TUESDAY, 4.30PM
FORMER head of the erstwhile National Intrelligence Service Niel Barnard told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Tuesday that several people currently occupying prominent leadership positions in SA had supplied information to the apartheid intelligence agency during the 1980s.
Barnard, now Director-General of the Western Cape, was subpoenaed to by the TRC to answer questions in its investigations of the erstwhile State Security Council and violence in KwaZulu-Natal. In a 27-page affidavit, Barnard claimed that persons currently leaders in politics, state administration, public and business and media supplied information knowingly and unknowingly.
However, Barnard said in his affidavit, accompanied by a number of supporting documents, that in the “extremely delicate” political, administrative and socio-economic social transformation phase in which South Africa finds itself at present, it would in his “considered judgment” be an “absolute tragedy” if such individuals were to be identified at this stage.
“It will least of all lead to reconciliation and will, on the contrary, cause a witch hunt which could have devastating consequences for the individuals, their families and friends, and South Africa’s reconciliatory transformation process.”