TRC Final Report

Volume 6

Section 3

Chapter 6

Subsection 8

The Seychelles Restaurant attack

79 . In February 1994, the same IFP and AWB members conspired to carry out an attack on the Seychelles Restaurant at Port Shepstone. Mr Morton Christie, Mr Harry Jardine and Mr Andrew Howell applied for amnesty for the arson attack that destroyed the restaurant. They testified before the Amnesty Committee that the restaurant was a known meeting place for ANC supporters.

80. At the hearing on the Flagstaff police station attack, the applicants revealed that they had conspired to bomb the Port Shepstone offices of the NP and the ANC on the same day as the Seychelles Restaurant attack, but had abandoned these plans because of the commotion caused in the town by the bombing of the restaurant. No casualties or injuries were reported after the bombing.

81. Amnesty was granted to the applicants for the attack on the restaurant, for the conspiracy to attack the NP and ANC offices and for preparing and being in possession of explosives, on the basis that the relevant facts had been disclosed and that the offences were associated with a political objective committed in the course of the conflicts of the past [AC/1999/0183, 0184, 0185].

Links with international right-wing organisations

82. Support from international right-wing organisations mainly took the form of moral support and the supply of propaganda materials.

83. Mr Robert Mahler [AM6397/97], an American citizen, stated in an amnesty application that he had been recruited by the SAP to act as a firearms instructor. Mahler had illegally imported a large cache of weapons to South Africa, using fraudulent names and passports. He claimed allegiance to the CP and said he had contact with other groups like the AVF and AWB. He also said he was the USA fund-raising representative of the AWB. He was refused amnesty on the grounds that he could show no political objective for his offences.

84. After the assassination of Mr Chris Hani, reports appeared in international and local media linking Mr Janusz Walus and Mr Clive Derby-Lewis to international groups. This supported suspicions that there was a wider international conspiracy behind the killing. However, the Commission was unable to find that Walus and Derby-Lewis took orders from international groups (see below).²⁴⁰