TUESDAY, 5.00PM
FORMER foreign minister Pik Botha told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Tuesday that the National Party government suspected its security forces of engaging in illegal activities, but stopped short of admitting that the apartheid cabinet ordered gross human rights violations.
Botha was testifying on the first day of the commission’s hearings on the role of the State Security Council, which co-ordinated security action in the late 1980s. When asked if the killing of political opponents was approved, Botha skirted the question, saying: “The decisive question is not whether we as a cabinet approved the killing of a specific political opponent, the question is whether we should have done more to ensure that it did not happen. I deeply regret this omission. May God forgive me.”
The SSC was at the pinnacle of a complex and wide-ranging web of structures that compiled reports on security issues. Apartheid opponents slated the body as a military government parallel to the civilian government, and there is no doubt that it had far-reaching powers with respect to security policies and actions.
Botha, however, maintained that as the SSC had no executive power, it could not have taken illegal decisions. He said the incorrect impression had been created that the security council had been an all-powerful body that played a key role in the apartheid conflict. “Too much power has been attributed to the SSC. More power was given to the minister. The cabinet was the government. The cabinet had to report to [the NP parliamentary] caucus. Caucus had a lot of power… and the regional NP congresses could make or break you. That is where the power was. SSC decisions were useless, of no validity, until the cabinet [approved] of them,” said Botha.
When questioned about his understanding of the words “eliminate” and “neutralise”, used in SSC documents when describing how anti-apartheid activists should be dealt with, Botha said: “I want to say to my friends in the TRC to be careful not to lift a sentence out of context because you were not there, you were not at a meeting.” he told them. He added that the SSC had been relentlessly inundated with working documents, proposals, guidelines, assessments and memoranda drafted by a labyrinth of committees, sub-committees, joint management centres and working committees. “A considerable number of the proposals and recommendations, formulated as decisions, were vague and of a general nature and some were naive and ingenuous and simply not capable of implementation in the light of the existing realities or the shortage of funds.”
When questioned about the 1981 bombing of the African National Congress London offices and the 1988 assassination of ANC representative Dulcie September in Paris, Botha said he had been upset by both incidents, which he described as “bad stuff”. When told that an unnamed amnesty applicant had said bomb parts qwere transported to London via diplomatic bag, he expressed suprise and maintained that it was done without the knowledge of his department.
Said Botha: “To me this is a crime of gross proportions. That means a [diplomatic bag] can be used to put a bomb in it. I can assure the commission today that I would personally like to know who did these things. Who stole our bags, what did they send in those bags, and how did they copy that secret diplomatic seal?”