Amnesty Hearings — Pretoria — UNKNOWN

MR MOLOI: In the affidavit, in the confession rather, you made to the Magistrate, I refer to page 56.  You refer - let me take a piece out of this confession, the second line from the top - "the following day me and two other persons committed an act because we were in financial dire straits but it held no political objectives or consequences.  We were in great financial trouble and my bank manager as well as the bank where my car was on hire purchase gave me a deadline to solve my financial problems."

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: That is the Hennie Binneman who came to me and told me to make such a type of statement and what happened was that he told me this on a Friday and I had all the time until Monday to think of a good story in order to give a bit more detail to it and I simply made up a whole lot of things in order to construct an acceptable story for the security police.  What also happened was that at that stage we had already heard that the security police was looking for us and I would not have been worried about a car which would have been repossessed if I was running away from the security police.

MR MOLOI: Do I understand you correctly to mean that you are capable of making up a story and make it look real even if it's not?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: Yes.

MR MOLOI: As regards to the content of the instruction to murder - what exactly did it contain, what was said to you about the murder?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: He specifically said that I should kill a black person in order to prepare myself for the struggle which we still had to wage, that was to take out political leaders and this person knew me enough to know that murder or violence was not a characteristic with me, it was not something I would easily do that is why he gave me that task as part of my initiation.

MR MOLOI: So at the end of the day you had to prove to whoever gave you the instruction that you have carried out the instruction didn't you?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: I had to tell him verbally, he would have believed me no matter what I had said.  If I had said that I had done it then he would have believed me.

MS GCABASHE: So it is therefore correct to say that that instruction was just to enable you to prove yourself to the organisation, it had nothing to do with any political objective?  Because the political objective was to get rid of NP cabinet ministers and ministers at that time?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: Yes but they couldn't trust me with the task of shooting a minister if I couldn't prove myself and I would not have committed such an act if it was not for the objective, the ultimate objective that we had.  If anybody has said to me under other circumstances to shoot someone, I would have laughed at him but in terms of the significance of the background, it was definitely political.

MR MOLOI: Did I understand you correctly to say even the word of mouth would suffice that you had carried out the murder as instructed?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: Yes.

MR MOLOI: Why did you kill?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: We didn't have any other option at that point, we didn't believe that there was any other option for the survival of our nation.

CHAIRPERSON: I think the question was if all you had to satisfy Mr de Beer that you had carried out his instructions was to tell him that you had done so, why did you actually go and kill somebody, why not just go to him two weeks later and say well I've killed somebody here, I've now qualified?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: In terms of that framework, living in an underground movement, every person had to be able to trust everybody with his or her life and if I had just gone and told a number of stories it would have meant that I would be lying and I couldn't lie and said that I had done when in fact I hadn't done it because in the first place if I could not have committed that murder, it would later have surfaced where I would not only be placing myself in danger but everybody else around me.

MR MOLOI: So in the killing, actually your objective was to make yourself acceptable to the "order van die dood"?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: Yes.

MR MOLOI: That was the main objective?  Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Advocate Gcabashe do you have any questions you would like to ask the witness?

MS GCABASHE: Yes, I do.  When exactly did you act as a bodyguard to this unknown person you've referred to?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: Just before my arrest for approximately two to three months I'm not entirely sure of the time period.

MS GCABASHE: Was this before the murder or after the murder?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: After because at that point we were waiting for certain weapons to be conveyed to us.

MS GCABASHE: Now another little bit that's not too clear to me - you referred to a security police tape of a conversation between I think yourself and De Beer or it could possibly be Binneman, I actually have De Beer in my notes but the Judge has just said that also Binneman, which is correct.  Which of the two, is it both are there two different tapes or one tape?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: Two different tapes, I had listened to a number of tapes from the security police under Section 29 which they had made in our home and I suspected that there was a tape with Binneman and that's just suspicion because it was practice to tape every conversation wherever possible in the security police.

MS GCABASHE: Now alright, now I'm really interested in the conversation between, that was taped between yourself and De Beer.  There is such a tape do you think?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: Yes.

MS GCABASHE: What were you discussing?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: He gave us an order to commit murder, robbery when the financial side of the organisation was experiencing problems.

MS GCABASHE: Sorry, I'm not sure if it's murder, robbery or both.  What was the order?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: That was with the robbery, I don't believe that there is a tape regarding the robbery because I've never heard of anything like that.

CHAIRPERSON: Sorry let me, if I may just intervene, you say Mr Lottering, that there is a tape about the instructions given regarding the robbery.  Do you know that there's a tape or do you think there's a tape?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: Yes I definitely listened to such tapes under Section 29 when we discussed the matter.  Why they didn't use the tape I don't know, I only said later on for myself that there was an informer in our group, the third person who I mentioned, that came along with me and Goosen, he was a security police informer and they didn't want to expose him and that is the same person who committed the robbery with us at the bottle store.

MS GCABASHE: Now, again in my notes, another aspect I'm not too clear about - you talked about what you are going to do as an order was to kill NP leaders and ANC leaders - am I right, have I written this thing correctly?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: Yes, originally we would have focused on NP leaders but as I have mentioned the shift of emphasis went over to ANC leaders because at that point the CP had lost a great deal of support and we weren't certain that a coup d'etat would have been executed, a political coup d'etat.

MS GCABASHE: Now you talk of "we" what was your input in these discussions?  You specifically?

CORNELIUS JOHANNES LOTTERING: For instance certain instructions were received from above and then we had to go and look at the feasibility of those orders, could they be carried out for instance, whether it was a high risk operation or whether it was quite feasible to carry out and then I would have gone back to those people and I would have given them feedback.