Amnesty Hearings — Pretoria — 1996-07-01

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Basically infantry training, an infantry unit, but did also have a special forces subsection.

UNKNOWN: Special forces?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Better known as the Recces.

UNKNOWN: Was White a Recce?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: I can't be absolutely sure about that.  The security police told me that he was, but we didn't really discuss that.

UNKNOWN: From your own experience, training that these Recces got, what kind of attitude were they taught about in the lives, particularly the lives of the enemy?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Basically there was a total contempt for the lives of an enemy, absolute contempt. They were trained to eliminate the enemy.

UNKNOWN: To kill people, the methods of killing?  Do you know what they were taught?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Certain tactics, hand-to-hand combat methods, they were trained in knife-fighting, small arms fighting, demolition, explosives.

UNKNOWN: So that people could be killed fighting with knives?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Yes, that was part of the training.

UNKNOWN: Now let's return.  After your training, where did you go then?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: From Natal Command I moved to Pretoria and then I decided - excuse me, to go back.  While I was in the Defence Force, White and I decided that we wanted to establish a similar organisation in South Africa to the one which we had had in Namibia. That was that as soon as we left the Defence Force we would actively begin the planning and organisation of that organisation.

UNKNOWN: What became of these plans?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: I came to Pretoria. I found a job, because we needed funds so that we could begin to do what we wanted to do. To set up this organisation we needed funds and so I got a temporary job until the beginning of 1991, I enroled at Pretoria University, where I began to read political studies.

UNKNOWN: What was your attitude to religion at that stage?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: I was an atheist at that stage.  That was also part of my father's philosophy.  Since I was about three years old, I have been an atheist.

UNKNOWN: Did you believe in no god or did you believe in nature, a natural force?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Well, I believed that there was no spiritual God. I believed that nature sets an example that we should follow, that the laws of nature were the supreme laws, and that the White man represented the highest level of the ladder of evolution.

UNKNOWN: Did you have anything to do with the Church of Creator at that stage?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Well, that was also the view of the Church of Creator. As Mr Van Wyk testified, this originated in Ben Claassen's White man's Bible.

UNKNOWN: Did you attend these services or meetings?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: When I arrived in Pretoria, I regularly attended the services of the Church of the Creator.

UNKNOWN: Did that church have any influence on your political education?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Yes, an important influence.  Initially while I was in the Defence Force, the organisation we wanted to found would have been called South African Partisans.  After I had contact with the Church of the Creator, and also the contacts that I began with foreign groups, in France and in Belgium and in Italy, I increasingly began to believe in a nationalist socialist philosophy.  I began believing that the philosophy that the national socialists or the Nazis as they called them, adhered to in Germany, was a more acceptable philosophy.  Basically a continuation, projection of what I already believed in.

UNKNOWN: Just as a matter of interest, what was your attitude to the allegations that 6 million Jews and others had been killed by the Nazis during the Second World War?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: As long as I remember from the time that I was discussing politics with my father, I believed that 6 million Jews had never died in the gas chambers. I had a lot of documentation to prove my theory and for example, in my matric year, in the history assignments dealt with Auschwitz and that I believed that I had proved that not one single Jew could have died there in the gas chamber. Allegedly 1,5 and 2 million Jews died there in the gas chambers, but I had photographs of the gas chambers and aerial photos, there was a video cassette of the place that I had, and it was part of this assignment that I was doing, that proved that no Jews had died in gas chambers during the Second World War.

UNKNOWN: As an adherent of national socialism you foresaw and envisaged that if you came to power one day that you would have a policy of racial purification?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Yes, we believed that the White race was exalted above other races and that essentially the White race only had the right to existence.

UNKNOWN: Now continue, tell us what happened at the University of Pretoria.

JEAN DU PLESSIS: I joined the Afrikaner Studentefront and I was part of the management committee.

UNKNOWN: What is the Afrikaner Studentefront?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: The Afrikaner Studentefront was a far right-wing students grouping, student organisation, under the leadership of Donald Pols.  It was a reactionary group in the sense that we attended political rallies, rallies held by our political opponents, for instance the ANC and we tried to disrupt these meetings.

CLLR ERLEIGH: Give us some examples?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Well, amongst others, we disrupted the meeting attended by Minister Org Marais in Waterkloof, a meeting attended by President Mandela, who was then the leader of the ANC, we disrupted his meeting, which was held on campus of Tuks.

UNKNOWN: What did you actually do during the President's meeting?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Well, beforehand we decided that Mr Nelson Mandela would not hold a meeting on the campus of the University of Pretoria and we decided that we would disrupt it, by violent means, if necessary.  The situation was such that it wasn't necessary for us to follow the first option.  There was a Mr Claassen who went on stage and when Mr Mandela's bodyguards, it seemed as if they wanted to assault him, and we all then stormed onto the stage and the meeting never took place.

UNKNOWN: Please continue with your development.

JEAN DU PLESSIS: Well, at that stage I felt that we should urgently establish an underground organisation. I felt that the National Party was giving away the country to the ANC, and that we should prevent this at all costs.

UNKNOWN: Now what was wrong with the existing organisations, the existing right-wing organisations?

JEAN DU PLESSIS: I felt that the leadership of these various right-wing organisations, was such that it wasn't dynamic enough to lead the country to liberation.  The only person I believed had the necessary dynamics was Prof Schabot. I went to see him regarding this. I wanted to revitalise the BBB, because the BBB had been unbanned at the same time as the ANC had been unbanned. I believed that the BBB could make a positive contribution and that we would be able to achieve something by means of this organisation.  At that stage I also felt that what I then regarded then as the enemy, it was so powerful that we would in any event have to establish an underground organisation. I felt that just as the ANC had a military wing and a political wing, and the ANC and Umkhonto weSizwe, we would also, using the same model, divide the BBB into a political wing and the BBB would be the political wing and the National Socialist Partisans would be the underground organisation with a possible separate military wing, which White wanted to name Skuzapo, based on the Selous Scouts.

UNKNOWN: Now what was Prof Schabot's reaction to your approach to him?