Amnesty Hearings — Vosloorus — 1998-11-24

RONNIE KASRILS: And it's the only way to go forward.  The question of infiltration is not just a problem and has not just been a problem for the South African liberation struggle.  It is as old as the Bible, it is as old as history, we can read in the Bible about infiltration whether it's the Old or the New Testament, whether it's a Judas Iscariot and a traitor of that kind and previous history.  So we've seen particularly in the 20th century and in the liberation struggles against colonialism, be it in Vietnam or Zimbabwe, the then Rhodesia, Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Algeria and Algeria to a tremendous degree where the ruling power has used the entire historic arsenal to prevent justice from being achieved and on the one hand it's the full force of the army and the police and the courts and so on and the law and on the other it's what is being used in history, it tends to be called the third force, it's been called the dirty war, it's where the forces of the ruling order masquerade in various ways as liberators.  Now South Africa and Zimbabwe struggled particularly because I believe South African Security learned a great deal from the Smith forces in Rhodesia which in turn learned a lot from way the British in Malaya and in Kenya dealt with patriotic uprisings and that was to, for example, capture guerillas or liberation fighters, freedom fighters, threaten them with death, compromise them in some way and turn them into what we call Askaris in this country who then infiltrate the liberation organ.  They do the same thing directly with convicts and criminals from prisons and we've had many examples of this in South Africa where actual convicts are released while they're serving sentence and are done so on the basis that they would join the ANC and this was happening in the '70's and the '80's and they would join in order to be obviously informants that where necessary agents provocateurs, to carry out murders and assassinations or to go and pretend to the people that they came from the MK or the Zimbabwe Freedom Forces or SWAPO and would kill people in the name of those organisations.
	 Now the TRC has revealed a myriad of factors like this and what we found post 1990, when we began to think we had gone through the worst of the problems of the actual armed struggle that these methods were used against us and the communities in a multifold way and did exactly as it's being put by Judge Pillay and we are aware of this so that in the ANC's documentation which was presented to the TRC of the hearings in August '96 and 12th May '97.  There's a great deal of time and trouble there, is spent on explaining how certain of these actions were carried out in the name of the ANC but by forces which actually came from the regime and at times criminal forces, became very problematic for us and that's precisely ...(inaudible)

ADV DE JAGER: ...(inaudible)  but why they did it, what would you say in such an event and taking into consideration that you've written this pamphlet as you've said in theory but now we've got the practical situation in Thokoza.  How would you say, was that a defence or an offensive deed?

RONNIE KASRILS: Well in the first place it wasn't policy.  Our policy did not say that we should attack people and kill people in that way, it was all about self defence.  I'm talking about the policy of the self defence units.  So from that point of view that was a deviation from the policy as laid down and the moment an event like that happened, the ANC leadership and I see Jessie Duarte sitting here today, she was very active in that period in the East Rand.  Her, the colleagues of the ANC's regional leadership would race to these areas and remind the comrades and members of discipline, of policy as we would from a national level and I would say that those who carried out such an act wouldn't argue against us and say well, this is policy we're challenging the policy and therefore one has got to find another reason for it.  I think it's quite easy to find the reason and that would be out of anger, out of retaliation, as a counter-action, as a deterrent, as a way of proving to the other side and unfortunately that's how perceptions grow in a war zone, that we can hit you back.  So the power of a deterrent and we know this from the Old Testament, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and that's why I say - I think it's easy to understand what had compelled the individuals on the ground, having lived through the nightmare that I've described, that others can more capably describe than me, the deaths and the bloodshed and so on of feeling propelled to counter-attack and to say we can do it to you so "pas op", stop what you've been doing, it's tit for tat.  Now that has happened in every conflict in history.  An organisation, a leadership with principles, that pursues justice, is constantly striving to get people under discipline, to get people to understand that that isn't the way.  But unfortunately, the dividing line is very, very thin.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Kasrils, I appreciate what you're saying and maybe we must take cognisance of all the noble concepts that you talk about but I wouldn't have imagined that the drafters of that document, the policy makers of the SDU's, would ever have imagined that a particular group of people forming a self defence unit had to wait to be attacked and run the risk of injury, or death maybe, before that group of people could comply with the criminal requirements of self defence.  One couldn't expect people to wait to be attacked or am I wrong?

ADV MOTATA: Before you do Mr Kasrils, we say there is a broad policy laid down by the hierarchy of the ANC but if you come to the ground you may find that the theoretical notions put down do not translate to the actions that obtained from the ground and are you saying people whilst the broader policies says to you "look, this is the discipline we want", they shouldn't take cognisance of the surroundings and the happenings that probably we are not speaking of something conventional here.  It's very unconventional and the understanding even from the media reports says that Thokoza, Kathlehong, Katorus, was a war zone and then now there are the people peacefully going to a cemetary, no attack, but they are attacked?

RONNIE KASRILS: Well let's deal with the first question about could we expect people to simply sit back until they're attacked, shouldn't they therefore they go out to attack the opponents?  The problem about that is identifying the enemy if you're talking about enemy and living within another community.  So whatever the problems that arose and we did impose those problems and we made it difficult for our people and this is why whether it's regular and unconventional warfare, it's always easier for the attacker than the defender.  It always is in a conventional war and unconventional war even more so.  But these were the standards that we hoped to achieve, we couldn't develop and wouldn't develop a policy that would have simply declared war and said go out and attack and therefore it required tremendous degree of training and discipline and self control and I would think perhaps there you then have the breakdown and specially if we turn to the second question, you then have the breakdown and specially if we turn to the second question, that in an unconventional situation it is even more difficult but the ANC always had very, very high principles and sought to inculcate that within our people and sought to develop a method  of warnings, early warning systems, self defence, so as to have a deterrent from defence rather than one of a deterrent from attack.  I have used the term a very thin dividing line which is why we understood what had driven people to go against policy and could only strive to educate them and to train them in a more disciplined way to avoid such action as the one that you're considering.