Special Hearings — Political Party Recalls — UNKNOWN

CHAIRPERSON: You want a brief response yes, and then Hlengiwe.

DR BORAINE: Thank you very much Mr Deputy President. We could, as you say, discuss this for a very long time and I certainly have no intention, there are many other questions I am sure that we want to entertain. Let me just say one quick word in response.
Perhaps I did not make the point clear, the one point which I feel so strongly about, and that is that, and let me say this from my heart, that when we listen to people coming as victims or survivors of atrocious treatment over many years, I think some of us, let me speak only for myself, can handle better the older and especially the women who have come with such courage and such strength that you almost think they are helping you, but when we listen to young people who have been very badly tortured for example, who have been blinded, been shot in the face, who are helpless, and you can't see any future for those people then inevitably you start thinking of a whole lot of other young people, many of whom have no jobs.
And that's the point I was trying to make, that somewhere along the line we as a Commission, in a very small way, you as government in a major way have got to, and I'm sure you've started to do that, but it's a huge problem, tackle the whole question of making, helping young people to feel that they are part of this new South Africa and are not going to resort to alternative means or crime or whatever, out of their hopelessness and their hunger, that's I suppose the point I was trying to make. But I'm sure you agree with that.

CHAIRPERSON: Hlengiwe Mkhize.

MS MKHIZE: Thank you Chairperson. Mine is first of all a statement and then a question which aims at assisting us as a Commission to understand your policy thinking at the time when these SDU's were formed. The first statement is that according to our data base really SDU's as a political formation, I do not agree with you when you say they were community endorsed. In our understanding they were a militarised group of young people linked to the ANC and their alliance. Okay.
Secondly, I just want to get the benefit of your understanding about the right of children to participation as well as to protection in times of armed conflict. The second one we are asking for the first time but it's very, very important for us because at this point in time we are taking a careful look and people's thinking about that in the past with a view of cleaning up our future.

UNKNOWN: Chairperson we would agree very much with the Commissioner that the SDU's were linked and aligned to the ANC and the alliance, we haven't contested that at all. She - also the point she makes that they were not "community endorsed". We have not made this accession and therefore there is nothing to disagree about. What we are saying is that was their conceptualisation, that's how they should have been but because of particular sets circumstances they came as she describes them. So there's no disagreement about that.
On the matter of protection of children - yes I presume that we are talking about in periods of conflict. I'm not sure that there's very much more we can say on this in addition to what we've said.
You know I'd like to repeat this to the Commission, that the view of the ANC about the observance of humanitarian principles in the conduct of warfare was a very, very serious matter. There are many instances when we had discussions about targets and as I'm sure you would not be surprised, there were many instances when people said but when are we going to abandon this policy because - and some of the examples were given were of children, because you have White schoolchildren who travel in a bus in a morning to go to a White school. It's an easy target, it's there, there's not a single Black child who is going to be hurt because these are segregated schools, why don't we just hit these things? Let the White population feel this pain. Any number of times that these matters would come up and people would argue this and we would always say, no, no, no, no, it can never be done, because it's wrong.
So I am saying that in the conduct of the struggle these principles were very, very strong and very firm. The matter we were discussing yesterday, similarly, there would be a lot of discussion about you know why don't we just go and blow up one of these IFP things. There they sit in their legislature at Ulundi, easy, can be done, and we would always so, no.
The protection of children, we, after 1976, we got quite a lot of young people, 12 year olds, 13 year olds, 14 year olds who left the country and very inspired by the notion of taking up guns to fight for the liberation of their country, in all instances we would say back to school. Very difficult in certain cases.
The certain point when we discussed the position establishment of a boy scouts movement, something similar, I remember he was in those discussions was in those discussions to deal with the question of these very young people who are inspired by this notion of carrying out a gun, as I was saying, to liberate their people, and we were saying no you cannot be a soldier you are too little, but they wanted to fight. So we thought perhaps the best way to handle the thing let's set up something like a boy-scouts movement, they will go there and they will put them in some uniform, they run up and down, you will give them a compass and so on, they feel like soldiers, in the meantime they are going to school.
But I'm saying Chairperson that I don't really think there is anything in particular we can add on this, the treatment of children fell within this general broad approach with regard to this question of humanitarian conduct of warfare.

CHAIRPERSON: Wynand Malan?

UNKNOWN: Thank you Chairperson. I have a major interest in understanding the dynamics of conflict and especially the spiralling level of the escalation of conflict. Can I just summarise what I've heard, sort of main moments that there indeed was a discussion about a need. You quoted General Magnus Malan at the time, the self-protection units, the licensing, some form of civilian joint control some way or another. It's not implemented, what happens is because of the pressures from grassroots the ANC goes ahead, unlicensed, make available to people that they don't control, non-partisan but party loyalties on the side, surely there must have been some understanding on General Magnus' side that this was double-crossing him in terms of what he perceived to be a joint understanding?
At the same time the SDU's go out, or some of the individuals in the way Mr Kasrils has described and generally also I think somewhere in your submission on page 13 in a different way you refer to community preemptive attacks as a need for self defence, which also happens, it should, this is really the question, the same way as questions are being put to the previous government, should this not have been foreseen?
And isn't in that sense at least, the organisation guilty by omission?
Wasn't this a logical development that should have been expected?