IN THE HIGH COURT OF SOUTH AFRICA GAUTENG LOCAL DIVISION Case number: 2019/445 Original case no: 1982/130 In the matter of: THE REOPENED INQUEST: LATE NEIL HUDSON AGGETT AFFIDAVIT I, the undersigned, BARBARA ANNE HOGAN do hereby state under oath and say that: 1 I am a semi-retired adult female residing in Cape Town. 2 The facts contained herein are within my own personal knowledge, save where the context indicates otherwise, and to the best of my belief are both true and correct. INTRODUCTION 3 Dr Neil Aggett (Neil), Dr Elizabeth Floyd (Liz) and many others were arrested and detained as a result of the Close Comrades list (Close Comrades) and a document titled "Problems Arising in Internal Political Work" which I had drafted, and which were intercepted by the Security Branch (SB) in the latter 2 part of 1981. I will explain in more detail about these documents below. Close Comrades is included in the 1982 Inquest court record as exhibit 83.5.21. Although I do not have a copy of the document titled "Problems Arising in Internal Political Work", I attach as Annexure "BH1" a portion of the transcript from State v Barbara Hogan, Case no 163/82, where the contents of the report were read out. 4 I was arrested and detained as a result of the intercepted Close Comrades list. I was unable to testify at the first inquest because I was imprisoned at the time, awaiting trial at court, having been accused of high treason. I was 30 years old at the time. Later that year I was convicted of treason and spent almost ten years in prison in Pretoria, a year or two of which was spent in solitary confinement. In 1990, I was released a week after the unbanning of the ANC. 5 In 1982 the Aggett family's legal team consulted with me in the women's awaiting trial section of the Old Fort prison in Johannesburg for purposes of the first inquest. They took a statement from me and I signed an affidavit on 22 February 1982. A copy of my signed affidavit is included in the court record as exhibit 84. 2.1. The record also includes a previous version of my affidavit, which was unsigned, marked as exhibit 83. 1.3. 6 The purpose of this affidavit is to provide the court with additional information as well as to expand on some of the themes covered in the 1982 affidavits. 3 BACKGROUND 7 I was born on 28 February 1952 and grew up in Benoni, Gauteng. In 1970 I enrolled at University of Witwatersrand where I obtained a BA Honours in Development Studies. At the time of my arrest in 1981 I was registered for an MA Degree focusing on unemployment in South Africa. 8 In my early years at Wits University I became active in protest movements against the government and was arrested in my first year. During 1973 I 197 4 I helped to set up the offices of a black workers advice office in Johannesburg called the Industrial Aid Society. Later, several new independent black trade unions emerged from this organisation. They formed the core of what was later to be FOSATU I COSATU. 9 During the June uprisings in Soweto 1976, I and a few others helped to draft pamphlets for the Soweto Students' Representative Council (SSRC). Thereafter I became increasingly engaged in rural development work and organising community support for black trade union struggles, such as consumer boycotts. 10 In 1977, Steven Biko died in detention and the apartheid government banned the entire black consciousness movement (BCM). The BCM was the pre­ eminent black political movement of that era. 11 In December 1977 I was recruited into the African National Congress (ANC) under the Swaziland network and later transferred to the Botswana division 4 under Marius Schoon (Marius) and Jeanette Curtis (Jeanette), who I had known in South Africa. At the time of my recruitment, I had specified that I wanted to join the political underground of the ANC and that I did not want to do military work. This agreement was honoured. 12 I was given a broad mandate to work within the white left to promote the strategies and political principles of ANC, especially those pertaining to the principle of non-racialism. I was also able to continue my work on unemployment and to regularly report back to the ANC on current political developments within mass struggle, including the black trade union movement. 13 It was important for me that the ANC understood what was happening in South Africa because from June 1976 an influx of people joined the movement in different capacities in exile and we had to make sure that people were aligned both internally and externally and avoid a multitude of inconsistent strategies. 14 Some who were recruited into the ANC were said to be working under discipline. I was one of those. I was not receiving instructions from the ANC, but I worked within the broad mandates of the organisation. I would provide feedback on the work I was doing and attend debriefings. The bulk of my political work was done with activists within the country, not as a consequence of instructions from ANC. 15 I used my dead letter box to send coded reports to Jeanette and Marius every 2 weeks. My dead letter box was a post office box that I had rented under a false name. A courier would pick up the correspondence from the box using a 5 duplicate key and take them by hand to Botswana. The letters would only be fetched during a specified time period and date. CONTACT WITH NEIL 16 Sometime during the first half of 1982, Jeanette and Marius informed me that they wanted to meet Neil. I relayed this request to Gavin Andersson, without mentioning that I was a member of the ANC and he seemed reluctant to organise this meeting. 17 Subsequently, I had a conversation with Neil about meeting Jeanette and Marius. Neil responded by saying that while he was totally sympathetic to the ANC, there was no way he would become a member because it would be detrimental to the Food and Canning Workers Union (the Union). Neil understood that the ANC was a banned organisation at the time and what the implications would be for the Union should he be exposed as an ANC member. SURVEILLANCE 18 During June 198 1, I was telephoned by someone who asked to meet me at Jeanette's parent's home in Norwood. Upon my arrival a courier who had been sent by ANC structures in Botswana awaited and told me that the courier who had picked up my last report from my dead letter box was extremely concerned because the envelope had been slit open at the top and just placed back. I was advised to leave the country, legally, as soon as possible. The ANC was of the 6 view that the Security Branch (SB) did not yet know who I was, so I did not need to illegally cross the border. 19 However, as I left the meeting in Norwood, I immediately noticed that I was under surveillance, followed by at least 6 cars which indicated to me that the police were on to me. I returned to my flat and started making preparations to leave. I wrote a letter to my flatmate saying that I would be away for a while and on putting it into an envelope I noticed that it too immediately slit open at the top. I examined the pack of unused envelopes which I had bought, and which I also used to correspond with Jenny and Marius and discovered that they all slit open at the top when opened. It appeared that I had simply bought a pack of poor-quality envelopes. 20 I surmised that my correspondence had not been intercepted and read by a third party such as the SB, as the ANC feared, but rather that the envelope that I had used was poorly made. Although I felt sure that my communications had not been intercepted, from the moment I had left the meeting in Norwood I was under such intense surveillance that the prospects for leaving the country legally were very dim. Indeed, the police were now following me all the time. It later transpired that the Security Police were following me because they had seen Rob Adam (Rob), an Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) operative, at my flat visiting my flatmate and they had been keeping him under surveillance. 7 CLOSE COMRADES LIST AND ARREST 21 I approached Alan Fine for advice on the issue because he was also in contact with the same network. I utilised his communication network to send a message to Botswana about what had transpired and asked for instructions on how to proceed because I was concerned about the possibility of endangering others, simply by being in contact with them. 22 Ordinarily with communications of this nature with the network, one could expect a response within 2 weeks, but this time none was forthcoming. I therefore made the decision to leave the country covertly because I considered myself a danger to others. 23 The only way I could think of leaving covertly was to approach Rob who had tried to recruit me into MK about 6 months previously. I had declined his offer, without letting him know that I was already a member of the ANC 24 I approached Rob and disclosed my current situation and my need to leave the country.