Special Hearings — Mandela United Football Club Hearings — 1997-11-24

MR PIGOU: In the opinion of.  Thank you.  How many members of the security branch in Protea roughly, an estimate, had those kind of powers to make that kind of decision?

JAN DANIEL POTGIETER: I would roughly say about four.

MR PIGOU: Okay, now you have indicated that people originally went for the 30 day period and then to get an extension you could get that with the help of the minister and that was often how it was facilitated.  Is that correct?

JAN DANIEL POTGIETER: The procedure was that the lieutenant colonel or senior member would authorise the detention.  Head office would be informed of the detention.  They would then supply a detention number and all correspondence will then be done in terms of that.  That was for the first 30 days.  That warrant of the lieutenant colonel and senior.  With the lapse of 30 days you would have had to obtain a warrant signed by the minister of law and order at the time, Mr Vlok and company, and in order to get that you would have, on the 28th day of detention you would then submit an application to head office which they would then submit to the minister and you would get your warrant and thereafter at the end of six months you would have to apply to the overseeing committee.

MR PIGOU: No, thank you for that but have you indicated - you have indicated that the minister was quite helpful in this regard in terms of providing extensions.  You didn't have a particular problem with getting extensions.

JAN DANIEL POTGIETER: If your reasons for detention was - there was merit in your application you wouldn't have had a problem.

MR PIGOU: Thanks.  I want to put to you a situation which arose in the Supreme Court in Witwatersrand in 1995 during a civil case against the former minister of law and order, Mr Hernus Kriel, where the Courts ruled in favour of the plaintiff and awarded the former Umkhonto we Sizwe commander a sum of R180 000 for illegal detention and torture in custody of the Vaal Triangle security police.  Now what I am putting to you is that the Minister in that particular incident was purported to have sent a blank fax copy of the detention order with his signature on to the security branch in Vereeniging before, some several days, in fact several weeks if I believe, before the MK commander Mr Mapalala was due to be re-detained, that is 30 days.  Now what I am trying to find out is did that happen in the Soweto security branch?  Did you get that kind of - in the Soweto security branch did you get that kind of assistance from the minister?

JAN DANIEL POTGIETER: I wasn't that lucky. I wish I had some of those blank warrants.

MR PIGOU: Okay.  Just quickly on the overseeing committee could you tell us what the composition of that committee was?   Was it all policemen?  Who made up that committee?

JAN DANIEL POTGIETER: Which committee is this?

MR PIGOU: The overseeing committee that decided on whether detention continued after six months.

JAN DANIEL POTGIETER: No, the overseeing committee consisted I think of a retired judges or director generals appointed by either the minister or parliament.  I am not quite sure.  I can't recall.  They were independent officials.

MR PIGOU: Thank you.  Now you have referred to also in your statement that files were kept on the detainees that they contain warrants, charges, visits by magistrates, doctors and so forth.  Now we know that up to the period of about 1986 I think it was, the director of the security legislation in Pretoria kept those files and the Commission has had access to those files in Pretoria.  Now the period we are talking about, which is after that, where were these files kept?  Were they kept at head office, the security branch head office?  Where were those files kept?

JAN DANIEL POTGIETER: We had a file at grassroots level where the person was detained with all the details in it.  I am sure that head office would have a file as well where correspondence was filed but they wouldn't necessarily have the magistrate's reports unless there was complaints.  If there was a complaint by any detainee a report would have been sent to head office and head office would send it down with a memo to ask wie, waar, wanneer, hoekom, et cetera, et cetera.  We would get a copy of that as well.  But I don't know what - I have never seen the files of head office.  I don't know what they look like, I don't know what it contained.

MR PIGOU: Both Mr Nienaber and Mr Coetzee said in their statements that there was no surveillance unit in Soweto.  In the light of the information that you gathered during the courses of your investigations as the investigator into activities around Winnie Mandela, did you not motivate for the need, and we have seen the statements that you put in the back of your submission to this Commission, and obviously there was a lot of activity going on around Mrs Mandela.  Did you ever motivate for the need for surveillance and for the need to beef up your capacity to see what Mrs Mandela was doing?

JAN DANIEL POTGIETER: We did not have a surveillance unit and as I mentioned in my statement somewhere the area in which Mrs Mandela lived was pro ANC and pro Mandela.  We had instances where persons were shot at, policemen were wounded, persons from Escom were shot at.  It was risky.  It was really risky and I would say nigh impossible to have surveillance conducted for any length of period.

MR PIGOU: So no efforts were made into looking at the possibilities, a concerted effort into looking at the possibilities of improving your surveillance in terms of physical surveillance, watching the comings and goings in that house - in various houses?

JAN DANIEL POTGIETER: We obtained ample evidence about the coming and goings from the persons whom we detained in terms of section 29.  I invite you to approach the Attorney-General.  I think there are in excess of 100 statements there that supplied us with information.

MR PIGOU: Okay, thanks.  I want to move on to the death of Sergeant Pretorius quickly.  Now how is it possible that you as the head of the - and I am going to just term it the Winnie Mandela investigations - that such a crucial source of information as close to Mrs Mandela as Jerry Richardson, that this information was not made available to you.  Now we have heard that he became the source sometime at the end of 1987 or the beginning of 1988.  You are telling us today that you first heard about this in November 1988, at the time of his arrest.  How is it possible that that information was withheld from you, considering the position that you held as the commanding officer so to speak of this investigation into Mrs Mandela?

JAN DANIEL POTGIETER: It was never policy or whatever to divulge the identity of informers and I was never told that there was an informer recruited in the Mandela household, close to the Mandela household or whatever.  I was totally unaware of it and I never received reports containing valuable intelligence regarding the activities going on.

MR PIGOU: It seems highly improbable, you have just mentioned that you didn't know Mr Pretorius, I mean it seems highly improbable that there have got Mr Pretorius who is the handler of Mr Richardson and you don't know about - apparently you don't know Mr Pretorius even existed inside the security branch.  He is handling Mr Richardson and you don't know about this.  I mean surely it would have been of great importance for you to be able to liaise with Pretorius in terms of trying to request certain aspects of information to further your investigations.

JAN DANIEL POTGIETER: Surely if I had known that Pretorius had such a sensitively and well placed informer I would have definitely had liaison with ...

MR PIGOU: Well when you found out about this were you angry, did you do anything about it, did you report this to your superiors that that information was being withheld from you?