TRC Final Report

Volume 5

Chapter 6

Subsection 8

Findings on the SSC and the policy of elimination

84 The basis for the following finding can be found in Volume Two of this report, in particular in the sections that deal with the killing of MK operatives and other political opponents. Because of the seriousness of this charge, a summary of the arguments and reasons for the adoption of the finding is included here.

85 Volume Two charts the intensification of the conflict during the 1980s, and the development of a ‘total strategy’ by senior politicians and security force personnel to meet what was considered a ‘revolutionary onslaught’. It has been noted that, for the first five to seven years of the Botha administration, the security forces engaged in various forms of counter-revolutionary warfare with the states it perceived as a threat to the existence of that administration. With the intensification of conflict inside South Africa in the mid-1980s, tactics that had worked externally began to be applied on the domestic front.

86 The domestic application of an essentially military counter-revolutionary strategy was a significant landmark. Whereas the SADF had previously directed its military operations at external targets, it now began to play an increasing role in support of the SAP inside South Africa. The policing of internal resistance became militarised.

87 Military operations aim at eliminating enemy personnel, weaponry and bases. Hence, as a military approach to policing gained ascendancy inside South Africa from the mid-1980s, so too did the incidence of killing or ‘eliminating’ activists, which had already become an established practice outside the country.

88 This application of a more military-style approach to opposing internal dissent was the expressed policy of the SSC, perhaps the most influential body in South Africa at the time. Although the SSC was merely an advisory body to cabinet and had no executive powers of its own, its decisions were almost always accepted or adopted by cabinet. All the key cabinet ministers sat on the SSC, as did the leadership of the security forces. The SSC also formed the pinnacle of a vast network of joint security structures in the form of the National Security Management System (NSMS), which extended from national to local level. Thus the SSC carried enormous influence. Its decisions both reflected and influenced the perceptions and mindsets of senior politicians and security force personnel. Members of the security forces who participated in SSC- or NSMS-linked structures, and to whom decisions or policy were communicated, would have regarded those decisions as specific instructions or general authorisation.

89 It seems highly improbable to this Commission that the members of the SSC did not foresee the possible consequences of such a shift in counter-revolutionary strategy. Indeed, their increasingly strident language and rhetoric on both public platforms and in documents was laced with phrases such as:

‘elimineer vyandelike leiers’ (eliminate enemy leaders)

‘neutralise intimidators by using formal and informal policing’

‘destroy terrorists’

‘fisiese vernietiging – mense, fasiliteite, fondse, ens’ (physical destruction –

people, facilities, funds, etc)

‘uithaal’ (take out),

‘neutraliseer’ (neutralise),

‘uitwis’ (wipe out),

‘verwyder’ (remove/ cause to disappear),

‘maak ’n plan’ (make a plan),

‘metodes ander as aanhouding’ (methods other than detention),

‘onkonvensionele metodes’ (unconventional methods).