Special Hearings — Conscription Hearings — 1997-07-23

MR DEEGAN: Thank you very much to the Chairperson andto the panel and to the TRC for giving me this opportunity tobe here to-day.   It's not my first contact with the TRC, I submitted27 pages of confession to the TRC last year but I just couldn'tgo through with the process it was just too painful.  My personallife didn't allow for it either so I'm very grateful to be hereto-day.  Thank you very much.
 I'll just start by giving a brief background on myself.  I comefrom a conservative White middle class suburban background.  Igrew up mainly in Gauteng ,in Edenvale.  My father was very involvedin police force, had been since 1947.  I grew up in Edenvale andthen we moved to Pietermaritzburg where I went to school, HighSchool.  We did the normal subjects, I did Science subjects. I actually wanted to be an artist but there were other ideas inthe family about that.  At school I did shooting, it was my sport,and it was one way of getting out of rugby until they caught upwith me and then I played rugby.  Basically that was the cultureand background that I come from.  I think we all know it well,the rugby supporting White South African middle class culture. 
 I matriculated at he age of 16 in 1977.  I was too young to goto the army and the call-up papers had come in the, I think inStandard Eight or Standard Nine we had to fill in our detailsand send our details away, so I was too young to go with my peergroup, my fellow matriculants.  In retrospect it seems crazy butI actually wrote the army and asked if they would make a specialdispensation in my case.  They weren't really interested untilI'd turned 17 at least.  
 At the same time there was pressure on me through my family tojoin the South African Police force.  My father held rank in thepolice reserve at that time.  He had left the police force in 1949 but he'd carried on his involvement in the police reservedoing reservist duties.  My older brother at that time was inthe Security branch at John Vorster Square.  
 In 1977 I left school, went to Rhodesia and we went on a tour,my two brothers and I and a Kiwi friend and we came back to SouthAfrica and I decided well I've got a year before I have to gofor my call-up I'll wait for my army papers and I decided to goback to what was then Rhodesia and work on a farm, which I didfor about three or four months.  I became very homesick and Ireturned to my home, my parents home in Johannesburg or my father'shome in Johannesburg in about April 1977, and I was looking forsome work as a barman or just temporary work until my call-upcame.  There was no question of going to study as there wasn'treally finances for that and it was just never mentioned thatI would ever study further.
 So I found myself back in Johannesburg in April 197, my brotherin the Security Branch and my father involved with the policeand through gentle pressure they brought up the fact that therewas a family tradition of military and the police force.  Theyconvinced me and I convinced myself that best thing to do wouldbe to join the South African Police force, which I did at theSecurity branch John Vorster Square in 1978 in April.  
 I joined as a student Constable which was very unusual.  Normallyyou'd have to serve five years in the Police force as the runof the mill policeman in uniform or a Detective before you wereadmitted.  My father had connections so I found myself in therecord section at John Vorster Square.  I was there for a fewmonths and I obviously had access to all this information on suspects,National and organisations and individuals but we particularlydealt with the Witwatersrand, so I had access to all this incredibleinformation and I just didn't know really that there it was inblack and white exactly what the Police force entailed.  
 I went for training at the Police College in 1978 in Pretoria,six months basic training in subjects like law and a few otheracademic subjects mainly we did drill, shooting practice, riottraining and that kind of thing.   
 I returned to John Vorster Square after the passing out parade,it was the only time I wore a blue uniform was on that day in1978, December where I started duties as an investigator on theso called "blanke seksie" on the White section at thesecurity branch John Vorster Square.  
 I was on this section until about 1979/80 when I took a transferdown to Pietermaritzburg where I'd been to school.  My friendswere there, I had a girlfriend down there.  I was at the securitybranch Pietermaritzburg where we investigated, again I was onwhat was called the White section, students, student activitiesmainly but any other White suspect posed - the so-called namethat was used was "suspects" and anyone basically opposedto the stage or the ideologies at the time.  My bulk of my workthen was what they called doing securities clearances for keyGovernment Posts, like if there is a bank or sensitive installationslike Pelindaba or whatever these would come across my CommandingOfficers desk and they'd get filtered down into the ranks anda person like myself would go out and investigate the backgroundof this person to see if they were fit to work for the State. 
 In 1981 I started hearing stories coming back from the border,from Namibia and it sounded just like what I needed at that time. The guys were saying that it was freedom up there you could getaway from the basics of disciplined structures of the force atthe time, you could go up there, there was freedom, there wasmore money, they were having a good time.  So at the age of abouteighteen, 19 then, I went to Oshakati in South West Africa, Namibiaand reported at the security branch offices there.  
 My first day on the border, well the first day we were allowedto unpack and relax, and my first working day was the next dayand we had to offload a truck with thirteen bodies.  It was outsidethe security branch offices in Oshakati.  This big Bedford  truckpulled up and they flapped down the tailgate and all these bodieswere inside, thirteen SWAPO geurillas Terrs, as they were calledthen terrorists in other words and they were very badly decomposedand very badly shot up.   And we had to take these bodies outof the truck, finger print them, photograph them and put themback in the truck.  We then took them outside of the town, outof Oshakati, out of the White town into the township cemeterywhich was on the edge of the township and I was standing on theground at the tailgate of this truck and these bodies were thrownoff the back of the truck at my feet.  It was a very gruesomeexperience.  Six of the bodies were thrown into one hole and seveninto another.  
 That was day one for me on the border and it obviously changedmy reality forever after that.  That was just what one would calla three month camp.  While I was up there I started really gettinginto the whole idea of being in the bush. I was a nature loverhave always been and I liked the idea of having freedom with noofficers around and nobody to really tell me what to do. I hada choice of which base I could stay on if I came back permanentlyand this was discussed with the Commanding Officer at the time,the Commanding Officer of the security branch and this is whatI did.   I put in a transfer while I was on border duty to comeback there permanently and I returned to John Vorster Square in1981 and I went almost immediately back to Oshakati and resumedduties as a security branch investigator in Ovambuland in theoperational area.  I was based in Mabelantu which was an armybase but we had a security branch house outside of the base andthat's where we would perform our duties ,which included gatheringinformation on SWAPO activities and also going out and investigatingSWAPO murders, atrocities, landmine incidents, murders and thatsort of thing and we also would have follow-up's.  
 At that time I had no real contact with SWAPO except a rocketattack.  We were - I'll come to that incident now but we alsohad a landmine incident.  I was sitting on the roof of a Casspir,illegally, by that I mean it's laughable now, but we weren't allowedto sit on the roof we had to sit inside strapped in, it was totallyimpractical to do this and then we had this landmine that wentoff and we were in it and it's affected me physically and mentallyobviously but I got through that.   During this time it was whenI returned to Oshakati as a permanent member, we'd been out drinkingone night and we went to visit some colleagues at our officeswho were doing interrogations and these interrogations had beengoing on for a week non-stop around the clock, we'd have teamsof interrogators coming in and interrogating the same people,there were two or three people being interrogated two brotherswho were teachers or at least the one person was a teacher.  Sowe went around very drunk and we went to go and visit our colleaguesand see how the interrogations were going and while this was happening,while we were all crowded in this office suddenly there was thismassive explosion the ceilings collapsed, the lights went offand we were under rocket attack 122 millimetre rockets from aboutsix kilometres away.  And one of the colleagues, and it's in mysummary if I could just read it.
"We would work in shifts and the prisoners were kept awake,beaten, shouted at and deprived of food......"
If I could just mention this as an excerpt from a transcriptionof the tape recording made in Stockholm in 1993 when I first encounteredthe word PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and met somebodywho actually felt like I did, and this person Morris van Niekerkwas doing a documentary on PTSD and he needed some input fromme so this is verbatim from what I said to him.
"We would work in shifts and the prisoners were kept awake,beaten, shouted at, deprived of food and water and toilet facilitiesand given electric shocks ,not always together but selected accordingto how the prisoner was responding. 
As I remember we were crowded into a particular office where aschool teacher was being interrogated a huge explosive blast rockedthe office and the lights flickered and went out.  More blastsfollowed and it is obvious that we were under rocket attack. One of my colleagues shouted at the prisoner "kyk wat maakjou vriende", see what your friends are doing to us and thenstarted punching and kicking him and we all spontaneously joinedin, including myself, we started kicking and assaulting this personthis prisoner, we all spontaneously joined in.  
The next day I was approached by a senior officer who said tome "julle het gisteraand kak gemaak", last night youreally made shit didn't you?  And when I asked why he repliedthat he and a second officer had been called out early that morningto dispose of the body of the prisoner that we had assaulted ashe had died during the night.  I was scared and I realised thatI was a murderer now, but the official lack of response to theincident made me realise that this had happened before.
So I killed somebody and there was no going back after that, Iwas one of them I was part of the culture.  That was in 1981 Istill had another year or so of my national service to completeand I stayed in Oshakati all that time doing interrogations, notin Oshakati but based from Oshakati.  I was in Ombalantu but frommy side there was no other incident where I killed anybody, butcertainly I was involved in torturing people, interrogating themusing various methods but I never used methods like electric shocksor anything like that.  I would approach it in a little more psychologicallevel and try and win the person's confidence or trust, the oldgood cop bad cop routine and I was the good cop except sometimesthings would get out of hand and I would respond angrily and startgetting physical and actually assaulting prisoners.  
 In 1982 my national service, as I understood it, four years wasthe choice, in the police force for two years and as conscripteein the army came to an end and I decided to join the Natal ParksBoard which had been almost a life long dream of mine to be agame ranger, so I joined the Natal Parks Board at the age of about21.  Then and as a game ranger at St Lucia in the recreation divisionI took launch tours up the estuary and to St Lucia Lake and back. I really loved it I enjoyed what I was doing there and it wasgood to be outdoors but the border had done it's damage alreadyand my time in the police force had already done it's damage,I couldn't relate to people.  I had a lot of problems with myfiance, we were due to get married in August '82,  I calledoff the marriage at the last minute.
  I joined as a volunteer I joined at Matubatuba police station,rejoined the police force because the army sent me notificationthat I would have to do another year of national service becauseapparently they'd legislated that it was now five years in thepolice force, so my choice was to go back to the police forcefor a year or do call-up.  I decided not to go through the wholebasic training thing,  by that time I was a veteran at the ageof 21 I was a veteran and I knew it would be really stupid togo back through into basic training.  But talking about trainingI was never actually trained to go and fight a border war, I sortof got in through the back door and nobody really picked it up,nobody questioned it.  
 I joined at Matubatuba police station and asked for ...  I'dalready organised with the Commanding Officer of Operation Koevoetor Ops K as it was known or Koevoet as it's known and they wereexpecting my application and it was all processed and done throughMatubatuba police station and Pretoria Head Office, and in September1982 I found myself back in Ovambuland in  Zulu Yankee, whichwas the call sign for the team that I was in, I was in Koevoet. And the only thing I can think of why I went back was - okay, I was running away from a lot of personal problems that I wastrying to deal with, but there was also a sense that the societydown here, we called it the States and we called the border Namlike Vietnam and Nam as in Namibia, that the people in the Statesjust really didn't care, they didn't know what we were doing really. There was such a media blackout at the time.  The stories filteredback but they were so horrific that families, friends and girlfriendsdidn't really want to hear about it and the sense that I certainlygot was that, that was happening up there, it was a conflict andback here everything was normal and no-one really wanted to hearabout it and I just felt very alienated and very alone as apposedto being back in the bush and having the freedom to basicallydo what I like, to be in the outdoors with the minimum amountof authority.  
 So I found myself in Koevoet and I was with Zulu Yankee for afew months and then through a death one of the White members,Andre, I can't remember his surname was killed he was in a teamcalled Zulu Yankee. I took his place behind a 50 Browning anda double 762 machine guns mounted on a Casspir and that's whatI did for the next year is follow-up, contact, interrogation andeverything that Koevoet did.  I was one of them, I was part oftheir culture and the only thing I can think about now is thatwe discussed it up there, a ot of us, obviously we had time afterwe had contacts and we had a lot of contacts with the enemy, wedidn't really discuss death in any real way except in an abstractsense, but we didn't really care, we just really didn't care aboutourselves about our families, we didn't care about the cause,the flag, patriotism and all the things you heard mentioned to-daywere some possible reasons for joining.  I only heard this morning'ssubmissions I missed this afternoon's unfortunately, but a lotof the points that came up did count in the beginning where wewent from a patriotic fervour and sense of coming through schooland cadets and shooting and the whole thing was we were "syched"into it, but after a while we just didn't care we really justdidn't care about anything.  Life was very cheap and we were basicallyautomatants, we would just kill and that's how we got our kicks,and that's -  we were adrenaline junkies basically.  I still havea problem with that to-day because I left Koevoet in 1984 in 1983December, after a particular incident which I can relate at thistime but, ja,  we didn't care.
 We were hooked on adrenaline, and  it was like a process wherewe would pick up tracks, pick up information and we would getmore and more hyped and more hyped until everything was at suchfever pitch everybody, and I'm talking about the whole team orteams involved in following up on the actual tracks and that'sreally what we lived for it was that excitement, and the killingsobviously I have deep remorse now but at the time that was theend result that was what we had to do and we did it well, we didit efficiently, we were the best.  That's what Koevoet is allabout.  
 I met Eugene de Kok there, obviously he was Koevoet, he startedthat unit with various other people, so I knew him on a sociallevel as well as on a professional level although he had his ownteam.  He was a Captain at that time.  Eugene de Kok and peoplelike him out there were my colleagues, my friends, we worked together. 
 If I can just read another excerpt from my submission which isabout fifty pages of submission and it's nowhere near finishedso this is a very short summary of the main points, but I'd justlike to relate this incident if I can.  Again this is from thetaped transcription from 1993 so the articulation and the wordsand everything used was about my consciousness at that time in1993.  It's 4 years later and I have a different consciousnessand I'm at a different level entirely so the words, expletivesand that used don't really reflect how I feel now anyway.  
"On one occasion after capturing an insurgent we began totrack his companion whose name was Congo.  He was a well knownpolitical commissar and after tracking him for some time his trackswent to this kraal and they didn't come out.  I knew that he wasinside this kraal complex and I was in charge of this team atthe time as my team leader was away on leave.  The tracks wentin, the tracks didn't come out so it was obvious he was insideso the owner of the kraal, a very old man with white hair andthick glasses, I remember him very well and his family and smallchildren, grandchildren were there and I asked this old man whichhut this SWAPO geurilla was in and he obviously didn't want tosay because the local population, as in any war were just caughtright up in the middle, they got it from both sides.  They gotit from SWAPO and they got it from us.  If they didn't give informationto either side they were just treated in the worst possible wayso he didn't want to say anything so I gave an instruction toflatten a whole lot huts.  There were no people in these hutsbut these Casspirs drove over the huts and he started gettingreally edgy and moving towards this hut and away from it and towardsand away and then we identified that possibly this was the hutwhere this Congo, this political  commissar was hiding out.  
I gave the instruction for them to flatten the hut with the Casspirand that we would open fire at the same time.  It's an overkillsituation that was typically Koevoet.  We would shoot as muchconcentrated fire into a space as possible, we didn't know howmany people might be in there with him or what they were armedwith and so on, so it was overkill just in case.   
 As we opened up this rifle barrel of the person next to me wasshot by the person next to him so the rifle barrel actually becamebent and useless.  He was firing an automatic and his gun blewup and it sounded like a hand grenade and what went through mymind was that this person in the hut had thrown this handgrenadeat us.  We were sprayed with shrapnel from the barrel of thisgun blowing up and obviously this loud bang that went with itgave me such a shock that I ripped off the stock,  I had an AK47,and I just kept firing, my hand was being burnt by the barrelbut I was just crazy at that time and we were all firing.  
 Eventually we ceased fire and took the roof off this hut andthere this man was lying very badly wounded.  Our medic Shaunstarted putting a drip in him and patching him and trying to savehis life and that's when I lost it completely, and I rememberbut I don't remember actually doing it but from accounts, frompeople actually telling me afterwards and from what I rememberit was almost like an outer body experience where I could seemyself after this had happened.   There was a whole team standingthere and I could see myself with a gun in my hand but what Iactually did was I took out a gun and 9mm parabellum and I wasinterrogating this man and he wouldn't respond.  He was badlywounded and he was going into unconsciousness and I just rememberfeeling the most incredible rage and anger that he was ignoringme and that he was lying at the time because he said "kandishishi" "kandi shishi", he doesn't know anything. Then I brought the person that we'd captured the day before,they'd been travelling together and I said look here's your companion,we know your name is Congo we know everything about you the game'sup, you're wounded let's get this over with tell us where yourgun is, tell us where your rendezvous point is and then it's over.And he still denied it and I took out my pistol in a rage andI put a bullet between his eyes, I shot him - I executed him. 
After that it was as if I was looking at the scene from aboveand I could see myself standing there with this gun in my handand everyone looking a bit shocked and the family from the kraalstanding there and they were also very, very shocked and the kidswere just very shocked.  I walked away and I just said to theteam clean up and I said to the owner of this kraal you must burythis body now it's your responsibility, this is your problem andI went back and I radioed in to our Commanding Officer who wasin the radio room at the time and I said to him I want to comein because actually on the way to the vehicle I decided this isit. I've seen myself from another perspective, really like anaerial view of myself and I just couldn't believe who I was atthe time, and I'd had enough I wanted to come in and he said followup on your capture's information and I'll see you on Wednesday. This was a Sunday morning.
 So the next day we went out again and followed up on two, wefound tracks or actually this woman came to us and said she'djust been raped by 2 SWAPO insurgents.  We followed their tracksand made contact.  An RPG rocket was fired at the vehicle behindme and exploded in the vehicle and the capture was in the vehicleat the time and he got a fright, everyone did obviously, and thisman was executed in front of my eyes again.  He was wounded, I jumped off my vehicle to go and interrogate him as I did theday before and one of the Ovambo trackers just walked up withan R1 about two feet from his head and just pulled the trigger.  I was literally squatting next to him, his face was about thatfar from mine and this Ovambo tracker just walked up, put thebarrel there and blew his head right off and we left.  
We went back to the base got very drunk for about 2 days and thenwe went back to base and I went and saw my Commanding Officerand I said to him that's enough  I'm leaving now.  
And he said that's fine where do you want to go?  And I said Pietermaritzburgsecurity branch and he said okay I'll organise it.  
 About 3 weeks later I was back in the States and back in thesecurity branch and very unwelcome by the branch Commander whosaid he didn't appreciate these Koevoet killers just arrivingon his doorstep.  He didn't want us, he didn't like the way weworked and there was a different way of working in South Africanow.   I think P.W. Botha at that time was making "verligte"noises, reforms and things, so they were trying to get in withthat political scenario and we weren't appreciated at all.  
 I was eventually asked to leave the security branch, not askedto leave, told to leave by my branch Commander who wanted to sendme to uniform, I said I'd never been in uniform then he said yougo to the reaction unit which is like a swat team.  I went thereand really it was, pardon the expression, it was just a wank,it was just completely ridiculous people running around trainingand doing stupid things.   My last two weeks in the police forcewas spent pulling cannabis out of the mountains in the Drakensberg. My resignation in April 1984 took a month to get through andthat ended my police career, but obviously not my involvementwith the police because every year I would have to do a 3 monthcall-up, or a month at a local police station or 3 months on theborder and I spent the rest of my time until 1989 they caughtup with my system, I worked out a system of avoiding the call-upby moving, just by moving all the time.  We had to notify thelocal police station or I had to notify them wherever I went sothat they could call me up in an emergency, so what I would dois I would wait until my call-up date, for example 25th of July1989 would be my call-up date and I would organise a job, a houseor my whole life in another town and then 2 weeks of so beforethe call-up date I would say I'm moving.  I would then go to thenext place and I knew that it would take time for my file to betransferred there, and the whole process to take place so my call-upwouldn't actually happen at that time, and it would be deferreda year and then I'd move a year later so I've basically been movingsince about 1984.  I know I've taken up a lot of time and I apologisefor that.  
 Just to close it off.  My life since then has been very, verydifficult it's had a big element of self destruction.  I've beenthrough 2 marriages and I have a daughter, but really I've justdestroyed the people around me, my friends, my family and I thinkit's enough now.  It was very heartening to hear Gary Koen talkingthis morning on PTSD.  I know a lot about PTSD but every timeI hear about it there's fresh hope because actually the last timeI spoke to anyone with any knowledge of PTSD they said it wasincurable but I think there is hope and if I can just very brieflylist what my personal wish list is for coming forward here to-dayto give this submission.  
 Firstly, I haven't applied for amnesty I don't want amnesty. I think the process of the law must take it's course as it wouldin any society.  I'm not asking for any special treatment or dispensation.  I'm a citizen of this country and I also want to come to theparty, I also want to be part of the new South Africa, but I feelor have felt before to-day that I'm just a phoney if I just keepquiet and keep this to myself.  It's not helping me, it's nothelping my family and it's not helping the country in general. My wish list, my hope of coming forward to-day is that otherpeople like me, particularly people who were in Koevoet, but anyother special forces members any conscriptees, anyone who evenif you just put petrol in a Buffel and feel bad about it, comeforward and tell your story.  It doesn't matter that the amnestydate is over, what isn't over is the whole process that we'rein.  We're still in a process and to-day I realise that this submissionI'm making is not going to end the process, it's not going toneatly tie it up for me and I can put it away and get on and havea happy life.  It's part of a healing process that I've been tryingfor self-healing since even before I left the police force, butcertainly since I left the police force I realise I have personalproblems and that I have to deal with that.  
 And even in '93 when I met Marius who has PTSD and knows a lotabout it, it's been very difficult since 1993 to come to termswith who I am and what I did.  My past weighs very, very heavilyon me and I have a lot of the symptoms of PTSD, there's I thinkabout 12 in all.  I identified at least 8 of them in myself. It's never really been officially, I've never been to a psychologistwho deals specifically in PTSD but I would say that I've dealtwith about at least 50 percent of my problem and I've got 4 ofthe symptoms like hyper vigilance, which is paranoia with paranoia,it's extreme paranoia.  That's one of my symptoms.  
 So what I hope for, for the future then, is to find out answersto a lot of questions, but obviously within a structure, withthe help of the TRC and hopefully with the Government's backingwe can possibly get a veteran's association off the ground whichMarius and others have been working on for some years now.  Ithasn't been formalised but there is a constitution there's somethingon paper, it's concrete.  All it has to do is get approval andwe put it into gear and basically what it means is that it's nota bunch of ex-soldiers getting together having a braaivleis andswopping bush stories.  What it is, is SWAPO, ANC, APLA, UhmkontoweSizwe, Koevoet, Rekkies, all the units every single unit everybodywho ever was trained in any way militarily getting together andjust trying to make some kind of sense of the mess we made, anddoing something about it.  Like we talk about reparation and remorseand all this but until we actually do something like tangibleand physical it's all words, it means nothing.  So I'd reallylike to see the South African Veteran's Association if that'swhat it's going to be called, get off the ground and hopefullywe can convene a national meeting at some point where we can expressthe aims of that and make it open to absolutely everybody whofeels they might have a problem with PTSD or anyone who was justconnected with this whole conscription, with the whole militarything.  
 Part of the SAVA thing then would be to go back to Namibia andto actually go back and see the victims of our actions, theirfamilies and go and make reparation to the Namibians and to tryand help and then just make sense of what actually happened therebecause it was absolute madness.  I don't fully understand really. I know what I did there day to day but some of the things werejust absolutely insane, it was sheer insanity there.  There isa possibility that I'll be going up there next month with theapproval hopefully of the TRC and the Government.  Something'salready in the pipeline.  My medic, I've mentioned his name Shaun,I'm sure you won't mind me saying this, but we'll be going therewith an SABC team and hopefully with some professionals and I'mhoping that the TRC would be able to provide some sort of supportfor us as well where we could possibly have a psychologist withus and a few other people who are experts in their field.  Wecan go back and then really do something constructive.  And Isee this as part of the healing process.  
 I've more on my wish list but I think I've used up my time nowand I'd like to thank you very much for this opportunity.  Thankyou.