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

CHAIRPERSON: Could I just interrupt to stress again that we will be studying this I promise you, every line and every word so even if you do skip it will be considered very seriously by the Commission.

GEN VILJOEN: The problem is Chairperson, my presentation - I amplify the presentation with my personal experience in this because I didn't write the book itself, so I'm putting in practice what is in theory.  I'm coupling the practice - what happened with the theory which is in this.  If you just read the theory, you will find it very difficult to follow and that's the reason why I'm trying to deal with this.  So Chairperson, this is how the idea of international involvement of South Africa across the borders in the affairs - let us say, of countries such as Angola.
 It was all connected with the important international conflict of international - of communist expansionism.  This is the way we saw it and this is as far as we are concerned, a very, very, important motivating factor for us.  In fact it was certainly the major motivating factor and the fact that eventually this was achieved through the collapse of communism in 1989, at least gave us the satisfaction that this part of it, we did contribute some important aspects in this regard.
 Chairperson, I now want to read to you on the issue of cross-border operations and cross-border raids.  What Mr George Schultz, the United States Secretary of State had said.  He said: "From a practical standpoint a purely ...[inaudible] defence does not provide enough of a deterrent to terrorism and the States that sponsor it.  It is time to think long, hard and seriously about more active means of defence, defence through appropriate preventative or pre-emptive actions against terrorist groups before they strike".
 So this is basically the approach that we had also with the idea of cross-border operations.  It was therefore in this time of 1976 when we returned after the Angola assistance towards Unita, that we completely withdraw to behind the border of South West Africa but soon after that we found the SWAPO forces moving down, establishing basis just across the border and we had to apply the principle which I just read out to you about Mr George Schultz.
 From 1976 onwards - also regarding the ANC situation, now I want to switch away from the South West Africa towards the RSA front.  The ANC by now had the new strategy based on what they called: "The Four Pillars of the Revolution", a strategy for a people's war.  The Four Pillars were: the underground structure, mass mobilisation, armed offensive and the isolation of South Africa.  From '76 onwards, Angola became the maintaining centre of the ANC with Lusaka as the main operational centre.
 After '78, Mozambique became the pivot for armed action against the RSA with regional headquarters, the so-called machinery, being established at Botswana, Swaziland, Mozambique and Lesotho.  South African was being encircled from the North.  By the late '70's, both SWAPO and the ANC therefore had achieved two major requirements and that is, they had extensive external support and they had a source of arms with this external support.  And they had also achieved the principle of external manoeuvre.  
 They could effectively force us, or limit our freedom of movement within the other areas because we did not cross the border just for the sake of crossing the borders.  It was also a very, very, serious consideration before we crossed the border because of many implications such as international diplomatic security council - UN Security Council resolutions, we all had to bear this in mind.
 So what I want to emphasis at this stage Mr Chairperson is the fact that our operations across the border and in neighbouring States - was actually put by General Malan, the Minister then, when he said: "in the present operational situation there is no controlled neutral zone between the RSA and the host countries of it's enemies.  The result is that the enemy is able to establish and operate it's bases, arms depots and logistical roots close the RSA borders with the approval of the host country concerned".
 This means that the enemy can cross the border to lay mines, kidnap and intimidate and then within a few hours, return to the host country where he is unassailable.  No Government in the world can afford to tolerate a situation of this nature, consequently when the situation arises, the SADF has no other option than to launch pre-emptive operations across the border in order to destroy the enemy bases, depots and logistical roots and in this way to discourage the enemy actions on the other side of the border.
 So Chairperson, skipping a number of aspects, we at that stage - we were confronted on the Western front and the internal front with two problems.  The one problem was that in the South West Africa situation SWAPO situated their bases in Angola close to MPLA and Cuban force's bases, thereby making it difficult and risky for us to attack these bases.
 Inside South Africa, the ANC - we thought that eventually they would follow more or less the same strategy as SWAPO did, but they soon found out that it was not possible for them to do that.  And eventually the Cuban forces - sorry, eventually the SWAPO forces operated with the MPLA forces inside Angola and they assisted each other mutually whenever we tried to get at the SWAPO forces.
 In the case of the ANC and the PAC it was slightly developing differently,  their cadres were not operating from bush bases as we had in the case of Angola and South West Africa but mostly from houses, camps, similar facilities in or out of the outskirts of towns such as Maputo, Matola, Gaberone, Maseru and later also in Harare.  There bases were mostly clandestine facilities, small facilities and they often changed regularly.  A targeted bases could therefore be active on the one day and be gone the next day.
 Military factors such as accurate intelligence, security, surprise, infiltration and ex-filtration for the attacking force were of primary importance.  Because of this there has always been the danger that such facilities could included civilians, thus endangering the lives of property.  So SWAPO used the proximity of the Cuban bases and the ANC used the proximity of the human bush principle, firstly in the exterior situation and then later on interior situation too.
 Now in doing this, the ANC made a very important decision when they said in around about 1985/1983/84: "we do not have forests in South Africa, the military machine would smash us if we would send a force from outlying areas, our masses have to serve as our bush, the Black community is our bush.  This was a very, very, important strategic change.  And Chairperson, strategies follow strategies and I would now like to take you back to this position because the year 1986 has been a very, very, influential year as far as the development and the character of the conflict in South Africa is concerned.

CHAIRPERSON: General Viljoen, I wonder - this is a very important section and I don't want you to rush through that.  I'm wondering if we shouldn't adjourn at this stage and then ask you to pick this up again later this afternoon.  We'll necessarily extend the hours, it's not a problem for us as we're very anxious to hear your full report and I don't want to rush you at this moment particularly on this critical issue.  So with your permission, I would like to adjourn now so that we can have a break for tea and whatever else people need to do and then we will return here at 10 past 11 and then we will resume with other witnesses and go back to your report later this afternoon.