The car bomb that ripped off the arm of Albie Sachs, a Constitutional Court judge, in Mozambique in 1988 was not aimed at him.
This emerged at the Transition and Reconciliation Committee's (TRC) amnesty hearing of Henri van der Westhuizen, a former military intelligence officer, on Monday.
Van der Westhuizen, who was attached to ANC Project Section, is seeking amnesty for his role in the blast that maimed Sachs.
He is also seeking amnesty for the murders of three ANC members in Lesotho in 1986, the poisoning murder of Gibson Mondlane and the abduction of an ANC activist, Simon Mokgetlha.
Van der Westhuizen said the bomb had been intended for Indress Naidoo, one of the most prominent leaders of the ANC in Mozambique in the mid-1980s.
Van der Westhuizen said he was seeking amnesty because the information he had gathered on Naidoo had been used to harm the wrong target.
"My task was to collect information on where the targets lived and their movements. I would prepare the target and inform a CCB operative, Pieter Botes, that the target was ready. The information I had gathered on Naidoo was wrongly used.
"I did not in any way physically get involved in the elimination of people identified as targets. I only prepared the target and gave (information) to people who were responsible for target combat.
"The (ANC) Political Military Council (PMC), and Indress in particular, were singled out for being responsible for destabilising the country, especially in Natal and the Eastern Transvaal in the mid-80s," said Van der Westhuizen.
On the morning of April 7 1988, Sachs was critically injured when a device detonated in his car. His right arm was amputated and he lost the use of his left eye.
The decision to eliminate members of the PMC who had remained behind in Mozambique was taken after the South African government signed the Nkomati Accord with Mozambique, as part of which Mozambique had agreed to expel six ANC leaders.
The six members of the PMC who had remained behind after the signing of the accord and who were marked for elimination included Jacob Zuma, Keith Mokoape, Naidoo, Sue Rabkin, Bobby Pillay and Mohammed Timol.
Naidoo, who attended Monday's amnesty hearing, said he believed Van der Westhuizen was holding back on a great deal of information.
Naidoo said when he was in charge of propaganda for the ANC in Mozambique, he used Sachs's maroon Honda to run errands.
"Maybe this guy is telling the truth because I used to be seen often driving the car belonging to Sachs around in Mozambique. But whether the attack on Sachs was a mistake, I do not know," said Naidoo.
Sachs did not attend the hearing, as he was reported to be abroad on Constitutional Court duty. The hearing continues on Tuesday.