Special Hearings — Armed Forces Hearings — 1997-10-08

GEN VILJOEN: Chairperson, can I just say that I need about - I would say 10 minutes more but I will do that after the - because what I'm saying here, I'm now building up towards the establishment of the special forces and the CCB which is for the sake of our discussion today, very, very, important.  I need about a quarter of an hour, I have a number of transparencies which I have to show you because if I show that to you, you will much better be in a position to understand what takes on further when we come to the evidence of the other Generals.

CHAIRPERSON: Could I say that - you know, to try and assist good productive work, that we can use the next 10 - 15 minutes but I do want to say that we then have to have a cut-off point.  So if I use the sword at that stage, I know that you will agree that it was very good military tactics.  All right, so why don't you finish that section now on the condition that we do finish promptly at 11 o'clock.  It's now just before a quarter to 11 so you've got about 17 minutes, okay?

GEN VILJOEN: Thank you Sir.

CHAIRPERSON: Please proceed.

GEN VILJOEN: Can I have transparency number one please.  Now this is just to show to you the rise of violence in South Africa.  In the first incidents we had an average of 52 incidents over the years '76 to 1983.  That virtually doubled towards the end of 1985 and it became 97 and then we had a rather steep rise to 1989 of 153.  I just emphasise that those were the average violent incidents in South Africa.
 Next transparency please.  Chairperson, this is a very important transparency.  The problem that I had personally, is to understand why it was ever necessary for the defence force to go to the establishment of an organisation such as the CCB.  And then I started to work on the figures and I want you to look at those graphs.  The soft targets - that was the number of incidents on soft targets, that is the dotted line.  You can see how that rose from 1983 until 1986 when it reached the peak of '83.  
 On the other hand the solid line was the one of hard targets - security forces, that dropped down to 17 in 1986.  And what I'm emphasising to you is, this is what happened when this decision was taken - the Black community needs to be our bush.  So here we had a complete new situation. We could deal militarily with the kind of threat which we had in South West Africa, easily but we were confronted in 1986 with a special situation.  It was something that we - as I say, strategies follows strategies.
 Can I have the next one please.

CHAIRPERSON: ...[inaudible]

GEN VILJOEN: Pardon?

CHAIRPERSON: ...[inaudible]

GEN VILJOEN: Yes, thank you very much, it's the percentage of incidents, I'm sorry.  That shows the relationship between civilian orientated or soft target orientated and hard target orientated.
 Just an indication as to how this policy of the ANC was instrumentally applied through the Radio Freedom when they said - there you can read for yourself, you can quickly read - much quicker than I can do.  I'm told that it's necessary to read for the record.
"After arming themselves in this manner - that is for fighting, our people must begin to identify collaborators and enemy agents and deal with them.  The collaborators who are serving in the community councils - those were the ...[inaudible] part of the third ties Government, must dealt with.  Informers, policemen, special branch police and army personnel working amongst our people must be eliminated.
 Every homestead, every village, every township must be turned into a revolutionary base of the people.  Make the country ungovernable etc., and the whole of South Africa must change into a battlefield.  The time has come for Whites to be regular visits to the graveyards".
The point I'm making Chairperson is, this was the instruction to implement this and I've shown you the graph as to demonstrate how this eventually had an effect.
 Next one please.   Chairperson, I think we can make available these so that it can be taken up in the record otherwise, how will you follow my explanation.
 Can I have the next one please.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.

GEN VILJOEN: There you can see that there has been the increase also in 1986 of the necklace and the murders and the injuries coupled with that and also coupled with that, the burning of people.
 Put the next one.  So there you can see - and this is now the development of what has taken place on the instruction of the ANC and this is the effect of their new strategies.  
 The point I'm making - 1986, the year immediately after my retirement was a crucial year and the people really had to think hard towards finding new directions.  You will also recall that in 1986, the then Government found it necessary to publish some special regulations, some safety regulations in order to reinforce the ability of the people.  Those were emergency regulations.
 So the point I'm making - this let to the greater involvement and the greater importance of special forces and the CCB.  And now I want to quickly switch over to the idea of special forces.  I'm sorry, I'm not going to really be able to deal with this.  There is a definition - I'm not even going to mention this but ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: What page are you on?

GEN VILJOEN: I'm now on page 2.6.  There is a definition on what the special forces really is - a United States definition, there's also a South African joint warfare manual definition.  What I want to emphasise is, when we come to page 2.7 at the bottom, is that it stands
"the reason that all activities with the respect of special forces are planned and authorised under strictest security at the highest level.  Non-...[inaudible] is a requirement for external activities"
 And I want to switch over to page 2.8 by saying that South African defence force special forces had the functions of intelligence gathering of deep penetrations attacks and applying force discriminatorily, not indiscriminately.  Which is a very important motivation with us when we decided on this kind of forces because if you think about the indiscriminate use of force in the second world war in bombing - strategic bombing, then this was a much better system and much more in line with the tradition of a just war principles, than to apply small scale forces that can discriminantly use the necessary force.
 Economic way -  there was also an economic way of using force and it was preventing escalation in Southern Africa.  It was easy to use a small force like this and then there would not be a heavy big reaction on the other side causing a lot of lies and more fighting.
 Now on the command and control, all I want to say is they were highly trained, they were specialists, they were a scarce commodity and a very valuable force and usually engaged in rather sensitive operations.  So invariably the level of control used to be very high.  In my case and I think also afterwards, it was certainly the case of the South African defence force.  
 We had one very interesting case - let me tell you about this.  We were attacking - also a cross-border operation and we were using vehicles and we had the worry as to what would happen if the other forces would find out and they will chase us.  And then we said that would cause a big fight and that a lot of unnecessary loss of life, so eventually we came to this very good solution - "perde myne", and we made a lot of "perde myne" - you know ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: ...[inaudible]

GEN VILJOEN: What do you say?

CHAIRPERSON: ...[inaudible]