The trial of the former South African president, Mr P. W. Botha resumed yesterday with the presentation of documents detailing plans by the state security council - over which Mr Botha presided - to "destroy" and "neutralise" political activists seeking to overthrow the apartheid state.
Mr Botha (82) faced charges for refusing to heed a subpoena to appear before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) on the role of the security council during his tenure as head of government, first as prime minister and then as president, from 1978 until he was ousted in an internal party coup in 1989.
Mr Botha, whose fierce temper earned the cognomen "the Great Crocodile" when he headed the ruling National Party government, refused to heed the summons. He dismissed the TRC as "a circus" and accused it of conducting a vendetta against Afrikaners and of seeking to humiliate him.
The TRC wanted to question Mr Botha on a series of murderous attacks against anti-apartheid activists in the 1980s. These included the assassinations of Dulcie September, the ANC representative in Paris, Ruth First, wife of the now dead South African communist leader, Joe Slovo, and Jeanette Schoon, wife of the former Ireland-based South African exile, Mr Marius Schoon, the TRC executive secretary, Mr Paul van Zyl, told the Regional Court in George yesterday.
Documents presented to the court purportedly show that he presided over meetings which authorised the "identification and elimination of revolutionary leaders, particularly those with charisma".
Mr Botha, while not disputing that the state security council mounted a counter-insurgency campaign against the ANC-led revolution, denied that he authorised the murder of political opponents. "As a Christian and an Afrikaner, I have never associated myself with blatant murder," he wrote in a letter read into the court record.
Evidence presented to the TRC by the ANC charged the security forces of fomenting intra-black violence as well as carrying out covert operations aimed at "neutralising" leaders of the extra-parliamentary struggle against apartheid.
The question was whether those operations were authorised or condoned by the state security council and whether Mr Botha knowingly approved of or connived at extra-judicial killings, Mr Van Zyl said.
At the height of the rebellion against white rule in the mid1980s Mr Botha declared two states of emergencies, one in the 1985 and then, after a brief respite, another in 1986 which was not lifted until after he was ousted by Mr F. W. de Klerk, the man who initiated settlement talks with the ANC.
During the states of emergency an estimated 30,000 black activists were interned without trial while perhaps as many as 20,000 black people were killed in intrablack violence and in clashes with the security forces.
While Mr Botha's draconian crackdown on the rebellion earned him the reputation as iron-fisted Afrikaner ruler, his 11 years in power saw many reforms aimed at placating blacks, including, critically, the abolition of the pass laws, which subjected the movement of black people to controls from cradle to grave, and the enactment of laws facilitating the establishment of black trade unions.
Even as Mr Botha appeared in court yesterday another attempt was being mounted to negotiate a compromise which would lead to a withdrawal of charges against him in return for an undertaking by him to testify - in camera, if necessary - before the TRC. The latest move was led by an Afrikaner businessman and friend of Mr Botha's, Mr Boet Troskie.
If the trial goes ahead - it has been set down for the rest of the week - and Mr Botha is found guilty, he faces a fine of R2,000. He could in theory be sent to prison for two years but the TRC chairman, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, has indicated that he would be loathe to press for the imprisonment option.
A former policemen, Ferdi Barnard, was yesterday convicted of two murders and one attempted murder in the Pretoria High Court. Barnard was a member of the Civil Co-operation Bureau, a secret military unit established to disrupt South Africans deemed to the "enemies of the state". Its activities included "maximal disruption," a euphemism for murder.
One of Barnard's victims was David Webster, a university lecturer and high-profile but non-violent opponent of white rule. He was gunned down on May 1st, 1989, by masked men.