Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 2000-11-21

CHAIRPERSON: On your argument, if he had reported the truth, then he would say:  "Look there's all strangers living there now".

MR BERGER: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: Abrahamse, Hamlyn

MR BERGER: The Geer couple.

CHAIRPERSON: ...(indistinct - speaking simultaneously)

MR BERGER: No, no.

CHAIRPERSON: But all the people that they were supposedly interested in were not there.

MR BERGER: Yes, but Muff Anderson used to be there.

CHAIRPERSON: Now he would come back to his handler and say and give the correct version, how would that support your argument?

MR BERGER: Because Muff Anderson used to live at that house.

CHAIRPERSON: No well, let's assume Olifant came there and said:  "Look she's not living there any more", ...(indistinct) Abrahamse living there.

MR BERGER: No Abrahamse is living there, if it's before the period that Abrahamse moved out and these are people who used to be involved with Muff Anderson, they're still living there.  There are children coming to the house.  It doesn't matter, we just go in a wipe them out.

MR MALAN: Well was the evidence not that in the beginning there were indeed a lot of targets on the list because it was simply arranged by priority, which included women and children, and only at a late stage in the planning was the question asked:  "In which of these targets would we find women and children?" and only then were some removed.

MR BERGER: But not all.

MR MALAN: No clearly not all, but in terms of again this intelligence that they had, wasn't that the evidence?

MR BERGER: Mr Malan you know we've got to look, if you ask what was the evidence, where is the evidence from the applicant that, we've had a lot of allegations, where is the evidence that any one of the people who died was in any way involved in MK activities?  There is no evidence, there's not a piece of paper, there's not a shred of evidence that any one of them was involved.  If one looks at page 65 of bundle 1, you'll recall there's a list of people who were being observed.  There's MK Calvin, who by the way is Riaz Saloojee, who was the person that Muff Anderson was talking about who she was living with, there's MK Rickets, there's Tim Williams, there's Billy Masetla, Christian Pepane, Roger Nkadimeng, Jackie, Sipho Dlamini, Lambert Maloyi, that's ...(indistinct) Misi, Ben Zokwe.  I ask the Committee to ask itself why is it that not one of these people was killed, not one of them was hit.  Why is it that the MK people, Muff Anderson, Riaz Saloojee, why were they not hit?  Why is it that all the people that were hit are an old man who used to drive supplies, there's a suggestion that maybe when he wasn't with his other wife, he was launching rockets maybe.  There's an artist, there's a student.  We've heard the evidence from Uriel Abrahamse and from Muff Anderson about what Michael Hamlyn did.  He was a student.  Yes he said:  "I'm joining the ANC", but he wasn't involved in political or military structures.  What about Cecil, George and Lindi Pahle?  The evidence from Ms Mbethe is that they were socialites, he was a businessman, she was involved in the Botswana Government.  Joseph Malaza happened to pick the wrong weekend.

MR MALAN: There was also evidence that on occasion the Pahle home was used as a transit facility for an individual, that she knows of.

MR BERGER: Well I submit her evidence was not that, but even if it was that house, you recall the evidence from the applicants to say that once or twice is not enough, it has to be on a sustained basis, to qualify as a transit facility.

MR MALAN: Yet they had to rely again on their intelligence.  Are you arguing, I just want to make sure, maybe your argument is that the applicants knew from the beginning that they would be hitting really irrelevant targets, but they wanted to escalate the conflict and I have sympathy for the escalation of the conflict idea, I have my doubts whether that was sort of a general feeling across the board, or whether it was a section and specifically the military, I have my doubts, it may include the Security Branch, but my question to you is really are you arguing that all the applicants really had it in the back of their minds that your argument was really the target?

MR BERGER: No I submit that what the applicants, that the intelligence that the applicants were processing, because that's what they say they were doing, was intelligence about ANC activities generally in Gaberone.  Who was ANC? And I'm not saying that they had this sophisticated argument about escalation of the conflict, but the evidence was Botswana was being used as a launching pad by the ANC, we were going to hit the ANC and I submit that they did not draw a neat little line between political and military.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Berger, you raise this argument, it's a very interesting argument and it's one that one has to seriously consider, but if your argument is correct and your argument I must concede is fortified by the well-known intelligence structures of the regime then and if their intelligence on this escapade was so shoddy as it was described, it must have been deliberately so, if at all it did occur.

MR BERGER: And I say it didn't.

CHAIRPERSON: Are you saying Olifant didn't go out there?

MR BERGER: No he did, he did go out there and he did gather intelligence and he did bring it back to Coetzee as asked.

CHAIRPERSON: Well then I don't understand because you know one got to know the effectiveness of the South African intelligence of the time.  They were pretty good.

MR BERGER: They were very good.  Craig Williamson in fact describes the intelligence as
"The most sophisticated intelligence machinery he had at his disposal"

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.  Now if that be the case and one has to consider your argument, then the shoddy intelligence work in this escapade, must have been deliberately shoddy.

MR BERGER: It wasn't shoddy, that's my argument, it wasn't shoddy.

CHAIRPERSON: Well ja, it possibly didn't happen at all.

MR BERGER: No, there are military operations being launched from Botswana into South Africa.  The Security Branch and later the military decide:  "We have to counter this and we counter it by striking at the ANC and we're going to hit them so that they do not launch any more attacks against us, but we're not going to be" - and I'm not saying this was the reasoning, I'm saying this is how it panned out, they didn't worry about whether the person whom they hit was a military target or a political target, or a civilian member of the ANC, as long as the people whom they hit were ANC and that was the intelligence, it didn't matter, that fine line didn't matter.  Let me ...(intervention)

JUDGE MOTATA: Because Botswana was one of the sympathetic countries towards ANC, you had Lesotho being somewhat paralysed and Swaziland not being very helpful and Botswana was in the fore assisting these people.

MR BERGER: Indeed.  In fact the army were prepared to wipe out Botswana if the need arose.  Look at what Mr Loots says in his evidence.  This is right at the beginning of this hearing.  He is asked about Duke Machoabane.  His answer
"Well I remember his name as a collaborator or an MK member."
		"Joseph Malaza ..."

CHAIRPERSON: ...(indistinct)