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

YASMINE SOOKA: Sorry Mr Vally before you continue. I'm going to point out that I've noted what Mr Kemp has said. That the submission that his client has made to the Commission, it does have headings which I think are the topics covered by the subpoena. So when you do question his client remember that perhaps the response underneath that headline is related to a question in the subpoena.
 I will allow you to carry on questioning where there are contradictions but I'm asking you to be mindful of the fact that there are headings involved which really, and the answer to that may be in response to that specific heading. But I've noted what Mr Kemp has said.

MR VALLY: Madam Chair let me continue. I note that the comment that
"That I was not involved in any action that was where Mrs Mandela was directly involved or the Winnie Mandela Madikizela Football Club".
However, I will ask questions along the lines of what was said under oath where Mr Pretorius says, with legal advice. 
"During my term of office at the Intelligence Unit at Soweto, I amongst others received orders from, I received orders to monitor the on-going activities."
I'm sorry, I will carry on. And in brackets it says:
"(terrorism, murder, etc)" of Winnie Mandela to investigate those activities"
Assuming that that is where the truth lies. And I want ask questions along those lines.  Was there a special Winnie Mandela desk in the Intelligence Unit at Soweto?

ANTON PRETORIUS: No, there was no such desk. The Intelligence Unit did not make use of desks neither did the Soweto Security Branch.

MR VALLY: Are you saying that you did not have sections which specialised in SOYCO or trade unions or political groupings?

ANTON PRETORIUS: Not as far as I know.

MR VALLY: We've heard a number of Security Policemen from your unit in the last two days telling us this. Are you saying that they were talking lies?  Were you here when they were giving evidence?

ANTON PRETORIUS: If I may tell the Commission how I saw it - I don't know how anybody else saw it but I never heard them refer to a SOYCO Lessenaar or a Mandela Desk or whatever. If I speak on the Intelligence Unit, the Intelligence Unit was specifically tasked with certain tasks, instructions to investigate certain organisations. It was the total spectrum of Umkhonto weSizwe, for instance Mkhiza. They did special operations and so forth, there wasn't a desk for everything.
 All the members involved were tasked to work with those organisations and then there were individuals as well. To give you an example. I think you know of the terrorist photo album, together with that photo album there were something like 15 000 MK soldiers to whom we had to pay attention. I don't know of a desk, that there was a desk under my command which dealt specifically with one subject. 
 In an area office or a branch office where previous members had been members maybe, but the only division in Soweto was a geographic division. They spoke of the East and the West, as far as I know. All suspects in those geographic areas operated within that area and the people investigating them, the same. 
 He, for instance Watermeyer pointed out once that he was in the west whereas Mrs Mandela's house was in the east so that it didn't fall in his area. So I'm saying there was no desk way of operating.

MR VALLY: I would assume that when you got - sorry, let me just get more clarity. Which section were you in, East or West?

ANTON PRETORIUS: When I started in Soweto I was in the West.

MR VALLY: Did you cover Mrs Winnie Mandela?

ANTON PRETORIUS: No.

MR VALLY: Did you get ...[indistinct] to the East section or East?

ANTON PRETORIUS: I was never involved in the East section.

MR VALLY: SO you were always in the west geographical section?

ANTON PRETORIUS: As I've already told you, in the beginning I was, I resorted under the west section of the branch. I wasn't there for long and I don't remember specifically whether I was there for a year or a couple of months but thereafter as I have already said in my statement, I was transferred to the information gathering unit which later was known as the Intelligence Unit and I was in that capacity responsible for the whole of Soweto.

MR VALLY: All right.  So you were responsible for the whole of Soweto, so you would have covered possibly Mrs Madikizela Mandela's activities and her club's activities as well?

ANTON PRETORIUS: Although Mrs Mandela stayed in the area that she did, I had a specific tasking and people after me will also be able to testify that I had nothing but nothing to do with the Mandela Football Club, absolutely nothing.

MR VALLY: What was your tasking?

ANTON PRETORIUS: Except for the recruitment, training and placement of informers it was related to, as I have told you, mainly revolutionary threat, that was my main focus, my task. Secondarily the mass democratic movement of later: COSATU and all it's subsidiaries and then also tertiary level information.

MR VALLY: Meaning?  What does tertiary level information mean?

ANTON PRETORIUS: Student organisations, not at schools but at university and college level.

MR VALLY: What did Mrs Madikizela Mandela represent to you as an Intelligence gatherer from the Intelligence Unit covering the whole of Soweto? Did she represent a revolutionary threat to the South African Security Branch?

ANTON PRETORIUS: Personally I think Mrs Mandela was the top commander of MK of the internal branch who received direct orders from Chris Hanekom. I think she also confirmed that in her testimony.

MR VALLY: I think the interpreter meant Chris Hani, not Chris Hanekom.

INTERPRETER: Sorry.

MR VALLY: ...[inaudible] she was in your perception the overall commander, therefore she would be of primary interest to you being in the Intelligence Unit?

ANTON PRETORIUS: She was not important to me as such. I was interested in the MK members who infiltrated from overseas to Soweto, that was part of my function. It was part of my function to trace such members and it is so that as a result of the information that I gleamed, that Mrs Mandela time after time came to the fore but I didn't consider her, I couldn't consider her as priority.

MR VALLY: Did the Security Branch consider her as a priority?

ANTON PRETORIUS: I think that has already become clear in the past few days that Mrs Mandela was a priority suspect of the Security Branch.

MR VALLY: Now since you said there was no real division, there were no real separate desks, therefore any information that came in you would have known about it as well. Would that be correct?

ANTON PRETORIUS: What information?

MR VALLY: Any information which came into the intelligence unit where you were based, as there was no separation into different desks, you would be privy too as well, you would know about it as well?

ANTON PRETORIUS: What information?

MR VALLY: Whatever information regarding the activities of  Mrs Winnie Madikizela Mandela.  As an Intelligence Unit I assume you'll be collecting information about her activities, would you not?

ANTON PRETORIUS: No, I wouldn't say that, I would just like to explain.   As I told you I was not personally tasked with Mrs Mandela's activities. I talk of her daily activities, I wasn't tasked with that in Soweto. That was the Area Officer's responsibility because she lived in that area, the Eastern block.  It was their activity to monitor her and to gather information around her and the football club.
 The Intelligence Unit worked on a higher level according to me, they gathered information on a higher level and not on that level where Mrs Mandela and her football club functioned. We were on a very much higher level and it is not right for you to say that we knew all information that was gleamed by the area office.

MR VALLY: Well this higher level, did it include daily monitoring transcripts of Mrs Winnie Madikizela Mandela's telephone calls?