Amnesty Hearings — Bloemfontein — 1997-05-12

PIETER JAKOBUS GOUWS: Yes, this is a political debate, political parties make their live out of this one, but in general Boer is referring to the Afrikaner in a broader context, in other words what would be politically, by certain political parties be implied as pure bred Afrikaners that should be, you know have certain rights on whatever land, whatever the case may be, in other words we talk about Afrikaner as you would find it in text books.
	Then boer would refer to the farming community as such, which may be Afrikaners but which may be some other people too.  Now in the Free State the two are basically synonymous because most and at that stage specifically, now you have a small number of commercial Black farmers too, but here during 1989, 1991 probably ninety some percent of the farming community in the Free State would be Afrikaner people, in other words Boers and then farmers, boers and very few of them would be English speaking people.

ADV MADASA: So the call to attack Boers, did you perceive it to be a call to attack Boers or boers?

JUDGE WILSON: He said at the beginning of his evidence it was with a capital letter, didn't you?

PIETER JAKOBUS GOUWS: Yes.  And Chairman, I would like to repeat that in the Free State those two things are synonymous, they are the same.  If you attack the Afrikaner here you attack the farmer basically and it will be the capital B and the small B.

ADV DE JAGER: If you make a call "kill the Boers, kill the farmers", it would include the Afrikaner and the English speaking farmer or even if there were Black farmers they would be included under the criteria of farmers?

PIETER JAKOBUS GOUWS: Yes, I think I said that precisely at the beginning.  We read it, I personally read it this way and I think most of the farming community read it this way that it would mean the Afrikaner and then secondly specifically reference is made to the farming community, the farmers as such in other words the commercial farms we are talking about here and those farmers would be in most cases the Afrikaner too, but it could be some English speaking people too, even some Black farmers.  But as I have said we have very few of them in the Free State.

ADV MADASA: Now the attacks you referred to as brutal, were they prevalent prior to 1989?

PIETER JAKOBUS GOUWS: Farm attacks or attacks on farmers you always have the attacks on policemen, farmers, or whatever it is, but it was such a large escalation of attacks on the farming community, on the farmers as such that as I mentioned to you that even mass meetings were called by the farming community, in other words there was a tremendous escalation during this period 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992.  If I think, I don't have the facts and figures in front of me, but it was as if it was a continuous increase in murders and attacks during the period from 1989 to 1992, perhaps even past 1992, 1993 and when you think of attacks on farmers you think of maybe in the Free State you have something less than 10 000 commercial farmers and if you have an attack a week on a farmer, that is quite a lot.  It is not that you have an attack out of a million people, you have out of 10 000 people, you know, in total I don't think the commercial farmers in the Free State would have been more than 10 000 during that period of time and we have had sometimes two attacks a week on the farming community where farmers were killed or they escaped with their lives.  So yes it was an increase and I think this period in 1990, 1991 was one of the most brutal as far as attacks on the farming community are concerned..

ADV MADASA: Right, you have said the way attacks prior to 1989 and they escalated later on, now my question is those who occurred prior to 1989, were they brutal and similar in nature as those which occurred later on?

PIETER JAKOBUS GOUWS: Chairman, it is impossible for me to answer, I don't have the details of attacks earlier and even if I want to guess on this, it would be impossible for me, I don't have knowledge of those ones.

ADV MADASA: You said you put pressure on the police to act, what sort of pressure did you put?

PIETER JAKOBUS GOUWS: We went so far to say if we would get some of these murderers before the police, we would hang them.

ADV MADASA: Were there members of security forces who were also members of political organisations?

PIETER JAKOBUS GOUWS: Yes, and this is one of the reasons I started out with the political scene right in the beginning in 1989 because in this whole Northern Free State I think the political awareness during that period up to 1994 was tremendous, or immense I should rather say, it was immense and it worked through to the security forces and to the policemen and I would say they were under a lot of local pressure from the local communities and amongst the people that they operate and they would deal with everyday, there would have been a tremendous amount of pressure being placed on them and they probably would have been in certain cases, might have been members of specific political parties - for that I cannot vouch, I do not know, but independently if they were members of any of the different political parties, on all of them would have been a lot of pressure.

ADV MADASA: Do you know or are you aware if the members of the security police were recruited from the farming community?

PIETER JAKOBUS GOUWS: I can refer back to when I was a young person, I grew up as a poor White as they called us because the Afrikaners from my age used to be, or most of them were very, very poor people and in those days it was one of the biggest honours to become a policeman, it was really something to become a policeman because that was one of the ways in which you could get somewhere in life.  And I would guess in later years probably up to a couple of years ago, many, many Afrikaner people, Afrikaans speaking but let us say, Afrikaner people, farming people would have entered the police force, yes I think amongst many, many families, farming families you will find members of the police force.  I had an uncle myself, Commissioner of the police, General Gouws some time ago, quite 30 years or something like that, 20 years ago, so yes within the farming community it was a recruiting ground for police force and for the armed forces.

ADV MADASA: I have no further questions Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: Any questions?

MS THABET: Just one.  You refer to farmers, Afrikaners joining the police force.  I am interested more in Mr De Ru, did you have any knowledge of Mr De Ru being part of that group of you know, farmers or Afrikaners, so in other words what is your knowledge in as far as Mr De  Ru is concerned - was he part of that group Afrikaner group even though he was a  policeman?

PIETER JAKOBUS GOUWS: As I have mentioned right in the beginning, I met Mr De Ru in person only today, here for the first time in person, but his parents, I think his mother I don't know if it is  his father also, living in Parys constituency and I dealt with them during that period in time.  In the area where he is operating and I know, or knowing the farming community there Mr Jannie Els was Chairperson of our defence, we actually established here in 1990, the situation became so bad that we established a Safety and Security Committee within the Free State to liaison with the police and the defence force, now Mr Jannie Els was present Chairperson of that specific Committee in Heilbron area, I know those people are extremely conservative, the farming community and they would have exerted a tremendous amount of pressure on that local police.  Now what they did, how they did, what Mr De Ru's personal involvement is, I cannot say anything about it, I don't know.

MS THABET: Thank you.  Thank you.

JUDGE WILSON: I think implicit in what you have just said is that in smaller communities the police are much more members of the community and subject to much more pressures.