MR GORDHAN
I must however point out that as far as the last interaction about what is torture and what isn't and whether it's a human rights violation or not, the Committee might want to take into account that solitary confinement where you are a total captive to the whims, fancies, desires or otherwise of a group of persons who are there to perpetuate a racist ideology is one that must be considered a serious violation of human rights.  If one is in the situation where you have no contact with family, no contact with law, you only have contact with the lawyer, a doctor that they can choose, you have no access to your own medical personnel, you have only access to a bible, upon request you can get religious material of any other denomination, you have no access to reading material, they will only allow clothes that they deem fit that a family might want to send to you, they might allow an odd packet of biscuits to reach you from time to time otherwise nothing if they desire not to, you'll have a bath at their leisure and pleasure, you won't have it if they don't want you to have it, if you can shave if they want you to shave, you don't shave if they don't want you to shave and I can go on, Chairperson.  That's the condition in which people who subsequently played a leading role in both the negotiations for this country, that brought us where we are and in it's first democratic government were subjected to during the course of what we described as this set of events here.
	The second thing, Chairperson, is Mr Visser has in the absence of Mr Maharaj tried to recapture his version or his interpretation of the set of events from 1988 leading right up to 1990.  I don't want to counter every fact or detail, all I want to say is that one needs to balance that out with the evidence that a previous Panel which included two of the people that are here heard from Mr Maharaj as a contrary or alternate set of facts.  But there is some interesting terminology used there when he says that during the weekend of the 7th and 8th when Mbuso Shabalala and Charles Ndaba were in the hands of Mr Botha and others, he used the word "the light goes up" and suddenly there's an understanding on Mr Botha's part of what were the circumstances that were prevailing in relation to the Vula project.  I submit to you, Chairperson, that how can a light suddenly go up when here for four to six weeks you've had free access to an informer who is allegedly working for you from 1988?  That at that stage no computer tapes, computer disks, computer material, computers or any other personnel were in the hands of the security police or Mr Botha but just having - and earlier I think we heard that Mr Shabalala was also not cooperative, so the same person who was the informant, having spent a weekend with Mr Botha, suddenly becomes the source of the lights going up.  I think that's a very dubious interpretation to be granted to the circumstances of that point in time.
	As far as moles/informants accessed by the ANC in the pay of the police or security branch are concerned, there's a long standing practice in the ANC, Chairperson, at that time to actually recruit the police.  It's not something new, The Owl wasn't the first person to be recruited by the ANC, nor was it the last at that point in time.  So moles or informants who were connected to the ANC were a permanent feature of the struggle for democracy as far as the ANC was concerned.  Why there had to be this inordinate desire to suddenly find out who The Owl is and do it personally and then do it vindictively is something that in my view lacks credibility from the evidence that we've heard.