Amnesty Hearings — Vanderbijlpark — 1999-05-13

MR LAX: Sorry, Mr Lowies, he didn't say he went to sleep.

MR LOWIES: Went to bed.  I'd like to rephrase.  	When you went to bed.

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: You mean when I went to bed?

MR LOWIES: Is there a specific reason why you can recall the time that was, on your version, announced on the radio?  Why would you remember the time?

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: I remember because immediately after the news from the radio the attack took place, that is how I remember the time.

CHAIRPERSON: No, you see what Mr Lowies wants to find out is the following;  you've told us that you specifically remember that the news-reader announced the time as being 10 o'clock, is that right?

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: What Mr Lowies wants to find out is why do you specifically remember, not that the time was 10 o'clock, but that the news-reader announced the time and said it was 10 o'clock.

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: Chairperson, everything that took place in Boipatong will be difficult to forget it if it happened to you, but you can only forget it if it happened to somebody else.

CHAIRPERSON: We understand that, but all that he wants to know is, do you have any specific reason why you particularly remember that the time was announced?

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: I remembered that after, I recorded that in my mind.  I remembered the time because after the time was announced the attack took place.

MR LOWIES: Do you know what time the attack stopped?

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: From our street I think it took about 20 minutes.

MR LOWIES: You see, there's another reason why I'm crossing swords with you pertaining to the time.  There was a memorandum prepared pertaining to the allegations of the Boipatong residents and paragraph 2.1 reads as follows
"Between approximately 19H00 (that means 7 o'clock in the evening) and 21H00 (that means 9 o'clock in the evening), the SAP moved around the township dispersing youths who were on patrol as part of the Self Defence Units."
Now it appears to me that read in context, if anything happened it must have happened between 7 and 9, not 10 as you say.  When I say "anything happened" I'm referring to the dispersing by the police.

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: I don't know the person who wrote that statement.  What I'm saying is what I saw because I was there.

MR LOWIES: And it also appears to me that the people who were patrolling, it's common cause that they were Self Defence Units,  you say you've never heard of them.  From what I've read it appears that it's common cause that they're Self Defence Units, you say you've never heard of them, or not?

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: No, I've never been an SDU member.

MR LOWIES: Have you heard of the SDUs?

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: I have said this before, I have never heard about that.

MR LOWIES: What caused the police on the night of the 17th, to use teargas?  Can you just describe the scenario there at the time when this happened, what was happening?  Can you give us detail regarding that?

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: I cannot answer that question because they just said to us: "Go and sleep".  They forced us to go and sleep.

MR LOWIES: Didn't you want to go?

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: We were patrolling.

MR LOWIES: Didn't you want to go?

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: That is our township, therefore we wanted to patrol in our township.

MR LOWIES: But I still don't understand.  It's actually a simple question.  Why did the police use teargas, describe the reason why, what happened, how did it happen that they used teargas?

CHAIRPERSON: If you know why they used the teargas, tell us, if you don't know, you don't know.

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: I have explained that I don't know why they used teargas and there's no-one who can tell you to go and sleep because we sleep at midnight sometimes.

CHAIRPERSON: Is it a fact that when you were told to go and sleep, that I think round about nine twenty or thereabouts - at the time when you were told to disperse, that would not be the normal time that you would disperse, is that right?

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: No.

CHAIRPERSON: You'd normally disperse at about midnight, from what you've just told us.

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: Sometimes we'd disperse around 3 o'clock in the morning.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes, yes.  So when the police told you to disperse, did you resist that order?

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: That night when they said we should go and sleep we went away and we went to sleep.  I also went to sleep.

MR LOWIES: And is the only reason that you did so because of the order by the police?

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: Yes, that's the reason.

MR LOWIES: The only reason?

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: That's correct, that is the only reason, because if it was not their instruction to us, we would have dispersed in the early hours of the morning.

MR LOWIES: I see.  Now were you requested by the police on previous occasions to disperse, where you were part of a group patrolling?

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: It only happened on the 17th.

MR LOWIES: Now did you ever arrest or catch people whilst on patrol?

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: No.

MR LOWIES: Did you ever have to intervene in a fight when you were on patrol, to protect a person or persons?

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: No, I have never come across that.

MR LOWIES: Did you have no contact with the civics in these positions that you held and that you described to us?

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: Yes, we used to work with them as they were the community leaders.

MR LOWIES: Was that an ANC structure, the civics and the community leaders in Boipatong in '92?

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: All members of Sanco come from different political organisation like ANC, IFP and others.

MR LOWIES: And that was the situation in '92?

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: Yes, that's correct.

MR LOWIES: And is it not so, Sir, that you had meetings with Sanco? - you personally.

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: I have never had a meeting with Sanco.  There were leaders from Sanco.

MR LOWIES: Did you attend meetings with those people?

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: There are different meetings, there is a general meeting.  Can you please explain which meeting are you referring to.

MR LOWIES: Did you ever attend meetings with Sanco or people from Sanco, you personally?  That's the question.

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: You don't go to a meeting if you are not invited.

MR LOWIES: Do you want to answer the question?  Did you go?

THABO JOHANNES RAHANTLHANE: I have never attended Sanco meetings, I only attended the general meetings.  So you cannot attend for example, the NG meeting if you belong to the apostolic church.

MR LOWIES: Now the meetings that you attended - now we know that you've attended meetings, between which parties was it, who were the people at the meeting?

CHAIRPERSON: Okay, Mr Lowies, you've asked him a lot of questions about the meetings, the organisation, I mean where is this going to take us to?

MR LOWIES: I would suggest this person tries to create the impression that he was not involved in politics at that time, which is not true and this will explore that. It's in the process of exploring it.

CHAIRPERSON: We've got to get to a point at some point.

MR LOWIES: I'm almost finished, Chairman, but this is an important point.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.

MR LOWIES: You see the impression that you wanted to create earlier is that you never attended meetings, but we now heard that you did attend meetings.  I want to put the following to you as the result, Sir.  You are trying to make as if you had no political affiliations to anybody and that is not correct because of three things.  It's common cause that the comrades and the SDUs patrolled the streets in Boipatong on the night of the attack, you pretend not to know anything about it.  Your comment?