Special Hearings — Caprivi Hearings — 1997-08-07

MR MACADAM: 1B other members, and I discovered later that the reasons behind his killing it was because he was involved in the smuggling or supplying of firearms, which were given to specific members of the ANC.  I discovered that the ANC had people who were taken from Esikhaweni for training time to time and they would leave for about a month or two months and come back to operate within the community.  Those were the people whom Taliwe helped to supply arms and ammunitions, and he was the one who united the ANC people who were fighting at Dlangezwa with those who were at Esikhaweni, and I discovered that Taliwe is the one who started a way to protect the ANC members.  They bought two-way communication radios.  They were patrolling Esikhaweni all over the night, protecting their people, and I found out that he is the one that did all these arrangements and he also organized firearms, bringing them inside so that the Inkatha people should be killed.  We decided we should stop that and in order to stop it we have to remove the source or close the source.  Those were the reasons of which Taliwe had to be killed.

MR MACADAM: After he was killed did you report that fact back to any person?

WITNESS:   Yes, because I have to make a report after the work was completed.  Therefore I had to inform Captain Langeni.

MR MACADAM: And do you have knowledge of an attempt to kill a person, Welcome Mthimkulu?

WITNESS:   Yes, I do.

MR MACADAM: What do you know about that attempt?

WITNESS:   I also got an instruction from Captain Langeni and I had to do the reconnaissance.  I remember that, while talking about my training yesterday, I mentioned reconnaissance.  However, this is the way of tracing him to find out where

MR MACADAM: /he stays and

MR MACADAM: 1B he stays and where he works and his time of going to work and also his normal routes.  I had to make a trunk call, 1023 number, to find out his work telephone number. After getting the number of the firm I called the firm and I was connected to the switchboard and I asked them to put me through to his department and telling them that I wanted to talk to him.  They put me to the extension where he was working and I discovered that he was not at work at that time and I asked them when is he coming to work.  They said he would be coming at ten the following day at night.  I went back to my syndicate and I told them that he would be going to work at 10 o'clock the following evening and we tried to make some arrangements.  I think it might take some time to tell about these arrangements.  It was on that particular day, the following day, when he had to go to work, that we attacked him.

MR MACADAM: It's not necessary for you to go into any detail about the arrangements.  If you can proceed then.

WITNESS:   We ended up attacking him.  We later discovered that the time when we were attacking him, he was about to go to work.  We attacked his car and he wasn't inside the car and we found that someone else was driving the car.  There were some women in the car.  Even if we didn't get a chance to see that there were women in the car because it was at night, none of them was killed, only the car was hit and some of them inside were injured.  No one was killed.

MR MACADAM: Why was this attempt made to kill this person?

WITNESS:  I later found that he was very active at the firm where he was working.  He was always against Inkatha and he was said to be bad when it comes to propaganda and he was a

MR MACADAM: /very influential

MR MACADAM: 1B very influential person.  They said if he had to blacken Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi he will blacken him in such a way that this is a very bad person.  He couldn't continue to support or follow Inkatha if he did get a chance to listen to Mthimkulu campaigning for or mobilising for his party.  So he destroyed Inkatha.  To add, Mthimkulu was in front in the structure which was used by the ANC to sow within the KwaZulu Police.  When referring to sowing in the KwaZulu Police, the ANC had KwaZulu Police, which it used within us at the police station.  They were used to collect information regarding the hit squads.  They were used as a source of ammunition and they used to attack us with our own ammunition.  Maybe I will deal with that as soon as I get into the involvement of other police.  However, Mthimkulu was right in front of the whole strategy.

MR MACADAM: And do you have knowledge of the killing of a person by the name of Nathi Gumede?

WITNESS:   Yes, I do.

MR MACADAM: Did you actually hear my question?

WITNESS:   I didn't.

MR MACADAM: Do you have knowledge of the killing of a person by the name of Nathi Gumede?

WITNESS:   Yes, I did.

MR MACADAM: And can you tell us what your knowledge of that person's death was?

WITNESS:   Yes.  As I have explained before, the violence between the ANC and the IFP in that place intensified, so some means or strategies had to be devised so that each or one of the organizations should defeat the other.  I want to make it clear that the ANC knew exactly its target within the Inkatha people, as we also knew the people who were attacking us from the ANC.  And it was possible that you wished the particular person should be hit by a car and die, because he was a

MR MACADAM: /troublesome

MR MACADAM: 1B troublesome person.  You wished that if there was a way to bewitch him you could bewitch him so that bees can come and sting him and he dies.  Therefore, the two organizations have to use whatever means possible to destroy the other, or the enemy.  Nathi Gumede was used in the ANC strategy to destroy our syndicate and specifically to arrest us and put us in prison, to expose the formation that I've mentioned before.  Nathi went out and created lies, saying that Romeo had robbed him of his car.  I don't know if I'm making a mistake.  I don't know whether he said he robbed him of his car or that Romeo had robbed another person of his car, and the car was given to Nathi, and we knew that this was a lie - it didn't happen.  We showed that it doesn't involve Romeo.  However, we knew that they were very much afraid of Romeo and they were very much afraid of us because they knew that we were the people who were hitting them.  After Romeo was charged of this crime he had to be suspended from work.  This was a charge of robbing a car.  Most people got angered of this, because we knew that Romeo didn't rob any car.  They were framing him as they also framed me, saying that I killed someone at the railway hostels, and I knew that I wouldn't just kill a person.  This was something that I wouldn't have done.  They were just trying to get me arrested.  When they started using this strategy, maybe we were not going to be serious about this.  Romeo was suspended from work after his arrest.  It became clear to us because they are not in a position to kill us, they will finish us using the strategy of framing us, because we would all end up in prisons.  Because each and every time they would frame someone, they had enough evidence to make sure that

MR MACADAM: /we would be