the plans with regards to the bombs were instructions of the AWB and I think it's in that light that the advocate asked the question, that the use of bombs were at least discussed on a level where Mr Rundle was involved.

MR LE ROUX: Chairperson, these bombs exploded in three days and I think he maybe did not have the time to react to that.  I do not know what the agreements were amongst the leaders of the AWB.

MR LANDMAN: Mr le Roux, do you suggest that Mr Rundle would lie to the public?

MR LE ROUX: No, I do not say that Chairperson.

MR LANDMAN: If the intention of the AWB was to disrupt the election, would Mr Rundle tell that to the public?

MR LE ROUX: I do not carry any knowledge concerning that.  I do not know if he would have said that.

MR LANDMAN: Well surely, one of the aims of the bombing was to disrupt the elections, surely the AWB would want the public to know that?

MR LE ROUX: That is why the bombs were so powerful Chairperson, it had a message by itself.  I mean it's like the Church Street bomb, it had the same effect.  The ANC did not immediately afterwards something or took responsibility for it and that is what the AWB thought.  The bomb itself was the message.

MR LANDMAN: Mr le Roux, when was the decision to plant the bombs made?

MR LE ROUX: I do not know when that decision was taken Mr Chairperson, I know that I was informed about the bombs on the Saturday evening where Barnard came to fetch me at the game farm and that was the 23rd Mr Chairperson.

MR LANDMAN: Mr le Roux, you don't even know who took that decision do you?

MR LE ROUX: Mr Chairperson, I presume that it was the AWB headquarters, the Staff Generals.  That is all I know about it and furthermore I carry no knowledge about this.

MR LANDMAN: We don't want to know what you can guess, from your own knowledge you don't know who took the decision to plant the bombs, did you?

MR LE ROUX: No, I do not know who took the decision.

MR LANDMAN: And you didn't try to find out either, did you?

MR LE ROUX: I made certain conclusions by myself and that's all that I had, I did not try and find out myself.

MR LANDMAN: Didn't you ask Mr Barnard: "Who gave you the order that we should plant bombs"?  Is that correct?

MR LE ROUX: Mr Barnard told me through Nico Prinsloo he received these orders to plant the bombs.

MR LANDMAN: Did you ever go to Nico Prinsloo and ask him whether that in fact was true?

MR LE ROUX: No, Mr Chairperson.

MR LANDMAN: And you never asked Mr Prinsloo on whose authority did he give the instruction to Mr Barnard, is that correct?

MR LE ROUX: I could not ask him, I was not near him or close to him.  We were on our own at that stage.

MR LANDMAN: For all you know Mr Prinsloo might have decided, for his own reasons, to have wanted to plant these bombs.

MR LE ROUX: I do not know, I cannot answer it.

MR LANDMAN: You see I want to read something to you that Mr Rundle said to a newspaper reporter.  It's at page 13 of bundle A.  It's a report in Die Beeld of the  22nd of April 1994 and I'm reading from the ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Landman, let's be careful, you're treading on terrible ground here.  You haven't proved the accuracy of this document yet and your putting a question to the witness based on the contents of this document.  You're stuck with the answer that he gives.

MR LANDMAN: Yes, certainly Sir.
	Mr le Roux, I'm going to ask you just to listen to my questions and not to anything which might be said by your counsel next to you.  Now if you have a look at the bottom of the first column of that article, which is headed:
"AWB On The Way To Safe Area.  Mr Rundle said that the most recent plan is not the disruption of the election"
And then in quotes:
"No, we're will not disrupt the elections.  What must we do to rectify it, to physically prevent the people to reach the election points?  We are not going to do that because we are not kaffirs"
Now Mr le Roux, is there anything in that statement which you disagree with?

MR LE ROUX: Mr Chairperson, I do not know why Mr Rundle made this statement as the AWB leader himself said that the election will be disrupted.   Mr Rundle was definitely a subordinate and I do not know why he made this statement.

MR LANDMAN: Now I want you to look a little but further down in that column that I've cited to you, where it says
"The Staff Generals on the Executive Council of the AWB yesterday in a press release said that this movement if not planning to take part in the election"
Do you accept that?

MR LE ROUX: The AWB would not have taken part in the election Mr Chairperson.

MR LANDMAN: You see, because if one accepts that this is what the "Generale staf" and the Executive Council said on the 1st of April, it appears that in the same statement no reference was made to them wanting to cause havoc at the elections.  Can we accept that, that there has never been a statement by the Staff Generals: "Generale Staf" to say that they want to cause chaos before and during the elections?

MR LE ROUX: Mr Chairperson, this is a newspaper article, it is something like I mentioned earlier on, resistance movements do lie about these things and certain of these operatives had to carry certain things that come their way.

MR LANDMAN: Are you saying that they must sometimes be dishonest in their statements to the public?

MR LE ROUX: Various resistance movements do it across the whole world.

MR LANDMAN: So the answer is yes, they must be dishonest?

MR LE ROUX: Yes.  I beg your pardon?

MR LANDMAN: The answer is yes, there are times when they have to be dishonest?

MR LE ROUX: Yes, Mr Chairperson.

MR LANDMAN: Now is it correct that Mr Rundle was called as a witness ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Landman, when you get to a convenient stage we will break for lunch.