Special Hearings — State Security Council Hearings — UNKNOWN

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much, both of you, we have had an 
extraordinary two days.  We were very deeply frustrated that especially the 
military had not come forward for us to be able to know more about what had 
happened, why it had happened, and I mean, we had thought that this hearing 
was going to provide us with some of the answers that we were looking for 
about accountability and so on. I think we have gone beyond that.  We are still 
going to have to try and establish, I mean we have got researchers and these 
people who are going to be trying to establish facts and we are still going to 
have our meeting with Mr P W Botha.  You indicated earlier that you believed 
that it was important that your leaders should have been here to help you to 
become a team.
 But I think that anyone listening to yourselves is not going to go away 
with, well, they were fussing over this, they were fussing over that, it is that 
you have come out and stood, well almost naked, figuratively, and it is a very 
humbling thing, it is a very humbling thing for us in the Commission, it is 
very humbling, because some of the things that have happened in the two 
years that we have been together, have been quite extraordinary, and we 
regard what has happened in these two days in different ways, but especially 
the remarkable candour that you have displayed is something that I think 
doesn't happen, it's not happened anywhere else.   I said when we sit here 
sometimes we forget, I mean, that you were the government, you were running 
the show and now you are coming to give account to us who many of us were 
regarded in that dispensation as really nothing or worse, I mean, enemies to be 
neutralised.  And I just want to give thanks, I want to give thanks for our 
country, for our people, I want to give thanks that you two young men should 
have, I mean, the honesty that you have demonstrated is, it doesn't come 
easily to anyone of us, I think and it must be at some cost to yourselves, but 
we want to give thanks and believe, I mean we believe fervently that the 
contribution that you have made in the past, but the contribution that you have 
made today is going to be one that has a remarkable impact. 
 It is going to help give a momentum to this process of seeking to heal 
our country, because we have been committed to the fact that we want to 
finish this thing quickly. The country can't keep sitting and sort of scratching 
open the wounds, that's had to be done, but it is a phase that must pass so that 
we can actually get down to the business of holding hands and saying I want 
to make this country a great country.  
 The pain sometimes is that this could have happened so much earlier, 
you know, but then, there is a wonderful little piece in the Bible which says, 
"In the fullness of time, something happens in the fullness of time" we might 
be impatient and say "why didn't it happen at that time? But the circumstances 
were not ripe for it to happen. And I just hope you are aware that you have 
helped, I think, to pour balm on the wounds of very many by what you two and 
to some extent the other two people have done, and I want to say thank you.
  I want to thank my colleagues and our team over there and yourselves 
over there and all of you that, now I understand a little bit actually why the 
world looks on and marvels that you can sit there and that I can laugh with 
you when you can laugh with me, as they say, but it can't be, and it is, it is 
happening and the miracle that they spoke of in 1994, I think God wants it to 
persist in part for the sake of the world, because if we can do it here with 
God's help and God's blessing and the prayers of so many around the world 
and there is hope for Rwanda, Sierra Leone and all of those places. I want to 
pray.
 God you are good and you do some extraordinary things in this Land.  
We thank you for the privilege of being fellow-workers with you. We thank 
you for those who have come forward yesterday and today and for the things 
that have happened and we pray that these and others similar to this will 
contribute to the healing of this traumatised of this wounded people, thank 
you God. Amen.

HEARING ADJOURNS: 259

MR MEYER: /

LEON WESSELS: SECURITY HEARING TRC/