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POTGIETER, CGAge Description ... who do not believe the applicants were making full disclosures. The following segment provides a profile on Truth Commissioner Adv. Denzil Potgieter. The final segment looks at the South African right wing during the transition era and includes interviews with right wing leaders Eugene ... Truth Commissioner Denzel Potgieter But in spite of missing home Potgieter has no other regrets. // You know it’s very easy as a professional person to control what comes your way. If you don’t take to a particular kind of case or if you don’t necessarily want to engage in a certain kind of direction you can actually avoid it. ... of how he later murdered her alleged lover. He told the TRC Themba Mabotha had been handed over to Vlakplaas by this man, former police colonel, Jan ... We are obviously committed to getting the work done as quickly as possible so with the result that we are forced to take on that little bit more, so that I find that there is very little time for personal matters. If I’m not sitting in a hearing I’m preparing for a hearing. If I’m not in some ... I was born in the Eastern Cape in Uitenhage but I had spent wonderful early schooling years in a village where my mother was eventually the school principle of a church school and I had actually schooled there up to Standard four when I returned to Uitenhage, finished off eventually my high ... There is not very much spare time at this stage but I like to read, I don’t read as much as I would love to and as I used to. I read virtually anything. I love sport, I play a bit of golf but I have very little time for that now. That is something that I miss quite a lot. I try to spend a bit of ... Mortimer did say that he could not find any documents on the CCB. // You make the point that no documentation other than that contained in the records of the Harms Commission is believed to exist. Now, is that in fact the case? // Yes. // Are there no records available of the CCB apart from those ... Did you ever before today disclose that fact that you were a policeman when you were serving on the Star? // No I did not. // Is it today the first time actually that you disclose that? // That I’m disclosing that, yes. Other people may have had, Mr. Chair if I may add, their suspicions and I ... The role envisaged for the CCB was the infiltration and penetration of the enemy, the gathering of information and the disruption of the enemy. // You refer to the fact that the role envisaged for the CCB was amongst other things the disruption of the enemy. What did you have in mind when you ... Once I was done with that I got back to my chambers and I was hardly there for a few weeks when I got another telephone call to say that, well you know the president has decided that he wants to appoint you to the Commission. Of course that was again a surprise but a great honour and the next ... Was there any question that those to be killed were ANC members? // No, he only referred to Goniwe and similar cases. // He didn’t mention that these people were recruited by the ANC? // No, no there was nothing like that. Why did this happen? You raise it, you ask the question, you’re critical about yourself, you concede that what you did fell short of what you should have done in the circumstances. But why? // The overwhelming majority of attorneys in private practice were white males as you set it out in ... By the end of the process we would have had a good dose of the truth; we would have had quite a bit of exposure of what had happened during our mandate years. I am not quite sure whether we have given much direction in actually striving for reconciliation and I’m not convinced that we have really ... We were busy withdrawing and if this person had not thrown a hand grenade there would have been no shooting. // That is exactly my point. Why did that shooting take place? There were several police officers there. There was the possibility that you could prevent that these people could get away. ... Look your position if I understand it correctly is that Vlakplaas is an aberration like a lot of these other things that were debated this morning. And the explanation, as I understand it, that you were proffering was that it must have been an officer or two or whatever, lower down the hierarchy, ... When at last Denzil Potgieter does pack up his bags and go home it will be to his family in Cape Town and his practice there as an advocate. It is probably only Potgieter who will then be surprised when he gets the call to serve his country again. Let’s move on. Just before the 1994 election when ... Potgieter now sits on the amnesty committee which was expanded at the end of 1997 to cope with the unexpectedly heavy case load. Time for another portrait of the people behind the Truth Commission process. Truth Commissioner Denzil Potgieter recently joined the amnesty committee. Our cameras caught him at work in Port Elizabeth this week. Although he says it’s hard to reflect in the midst of such a hectic process Denzil Potgieter has given a lot of thought to the significance of his work. |
