Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 2000-11-21

MR COETSER: Mr Chairman, that is actually not what I'm suggesting or leading to.

CHAIRPERSON: Well can you deal with that then, if it was not being led, as if I've asked the question.

MS ANDERSON: So, sorry, must I deal with yours or ...?

CHAIRPERSON: With mine.  What do you say about that proposition?

MS ANDERSON: That those people on the periphery were targets, is that what you mean?

CHAIRPERSON: No that they weren't on the periphery, as you suggest, but were much deeper involved than you would like to admit.

MS ANDERSON: Well, I can't, it would be a lie to say that someone like Mike Hamlyn was involved, when he wasn't.  It's absurd that he was a target.  I mean the people, you are talking about normal people, I mean we were normal people.  Apartheid's the abnormality.  Anti-apartheid is the normality.  We were normal people.

CHAIRPERSON: Okay, all I needed for you to do is to deal with the possible argument that may come my way at the end of the day, that your friendship, the MK people's friendship with so-called ordinary folk in Botswana, leads one to the conclusion that they were not as innocent as you may want us to believe and in fact, they could be categorised as legitimate targets.

MS ANDERSON: But that makes no sense.  Your statement makes no sense.

CHAIRPERSON: Why?

MS ANDERSON: Because they could not be categorised.  I mean, people who are dancing and painting and being opposed to the system of apartheid, can not be classified as legitimate targets.

CHAIRPERSON: Maybe you misunderstand me.  I'm not saying that that is so.  I want you to deal with the possible argument that may come my way at the end  of the day, that accepted Umkhonto weSizwe operatives were mingling with ordinary folk in Botswana, could easily lead the regime of South Africa at the time, to believe that those people were not as innocent as you would like us to believe now and therefore they were attacked, because they were legitimate targets, otherwise MK operatives would never have mingled with them.

MS ANDERSON: I can't accept the premise of what you're saying because you're saying that because MK people mingled with ordinary folk, therefore the ordinary folk became legitimate targets in a sense.

CHAIRPERSON: No, I'm not saying that.  I'm saying that the inference as a result of the mingling was that those people were not innocent, as far as MK activities were concerned, but were more deeply involved in that and therefore became legitimate targets.

MS ANDERSON: You see, I would argue that the inference, and if Mr Olifant's testimony is anything to go by, there was such kind of lunacy and idiocy relating to the way in which targets were selected, it seems so completely arbitrary and so I don't think they actually had a clue who were MK and who were not and I don't think they cared.  I think basically they just took a map, threw darts on it, where the darts landed, they attacked those houses and then they created fiction around who died.

JUDGE MOTATA: Let's take your question that you, prior to leaving Pudulogo Crescent, that they had identified that house over a period, that is now the South African Police community and probably the community and the evidence before us is not only the persons living there, the building and the person and the evidence goes further and says, because in those houses there were people trading in arms or ordinance as you put it and they wanted to destroy those houses, now what emerges it's unfortunately you had left but you were an MK member in that house.  Would you say that is reckless or idiocy as you put it, about the South African Government?

MS ANDERSON: Yes, I would say so, because the trading of weapons wasn't going on from that house.  I had merely lived in that house and the address of the house had come up in my weapons of war court case that had gone on for a year, the fact that I had lived there, now I don't know how South African Defence Force and Mr Olifant and so on did their reconnaissance, but it would have become quite clear that number one, this person who was involved in a weapons of war case, had not been there for 10 months, that there were completely other people, that there were children playing there, that Baleka's kids were playing there everyday, that they were complete strangers to Botswana who had answered an ad in the living there and it was nearly a year later from the time that that place had been mentioned, so to me that is the most careless, ridiculous kind of reconnaissance, because as I say, there was no trading of weapons from that house. It happened that I at some point slept in that house.

JUDGE MOTATA: Now what about the thesis that much as you'd trained, because you were opposed to the then regime within South Africa, that if the South African Government viewed ANC, sympathiser or no sympathiser as their enemy, would that be absolutely lunatic as well?

MS ANDERSON: Well of course it was lunatic.  I mean the South African Government was putting people in jail for wearing a Mandela t-shirt, drinking a cup with Mandela on it, so of course it was lunacy.  The whole word - I mean we know that apartheid was lunacy ...(indistinct - speaking simultaneously)

CHAIRPERSON: But I want you to look at it from the perception of two opposing parties.  It may be your opinion and other people's opinion that whatever I do is lunacy and I'm preserving what I'm having and say for this not to be destroyed, I must destroy my enemy.

MS ANDERSON: The point is I can't see it in terms of two opposing sides.  I can see it in terms of a violence created by the Regime, which creates a resistance, the resistance, the fight against the regime comes up because of the regime's original violence, because on the one hand you have the world's most privileged minority, trying desperately to uphold their privileges and on the other hand you have a struggle, a world-wide and international struggle for human rights against that privileged minority, so I don't see it as a thing of two sides, I see it as some people working within the system, to the point of fanaticism regarding everything that is opposed to that, to the privileges of that minority as being dangerous.  They see everything as dangerous.

CHAIRPERSON: Precisely, now answer the question from that point of view, that they brought their own call it convenient conclusion from that perspective.  If it were to be argued to me or this Panel at the end of the day that yes, Hamlyn may not have been a card-carrying member, he may not have been a member of MK, but yes, he associated with a known admitted MK operative and therefore we at the time, even in a shoddy way, we thought that he was a legitimate target because of his association with an admitted MK operative.  How would you think this Panel has to deal with that?

MS ANDERSON: I would say that I would be very appalled if you gave these guys amnesty.

CHAIRPERSON: Fortunately that's not for you to decide, that's for us to decide.

MS ANDERSON: You just asked how would this Panel, how would I feel ...(intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: No I'm asking how do we deal with that proposition?

MS ANDERSON: I would like to counter it with a proposition and my proposition would be, if this privileged minority ...(indistinct)

JUDGE MOTATA: No you're misunderstanding what the Chairman is asking.  He says if we are faced with that proposition, how should we look at it, not what you are answering.

MS ANDERSON: I hope you would look at it in a sort of universal sense and that is that, by virtue of a charming red-haired man living in a particular place at a particular time, happens to be friends with a whole range of people ...(intervention)