SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ
I can understand how some junior officer could think that something like that would give advantage or no advantage.  Dozens of people had been arrested, detained illegally over the years.  Dozens of frame-ups had taken place, implicating even the Minister, Vlok had been involved in the fabrication of Shirley Gunn, the bombing of Khotso House, so illegal detention in the scale of horror was petty, nothing and as we know over the negotiations process, we had to negotiate not while one person was being murdered, we had to negotiate while hundreds of our people were being massacred on the trains and in the townships.  Pres Mandela has said, what is negotiation about except negotiating with the enemy.  He has told the Irish at Arniston, "you don't negotiate with your friends" and when we have said, "How do you sit down with this Bantustan leader?"  He has said, "but I sit down with de Klerk, who's hands are dripping with blood".  It would have made no difference.  It would have made no difference.  It's only a petty Intelligence officer who would read as if their small world constitutes the universe.  My own detention, Sir, I sat in detention for 4 months, from 25th of July.  Pres Mandela visited me twice.  I said "Don't bother to get me released, get on with the work of negotiating, you'll get me out in due course."  As long as I could get one assurance, "Do everything you can to make sure that they don't kill me out here."  So I don't think that the detention was a problem, I think the murder was heinous.