Special Report Transcript Episode 61, Section 2, Time 16:10

Did you lie to your attorney? // I did Mr. Chairman. // Nobody compelled you to lie to your attorney? // No one compelled me Mr. Chairman except for the fact that I was busy with an armed struggle and I was determined to give as much opposition as possible under any circumstances. // What support did you think that the honourable people in the Conservative Party would have given you if they knew that you were in fact guilty at a time when you contended you were not guilty, that you had committed perjury and that you were attempting to defeat the ends of justice? // Mister Chairman, my impression of the support I obtained was that my supporters believed that the end, the cause deserved the end used. // You claim throughout your evidence on a number of occasions that you are a religious man Mr. Derby-Lewis. // That is correct Mr. Chairman. // And that you punctuated your evidence from time to time that some of the things that happened appeared to you to be the will of the Almighty. // That is correct Mr. Chairman. // You also went so far as to suggest that the late Dr Treurnicht’s religious background influenced you in some way. Are you going to tell the committee that your religion and your depth of belief in the Almighty give you the right to commit perjury and to attempt to defeat the ends of justice? // Mister Chairman, in an armed struggle all tactics are fair and I already expressed my regret over certain actions which I had to take. Nobody comfortably, willingly contravenes the law, no matter whose law it is. // Can you give the Committee any yardstick in terms of which they could judge that you’re possibly not lying during these proceedings as part of the armed struggle? // Mister Chairman, any one attending a hearing like this where truth is of the essence would be an absolute idiot to even endeavour to lie to this Committee. // How much wiser were you when you falsely tried to reopen your trial? // I don’t understand the insinuation in that question Mr. Chairman. // The insinuation is a simple one Mr. Derby-Lewis; that you say that anyone who tries to mislead this committee would be very foolish because the truth has to be told. Didn’t the truth have to be told to the Judge President of this division when you tried to bluff your way through in setting aside your conviction and sentence? // Mister Chairman I explained and I repeat again, it was part of the struggle and any tactic was suitable. To now lie before this Committee, what would I gain out of lying Mr. Chairman? // To go free in order to continue the struggle. // Now you know what the question is, it says that you and your wife had vague plans at the beginning that some sort of arrangement should be made to liquidate one or perhaps more leaders of the ANC and the SA Communist Party. Is that correct or incorrect? // That is incorrect Mr. Chairman. // Are we to understand Mr. Derby-Lewis that your wife, a particularly active political person, who had a column of her own in the ‘Patriot’ written in English up to a certain stage, who wrote speeches for the leaders of the Conservative Party and who was politically active, that you conspired with Mr. Walus, the first applicant in this case without giving her any hint of what your thoughts on the matter were, ever? // That is correct Mr. Chairman and I explained in evidence why. We did not want to involve our women folk. It was too dangerous. // ‘We did not want to involve our wives’ was a statement made at a time when you were protecting her and I’m going to suggest to you that one of the reasons why you didn’t give evidence … you knew that if you gave evidence in all probability your wife may have been convicted on the strength of your evidence. // That is not correct Mr. Chairman. // Very well.

Notes: George Bizos; Derby-Lewis

References: there are no references for this transcript