Human Rights Violation Hearings — Kimberley — 1996-06-10

CHAIRPERSON: I - I should rebuke you for clapping but I think it is a response that is probably appropriate.

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you Father Lapsley, there's nothing that one can meaningfully add to that testimony, I think we'll go to Mr - the second Michael Wilsner and just say that you have been in Zimbabwe at the time when the incident happened and that you were in fact saw Father Lapsley after the incident, is that correct?

MICHAEL WILSNER: I was not in Zimbabwe at the actual moment of the bomb but I have had a very long relationship with Michael and I'd like if I may to put my perspective in terms of the context for this - for this bomb?

ADV POTGIETER: Most definitely.

MICHAEL WILSNER: [indistinct] met Michael in 1979 when I left South Africa to go to Lesotho as a war resister because I came to the conclusion that I could not serve in the SADF in any capacity what so ever.  And Michael was at the time the warden of Lelapela Jeso Seminary in  [indistinct] .  
Michael's house was a meeting point for South African refugees and all of us discovered each other there.  It was the most remarkable place to be in.  For people like me who had lived in a fairly closed white society it was the first time on a person to person level to be able to meet and to debate with and to converse with and to disagree with on an eyeball to eyeball level - fellow black South Africans.  
 And for me it was an conversion experience - I mean once I had gone through that, there was no turning back.  And it was - I was not the only person for whom that was an important place to be.  It was a house of peace, I want to emphasise that I never say weapons there - ever.  It was a house of protest, it was a house of debate where people met in real terms and could discuss and disagree and that sort of thing.  
But it was a house essentially of peace, it was sometimes a house of prayer.  That is the contexts in which  I met Michael, the only violence that I personally encountered while living in Lesotho was the two raids that happened from South African into Lesotho in 1982 and in 1985.
 The level of terror which those caused killing and maiming civilians inside Lesotho is beyond description.  The way in which the country and all of us living in the country felt raped by the kind of aggression and senseless killing that taking place across the border.  Michael's name was probably on a list for one of those raids, he just happened to have been out to the country at the time.  There were times in Lesotho when everybody was scared particularly South Africans living in that society and Michael was quite clearly a particular target of the apartheid state.  
 Because unlike many others in the church, Michael would make no compromise.  He was a target because he was white and because he as a very committed and a very public Christian supported the arms struggle against apartheid.  This was not something which the apartheid state could easily overlook because his being challenged many of the myths which apartheid had put up as it's own and constructed.
 The first myth that apartheid - that the apartheid state wanted people to believe was that the struggle was a struggle for the rationale survival of the whites against    the blacks.  On the one hand the ANC was portrayed as an all black organisation, on the other no white in their right mind would want to join it because it was out to destroy then.  Than was the first myth, the second myth was that the ANC was portrayed as a Marxist, Atheist organisation.  
To have a priest of the Anglican Church publicly being a member of it and functioning as it's Chaplain could not be condoned.  And that despite the fact that in terms of the history of the ANC many priests have belonged to it - many religious people of many faiths have belonged to the ANC.  The ANC was also identified almost entirely with Umkhonto we Sizwe - in other words the only picture which was given to the South African public was of an organisation with only one goal - violence, terror and destruction.
 Michael while not a member of MK but wholeheartedly supporting the arm struggle exposed some of the contradictions with this kind of presentation.  But the other thing that I think must have been enormous threat to the State was Michael's effectiveness in communicating his message and that it self must have made him a target.  Now you've already heard what Michael - what Michael's experience of the bomb was and the kind of devastating effect that it had on him personally.  
I saw Michael 3 days after the bomb in the hospital in Harare - it was an awful sight.  His face was charred and blackened, his beard had melted into his skin, his face was swollen to twice the size - twice it's normal size.  In fact the only way that I could recognise him was by a single gold filling which he has in his teeth.
 Both of his hands were taken off, he needed to hold his stumps up all the time because anything touching then cause him the most extraordinary pain.  His lips were swollen and bleeding, his one eye was damaged completely by the explosion and he could see nothing at all out of the other one.  We had to shout to make him hear but it seems as though he could hear just a little.  He was in a terrible state, his sister Helen who was with him told us about how he would wake up at night, screaming, reliving the bomb.  
I wanted to touch him but everywhere you looked - everywhere over his body was red and swollen and sore and painful.  There was nowhere to touch him, we were grateful that he was alive but we were very aware that his live would be changed irrevocably from that moment on.  There was very little any of us could do, except be there.  It was an agonising time for everyone but non of us could even remotely imagine the kind of agony that he was going through.
 From myself I want the perpetrators of deeds like this to be exposed and to be named.  Or for them of their own accord to come forward and own the deeds that they have done.  I would like to hear what they have to say for themselves, I would like to see them so that I can put a face to this kind of terror.  The person who made this bomb that was sent to Michael is unlikely to be mad, there was a clear skill and professionalism in the way in which this whole dead was executed and to me it's quite inconceivable that they should be allowed to remain hidden within the society without any sense of ownership or remorse or regret.
 It's inconceivable that any one should be allowed to do this to another human being and to remain hidden.  In any case for their own sake I would want them to come forward I say what they have done and what they thought they were doing.  Then at leased we can begin  perhaps to deal with it and take it somewhere.  But behind all of these hidden players I also want to see the Government of the day express remorse and sorrow for what they did to us all, how they damaged the entire nation, both physically and psychologically.

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you very much Mr Wilsner and Father Lapsley thank you.  If you don't have anything further to add then I'll hand back to the Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much, any  [indistinct] Dr Boraine?