Kasrils denies knowledge of alleged secret apartheid-era meetings

Former Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils has denied that he participated in or had any knowledge of alleged secret meetings with apartheid-era generals between 1999 and 2004.

The meetings are alleged to have been aimed at avoiding the prosecution of heads of the South African Defence Force and African National Congress (ANC) leaders who had been refused amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

Kasrils, who served as intelligence minister between 2004 and 2008, testified at the TRC Cases Inquiry public hearings.

He questioned the good faith of the source of the allegations.

He says an individual named Michael Schmidt told him that he was an investigative journalist following up such claims made by Major General Dirk Marais.

Kasrils says he recalls the email sent to him by Schmidt and remembers being suspicious of its “old-order” tone.

“I must tell you chairperson, I actually do remember feeling a bit suspicious of who this person was, there was a tone to it of old order South Africa quite frankly.

I looked up the name Micheal Schmidt on Google.

Chairperson, Commissioners, I am not going to open myself up to labelling or anything – do it yourself and you will see that even his own circle , the International Anarchists Circle, he claims he was the leader of the branch in South Africa and they take issue and they denounce him as a racist out and out of hand a person with no credibility in the honourable international order of International Anarchists and it’s not that that made me decide to reject him immediately, I have no time to respond to every journalist.” Proceedings in the stream below: -Report by Busi Chimombe