BOTHA, JJ

I assure you Mr. Chairperson that the Seychelles coup was neither discussed nor approved by the South African cabinet or the State Security Council.

This is my land, my native land. This is my South Africa. I’m not going to allow you to interfere in our internal affairs. Keep your hands out of South Africa. We will solve our problems in our own way.

Neither the international community at large nor any particular state will dictate to us what the contents of our political programme should be. We have to live in this country. We have nowhere else to go, therefore we ourselves shall find solutions to our problems and we will make them work. Let ...

This one guy he was just so bossies, he was actually amusing. I mean whenever you heard helicopters, I mean this is Voortrekkerhoogte, it’s like a military town, helicopters going all the time. This guy heard a helicopter, he would shoot under his bed and he would go into … this guy ...

No but you [Max du Preez] are always in front to do wrong things. He’s one of the gentlemen I don’t like.

The Seychelles, a tourist heaven. For years holiday makers have flocked to these islands strung out like jewels in the Indian Ocean. But in 1977 trouble came to paradise. Seychellois President Sir James Mancham was ousted in a coup led by Albert René. Mancham had been a friend of apartheid South ...

I realized that I could have done more to turn the tide of apartheid earlier. I acknowledge that I could have done more in the State Security Council, in the cabinet and in Parliament to ensure that political opponents were not killed or tortured by government institutes. I could have and should ...

If the words ”neutralised,” ”eliminate” were used in reference to hot pursuit cross-border action or terrorist bases in neighbouring countries, then obviously ”neutralise,” ”eliminate” would include the killing of the terrorists. If the phrase ...

This one guy he was just so bossies, he was actually amusing. I mean whenever you heard helicopters, I mean this is Voortrekkerhoogte; it’s like a military town, helicopters going all the time. This guy heard a helicopter, he would shoot under his bed and he would go into … this guy ...

These words and phrases reflected the general reaction amongst the majority of white South Africans whenever a murder or bomb explosion by terrorists was announced. It was reasonable therefore that members of the security forces would have interpreted a phrase like ”wipe out the ...

Now where do you take it from now? I ask myself, I can’t ask my colleagues. Everyone must speak for himself. I said to myself, not for the sake of this meeting but here this man, should I not have done more?

Dames en here [ladies and gentlemen], can you all hear me? Those who can’t hear me put up your hand and salute me. I stand by everybody who executed legal government orders on our struggle against revolutionary communist onslaught against our fatherland which had to lead to anarchy. I stick ...

All the decisions were taken to cabinet. You were not dealing with State Security Council decisions; you were dealing with cabinet decisions. Cabinet, it can be proved. Not only factually, but that is the constitutional position. So the cabinet was governing. The State Security Council was a ...

Our purpose was also to show to the PAC and its communist allies that attacks of this kind would not be tolerated.

I want to help build the new SA. I was a destroyer now I want to be a builder.

Only four months after the assassination of David Webster the most prominent white member of the Namibian liberation movement, Anton Lubowski, was shot and killed in front of his house in Windhoek. One of the men who conspired to kill him, Irish citizen Donald Acheson, was arrested soon after the ...

Your name is all over the Ferdi Barnard charge sheet, why didn’t you come forward to clear your name? // To be quite honest, I’ve noted all the allegations. I have approached the TRC with regards to an application, with regards to certain activities which took place within the CCB ...

There is not the slightest question as to its authenticity. There are even notes pasted by themselves at the back of this document in the handwriting of members of the delegation or members who attended the meeting. These are obviously notes as it’s only normally done at meetings of this ...

Massacre has become a cheap word in South Africa. There have been too many instances where a dozen or more people were killed in one incident of political violence. But there is no other word for what happened in the Natal midlands in 1990. 200 people died in the single biggest massacre in our ...

General Mortimer had nothing more to say about the CCB, not that they killed SWAPO leader Anton Lubowski, not that they killed Johannesburg academic David Webster, not that they tried to kill Justice Minister Dullah Omar, not that they bombed and attacked activists and organisations such as the ...