SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ
Chairperson, it is impossible that Charles Ndaba should have the information on paragraph 8 and 9 at the moment of his entry into the country.  I say this for the following reasons.  First of all, the identity of myself and Siphiwe Nyanda who entered the country in July 1988 was so strictly guarded that even the National Executive Committee of the ANC was informed in different that I was in hospital in the Soviet Union since 1987 and that Siphiwe Nyanda was undergoing a field officer's training course lasting 5 years at a military academy in the Soviet Union.  Nobody, no cadre being sent in the country, would be given that information, it's completely contrary to any simple underground rule.  The cadre could have got arrested crossing the border at Swaziland, got tortured and immediately under torture says, "But Mac and Siphiwe are in the country" and when the person settled in the country, we always only revealed our identity on very strict need-to-know.  What was Vula's mission?  Paragraph 8.  Each cadre was only briefed about their specific area of work.  We were not going to tell them that we were co-ordinating the underground political section, military section, Intelligence section and the overt sections of struggle and take the risk that in the course of their highly risky work, if they got arrested by accident and were tortured, they should reveal the top committee.  Certainly we'd learned from Rivonia and we'd learned from our own arrests that you don't do things like that.  Charles Ndaba, I say he was brought in on the 7th of February.  By then the February 2 speech had been delivered by F W de Klerk.  Shortly, a few days after the 7th of February, Nelson Mandela was released.  The situation was now extremely fluid.  In fact, precisely because of that situation, we began to introduce systematic discussion, to talk about the option of what we do with the underground as this situation develops, not in order that we take the decision, but in order that we prepare our forces for whatever would be decided by the leadership.  So Charles Ndaba would not know this overall mission, this is ex post facto, we were not going to reveal our communications systems, we had spent 50 000 pounds developing our communications system, even the Soviets wanted it from me and I wouldn't give it to them and you think I would give it to a cadre to say "you man it"?  Communications was manned by myself directly with one person working under me, by Siphiwe Nyanda directly.  I and Siphiwe Nyanda did the transmissions, we personally did the receiving and we personally did the decoding until work expanded to the point where I took on Janet Glove as my secretary and Siphiwe took on one person in Durban.  The only other person who was briefed about the communications system was Ronnie Kasrils who entered the country in February 1990 as part of the top leadership structure and he was briefed about the communications system and was being taught to use it because he would hive off to take command of a particular geographical area.  That's where the communication was.   No way Charles Ndaba would know that.