TRISH MURPHY, Pretoria | Tuesday 10.00PM.
FORMER state president PW Botha did not directly request unlawful action in making South African Council of Churches headquarters Khotso House “unusable”, former law and order minister Adriaan Vlok testified before the Truth and Reconciliation amnesty hearing on Tuesday.
But given the circumstances, he said, there was no other option. There was no means within the legal framework to carry out the order.
Vlok was responding to cross-examination by Botha’s legal counsel, Ernst Penzhorn, who has been attending the amnesty hearings in Pretoria. Vlok, Van der Merwe and 30 former police have applied for amnesty for illegal activities during the apartheid era, including the bombing of Khotso and Cosatu houses.
Botha himself has refused to attend Truth Commission hearings, deriding the commission as a “circus”. He has not applied for amnesty, and judgement in a contempt trial arising from his defying a Truth Commission subpoena is still pending.
Vlok told the amnesty committee that he felt he had been fairly treated by the committee, and now believed that it was the right procedure. Nonetheless, he was not going to prevail upon Botha to appear before the TRC. That was up to Botha himself, Vlok said.