TRC Final Report

Volume 5

Chapter 7

Subsection 1

■ A GENERAL PERSPECTIVE ON PATTERNS OF VIOLENCE

8 A number of general patterns are discernible from the huge body of materials collected by the Commission. A description of these general patterns is essential to an understanding of the particular – that is, the acts of individual perpetrators. Acts of violence are in many ways quite different from each other: they range from careful calculated intentional actions to unintentional, unplanned acts that occurred because things ‘went wrong’.

Intentional military actions: “We were at war.”

9 As is apparent from the testimony of the former head of ANC special operations, Mr Aboobaker Ismail, in the amnesty hearing on the Church Street bombing of the South African Air Force headquarters (in which nineteen people were killed and over 200 injured), many acts were carefully calculated actions of war:

Special operations were set up in 1979 to undertake high-profile acts of sabotage on key economic installations. This structure reported directly to [then ANC president] OR Tambo.

10 Later, in terms of a shift in ANC policy which resulted in the inclusion of military personnel as justifiable targets, the Church Street operation in Pretoria was carried out (with the stated approval of Mr Tambo) on 20 May 1983. The operation was conducted –

… in the wake of the SADF cross-border raid into Lesotho, killing forty-two ANC supporters and Lesotho civilians, and also in the wake of the assassination of Ms Ruth First in Maputo by the security forces.

In terms of stated ANC policy, military targets including personnel [were] justifiable, even if these entailed limited loss of civilian life.

11 Acts such as these were quite clearly rational, intentional and thoroughly planned (although mistakes did occur; for example, the two ANC operatives in the Church Street bombing were themselves killed in the attack). Often, as indicated above, they occurred in retaliation against state security violence. Following the Church Street bombing, the South African Defence Force (SADF) conducted various attacks, including air raids on Maputo. The sequential nature of such calculated attacks constituted something of a ‘dialogue’ or a ‘spiral of violence’.

12 As a further illustration of calculated attacks, Mr Ismail described the Dolphin Unit, established in 1982, which “had been established inside the country to carry out operations within the broad mandate of the ANC and MK [the ANC‘s armed wing, Umkhonto weSizwe]”. In an amnesty hearing in May 1998, Mr Mohammed Shaik, head of the Dolphin Unit, described thirty-two carefully planned operations against police, embassy, magistrate’s court and state department targets within South Africa. Mr Shaik stated in conclusion that:

At all times I acted within the policy and guidelines laid down by the ANC; I was comprehensively briefed on the modus operandi of special operations in MK. I accordingly attempted to avoid or minimise civilian casualties whenever I conducted operations. To this end, whenever circumstances permitted, I timed my operations after hours, when targeted buildings had been vacated by civilians. I accept that, in the end, there was always a possibility of civilian casualties.

Where there were civilian casualties these were never at any stage intended to be targets, but were rather caught in the crossfire. To the extent that there were civilian casualties, I express my deep regret to those who experienced pain and suffering. The apartheid state left us no choice but to take up arms.

13 These rational and calculated acts of violence were justified on each side by the statement that “we were at war”. General Andrew Masondo was national political commissar of the ANC between 1977 and 1985, and earlier a Robben Island prisoner. In a section 29 hearing, when responding to enquiries about atrocities, including executions in the Angolan Quatro camp, he repeatedly stated that “we were at war”:

You remember I said we were at war … There might be times that I will use third degree, in spite of the fact that it is not policy.

People who it was found that they were enemy agents, we executed them, and I wouldn’t make an apology. We were at war.

14 General Constand Viljoen, former chief of the SADF, expressed it this way in a public Commission debate on the notion of a ‘just war’:

The liberation struggle used revolutionary methods to coerce. This was a new kind of total war, not total in its destructiveness but total in its means of applying different ways of coercion: political, psychological, economic, propaganda. It was a new kind of war.

This war, if it could be called a war, is so unique that the traditional ‘just war’ theory cannot be easily applied.

15 Even the conflict between Inkatha and the ANC was repeatedly described as a war situation. Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) amnesty applicant Mr Victor Mthembu stated:

If it had not been a war situation between the IFP and the ANC, I would not have participated.

16 In a situation regarded as war, violent actions were undertaken with pride rather than with distress and embarrassment. In this regard former senior security force member Major Craig Williamson said:

The psychological effect of fighting such a counter-revolutionary war should not be underestimated, especially when this entailed long periods of covert operations. The members of the security forces, especially in covert units … saw themselves as the elite frontline troops in a critically important theatre of the overall war. Security force successes … produced praise, pride and relief from pressure.

17 Even a self-confessed torturer such as Captain Jeffrey Benzien admitted to pride in his work when cross-examined by Mr Tony Yengeni (ANC) whom he had tortured. After saying, in respect of a particular torture method, that “I applied it well and with caution”, Captain Benzien went on to make this extraordinary statement:

Mr Yengeni, with my absolutely unorthodox methods and by removing your weaponry from you, I am wholly convinced that I prevented you and your colleagues … I may have prevented you from being branded a murderer nowadays.