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Content
A listing of transcripts of the dialogue and narrative of this section.
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Structure
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Special Report
Transcripts for Section 5 of Episode 71
| Time | Summary | | | 42:25 | And now for the spy story. The National Party governments of the past had a devastating policy of destabilizing our neighbouring states. To this end they used several surrogate armies. The one in Mozambique was called RENAMO. One of the reasons why we know a fair amount of South Africa’s secret dealings with RENAMO is the young conscript who became a switchboard operator. | Full Transcript and References | | 42:48 | Roland Hunter is now the Deputy Director-General in the Gauteng Department of Finance. His job, to manage and expand the regional economy. From 1984 to 1989 he was an inmate of Pretoria Central Prison. His crime: spying. | Full Transcript | | 43:07 | I joined the army at a time when there was quite a strong current of opinion among the white left which said that you should never join the SADF. The options at that stage appeared to be though either you left the country permanently or you went to jail. Now, at that time I didn’t regard either of those as acceptable options, so that what I decided to do was that I would have to in fact go and join the army. But as soon as I went there I started trying to find some way of achieving some kind of moral balance and say ‘I am in this oppressive force, how was I going to live with myself with it?’ So that even during basics I was starting to collect information which I thought I might be able to pass on to someone at a later stage. | Full Transcript | | 43:57 | In 1982 Hunter was assigned to switchboard duty in the Zanza building in Pretoria. // I did the job very well, I found it very interesting in that there were all sorts of strange messages which people were leaving that I was asked to pass on to other people and it was fairly clear to me therefore that this was an unusual military unit with unusual significance. | Full Transcript | | 44:18 | It turned out to be the headquarters of the military’s directorate of special tasks. // I was never shown a mission statement for the unit as a whole or an objective for the unit as a whole but it consisted of four operations, all of them relatively similar. The largest being the operation to destabilize UNITA, destabilize Angola, by means of supporting UNITA. Secondly to destabilize Mozambique by means of supporting RENAMO. Thirdly in Zimbabwe as well and another operation in Lesotho through the Lesotho Liberation Army. | Full Transcript | | 44:55 | By 1980 South Africa was surrounded. The frontline states were on the side of the liberation movements. The Pretoria regime embarked on a programme of economic, political and military destabilization. Support for so-called rebel armies like RENAMO was central to that programme. // With respect to RENAMO, I did see some objectives. They were divided into long term objectives, medium term and short term. The long term objective was to overthrow the government of Mozambique and replace it with a government more sympathetic to South Africa. I think the word used was ‘more friendly,’ something like that. The medium term objective was to make the existing government of Mozambique more sympathetic to South Africa and the short term objective was a very, was just to do as much military and economic damage as possible. We would pay the senior members or RENAMO every month. We’d pay the president R800 a month and some of the other senior political leaders R500 a month. I would physically ...more | Full Transcript | | 48:02 | ‘The speculation that today’s Maputo talks may lead to reinforcements being sent to help halt the MNR advance, which is threatening to topple President Samora Machel’s government and is leaving the Mozambican economy on the brink of collapse.’ // While the world suspected that South Africa was providing a lifeline to the RENAMO rebels in Mozambique, Hunter had hard proof. After several false starts Hunter finally made contact with the ANC, his connection the present Minister of Land Affairs Derrick Hanekom. | Full Transcript | | 48:37 | I was very clear on what I was doing; it’s not to say that I wasn’t scared. I was actually scared stiff all the time. It was a very worrying period. It lasted about a year that I was effectively operating, that I was stealing documents. I was very aware of being an amateur, total and utter amateur, I got no training from anybody on this. So that, how did I steal documents, well I kind of put them under my shirt and walked out with them you know. I’ve since got quite a strong bias in favour of professionalism. | Full Transcript | | 49:09 | From late-1982 and well into 1983 he’d passed top secret information from the South African military to their sworn enemy, the ANC. // Some part of the information which I conveyed to the ANC ultimately landed up on the president of Mozambique’s desk. It appears that the president of Mozambique, through whatever processes I’m not sure of them, decided to use that information not to militarily hit the bases concerned, the RENAMO bases or to expose South Africa in some way, but instead to open negotiations with South Africa, which negotiations ultimately lead to the Nkomati Accord. So I think what happened was that when Mozambique opened these negotiations with South Africa they confronted South Africa with a list of information, militarily accurate information with map coordinates and names and whatever else, details of resupplies, whatever. South Africa found it undeniable, but as soon as I had that information they could come and get me, because once they knew that there was a ...more | Full Transcript | | 51:43 | This week the Truth Commission will hold a special hearing on the role of the legal sector in our past and the Amnesty Committee will hear the application of an MK soldier in Kimberley and those of three APLA soldiers responsible for the bloody 1993 attack on the Heidelberg Tavern in Cape Town. Until next Sunday at six, good bye. | Full Transcript | | 52:02 | End credits | Full Transcript |
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