1976 Cabinet minutes quote Jimmy Kruger urging his colleagues to back shootings. Mungo Soggot and Stuart Hess report
CABINET notebooks from 1976 reveal murder was official National Party policy, with the recommendation from the then minister of justice, police and prisons, Jimmy Kruger, that the police kill more people in the wake of the Soweto uprising.
The notes, released by the State Archives on Thursday for the first time, quote Kruger as saying the police should employ more drastic measures and “bring about more deaths”. (“Minister stel voor dat hierdie beweging gebreek moet word en die polisie moet miskien ‘n bietjie meer drasties en hardhandig moet optree wat meer sterftes meerbring.” [Minister suggests that this movement must be broken and the police must maybe act a bit more drastically to bring about more deaths.] ).
Kruger’s comments were made at the Cabinet meeting of August 10 1976 – less than two months after the start of the police killing of at least 600 Soweto children protesting against having to study in Afrikaans. The true death toll has never been ascertained but was certainly much higher.
State archivists have scanned Cabinet records between May and September of that year for references to the uprising and have found only three sketchy pages – two from August 3 and one from August 10.
It appears the strategy adopted by the police in June 1976 – that of firing live ammunition at children – was never discussed by the Cabinet of then prime minister John Vorster.
At the August 3 meeting, Kruger said the cause of the uprising had to be identified, adding that the language issue was just the start of the violence.
“The ANC are the central figures who organised the uprising,” he said. He felt black children in general were well taught.
Another Cabinet member, minister of Bantu administration and development MC Botha, said: “… regarding Soweto, it has become clear the language issue is only a front.”
Kruger told his colleagues the influence of the black consciousness movement was growing dangerously strong but that it was impossible to imprison all the leaders.
He said the government believed the movement had church support – especially from whites, which was of particular concern.
Kruger said government was considering negotiating with black consciousness leaders but that such negotiations might be pointless as those leaders could not “exercise self control”.
Kruger said certain officials from Bantu Administration, who had since been transferred, had stoked the unrest in Soweto.
Government officials had held meetings with Bantu communities about closing schools in the Soweto area. Kruger claimed these “Bantu” leaders were more concerned about these closures than the actual deaths in the uprising.
He indicated that another minister had tried to negotiate with representatives from the Soweto schools, but had met with considerable resistance from schools where children had established student representative councils.
Cabinet proceedings were recorded in notebooks by either a junior minister or a secretary until 1978, when the prime minister PW Botha ordered formal minute- keeping. The State Archives Act says these and other official records are subject to a 20-year embargo. Former president FW de Klerk attempted unsuccessfully to increase this embargo to 30 years when leaving office in 1994.
In an exhibition in the foyer at the State Archives in Pretoria is one of the original placards carried by the protesting children. It reads: “To hell with Afrikaners.”
In September the next year Kruger made headlines with his comment that the death in police custody of black consciousness leader Steve Biko “leaves me cold”.
In a display cabinet packed with memorabilia from the anti- apartheid struggle in the 1950s, is a letter in English from the South African police commissioner to the minister of justice about a banning order against Nelson Mandela.
The letter, dated January 14 1955, indicated Mandela should be allowed to appear in court on behalf of his clients in Krugersdorp, Vereeniging and several other magisterial districts in the then PWV.
But the commissioner opposed the suggestion that Mandela should be allowed to appear in Pretoria. He said it appeared Mandela, in any case, rarely visited Pretoria.
“Mandela cannot be trusted and visits by him to Pretoria and Vereeniging must be treated with suspicion.
“From inquiries made at the magistrate’s court and the native commissioner’s court in Pretoria it would appear that Mandela is not known here, from which it must be inferred that he is very seldom, if ever, called upon to appear in court in Pretoria on behalf of one of his clients.”
He added: “In view of the fact that the aim of the Congress of the People is to formulate the so-called Freedom Charter before June this year, it is possible that Mandela may, if this concession is granted, avail himself of the opportunity to further the objectives of the organisation.
“Although there are no practising native attorneys in Pretoria, there is certainly no scarcity of European attorneys and as the general opinion among non-Europeans seems to be that their interests are best served by European legal talent, there does not appear to be any good reason for Mandela to come to Pretoria.”