MR SMIT
My submission would be it could be very easy for the Conservative Party to file a letter in this regard.  No submission was made before this Commission, no representative from the Conservative Party, who has a real interest in this matter because it bears down directly on the Conservative Party's attitude at that stage during the time that these deeds were committed, no-one comes before this Committee to say but these people, it is denied that they were ever given instructions.  It's just a letter, it's not under oath, it's written by a Mr Wouter Hoffman.  He could have attended these meetings.  That would be my submission.  	'Cause the problem now is, we have applicants who at that stage acted on instructions, they were members of the Conservative Party and of Toekomsgesprek, they believed that all the instructions they received from people who were in high positions at the Conservative Party, the instructions given to them by those people were instructions from the Conservative Party, and they acted on those instructions because it was a political objective that had to be obtained.  The National Party, the ruling party at that stage, had to be put in its place.  Now a couple of years later these people have the problem, they are being blamed criminally for certain deeds that were done under instructions at that stage.  If they look back and say well, we were given instructions by these people, everybody behind them who were above them suddenly says "We were not involved, we did not give instructions".  How do they do that?  The one, Mr Steyn, does not come to the Commission to say that, the Conservative Party writes a letter and says "We distance ourselves".  Mr de Jager, who was high up in the Conservative Party, says it could quite have been possible that such an organisation existed.  He did not have knowledge of it, but now in retrospect, it's obvious that something happened.  And he says very importantly on page 109, he says
"Ek het sedertdien bewus geraak dat dit egter wel plaasgevind het, en vanwee die verstrengeldheid van Toekomsgesprek en die KP, was van die lede wat dit bygewoon het bona fide onder die indruk dat dit die amptelike goedkeuring van die KP weggedra het."