Special Hearings — State Security Council Hearings — 1997-10-14

MR R F BOTHA: Dr Boraine I will start with the last question first.  Yes, this is correct.  Apparently it became known that I wrote such a letter to Mr Roelf Meyer and then the press got hold of it and then you got hold of it.  Be that as it may Mr Chairperson.  Yes I remember that I saw, I can't lay my hand on it now, but it was my understanding towards the end of April, beginning of May this year that the leadership of the ANC had accepted joint and/or collective political responsibility for gross violations of human rights committed by members of certain sections of the ANC by applying for amnesty.  This was my understanding.  I read it over and over in reports.  And although at that time it was not clear to me whether you could do that in terms of the existing legislation, because it was also my understanding that as the legislation provides you must specify a specific crime and indicate dates, you must be more specific about the events in respect of which you ask amnesty, and that such a rather vague, joint responsibility kind of application would probably not be entertained by the Amnesty Committee because it would not comply with the requirements of the law.  My opinion then was be that as it may, that's not my job to find out what can legally be submitted to the Amnesty Committee and what not, but if the ANC did it then we should do it.  Not on the basis of a quid pro quo but far beyond that.
 It was of great importance to me that if we want reconciliation in this country, that was the driving force in my mind, then the leaders of these two parties who were at war with each other and who were enemies, if they could be seen to be acting on par then I was convinced that it would have an influence in the country, both for the followers of the National Party on the one hand and the followers of the ANC on the other.  And that is, from my little bit of knowledge of life, the type of action which brings about reconciliation in the minds of people.  You can change laws but it's difficult to change the hearts and minds of people.  But this kind of action, when they read about it in the papers, say oh FW has done it, Thabo has done it, you see what I mean, then people are inclined to say well let's do it too.  And it was from that point of view that I then wrote to Roelf a letter in time for the National Party Federal something, Federal "dagbestuur", Federal Management Committee or something, they were going to have this meeting say in Cape Town in a day or two, or they were busy with it, and I sent it in a great hurry.  I dictated it by telephone but I have somewhere a written copy of it to ask Roelf to submit it there at that meeting as a proposal from my side.  But it was apparently not approved.  I am sorry that it wasn't because I saw it more in the light of a step to improve, to facilitate reconciliation in this country. 
 Then as far as the Deputy-Chairperson's first question is concerned yes you know if you find yourself in the situation in which we found ourselves then on many occasions the thought came to one's mind on how do you handle these situations because you struggle with your own conscience.  
 But then again really from the point of view of the people out there it was not easy.  When Eugene Terreblanche broke up my meeting in Pietersburg by force, by force, and later the bill was sent by the Pietersburg Municipal Council to us because they said we hired the hall for the night, but Terreblanche and his men broke the windows and the doors but all right, I was told when I complained to a colleague he said to me but if you want blacks to be presidents what do you expect.  In other words it's easy today to sit and look back you know, but when you're in it, when you're in it, that's the trouble.  How do you persuade people?  Or what do you do through example I tried my little bit, maybe I should have resigned then and formed my own party, call it a different name, I don't know.  But it is very difficult.  
 All I know was it was a hard job going out there and telling the whites of this country look - the only reason why I could persuade them on occasion was that I adopted a rather aggressive attitude at the United Nations and was then portrayed here in this country as somebody who can stand up abroad and against the international community and against the UN and I can give them hell because of the lies that they tell, and a lot of it was exaggerations and it did not always help.  It's easier to change a person if he's confronted with the truth.  If half of it is only true then a person is inclined to say no he's talking nonsense I am not going to be influenced by what he said.  
 But alright, then at the same time in virtually all these events I in the same breath said, alright, just as I won't allow the United Nations to tell lies about you I am telling you now, here, here, you had better change, you can't go on like this.  I went so far in one of my speeches Mr Chairperson, to say to a gathering in rural areas, I said even if the United Nations tomorrow turns around and passes resolutions to the effect that they praise PW Botha and they pass resolutions and they congratulate him on his policies, even then I will come back to you and say to you, you must change because there is something inherently wrong.  
 It's difficult to change people that's all I can say today.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Botha.  Whilst there are things we would have hoped we could have had clarity, I mean you are telling us all that you know and there is no reason for us to question that, it just does seem to make it more true that there were maybe parallel lines of authority and that some of you were outside the loop at certain points.  I don't want to dwell on that.  It's just I mean that it probably is in the nature of what was happening at the time that there was deception and so forth happening because the thing was based on a lie.   But what I wanted in fact to emphasise is what I said right at the beginning after your submission, that we haven't had anything quite as powerfully put and in a way as straightforward in some ways, and it requires a great deal of courage to have had to come out and to say the sort of things that you have said here.  Very few people in your community have wanted to say that when you engage in the process of confessing you don't do it on the basis of a quid pro quo, saying it is something that I have to do whether the person on the other side does it or not that is their business.  It's a business between themselves and their God.
 I want to say to you that I believe that this has made one of the most impactful contributions.  And I would just hope that there are those in your community listening and who would seek to take this really to heart, that - and this is what we seek to encourage.  I believe that people in my community hearing what you say, despite all of the pain and anguish that they have undergone, when you come to them in that spirit very, very few of them would find it easy not to acquiesce.  And nobody of your political stature coming out of that particular community has said the policy of the NP had no moral basis in such stark terms.  In a way it is breathtaking.  
 And we want to, as a Commission that is mandated, you see the main task actually, apart from getting this is promoting reconciliation and unity, I just want to say that for myself and for my colleagues we are deeply appreciative of what you have said at the end of your submission, and your own appeals to the people in your community that their liberation is actually going to come when they face up to the truths, horrendous as they may be, of their past and that is how the ...(tape ends)...warmly and to say thank you very, very much for having had the courage to have to say as