Special Hearings — Mandela United Football Club Hearings — 1997-11-24

MR VALLY: After having asked Mrs Madikizela-Mandela about the statement made by the ANC, that's on your earlier page 73 and this is part of your annexure, I believe it's annexure E, Mrs Madikizela-Mandela answers on page 74,
"I do not know anything about that statement Mr Chairman and therefore I have no such answer for you".
 I ask,
"Were you ever contacted by the ANC and asked to disband the soccer team?"
The answer,
"No I was not".
 I ask
"Were you ever asked to give an account regarding certain allegations made about the soccer team by the ANC?"
The response,
"I have just answered you Mr Chairman".
 I then ask,
"So the ANC had no contact with you whatsoever regarding the Mandela United Football Club?"
 Her response,
"There was no such contact Mr Chairman".
 I go on,
"Did you ever receive a message from Mr Nelson Mandela via his lawyers, attorney Ismail Ayob regarding the Mandela United Football Club?
 I have a recollection of Mr Ayob discussing a number of issues with me not specifically on the Mandela United Football Club".
 I go on,
"I specifically want to know about the Mandela United Football Club, did you ever receive any message regarding the Mandela United Football Club from Mr Nelson Mandela?"
The answer,
"I did receive a message from Mr Ayob about not necessarily the Mandela United, about the youths who were in my presence."
 Question,
"What was the message regarding the youth in your premises?
 Oh I think Mr Ayob would recollect that, I really have no specific recollection.  He did speak to me as he will speak to me every time he came from visits from Mandela".
 Let me talk about the first part of it because in your memorandum and as you have repeated if you look at, among others, paragraph 37 page 10 of your submission I beg your pardon, you talk about telephone calls that you received from Mr Oliver Tambo the then President of the ANC where he asks the Reverend Frank Chikane to go to the residence, this is on the 18th of February already, and he also informed Reverend Chikane that he had spoken to Mrs Mandela personally and Mrs Mandela was expecting the Reverend Frank Chikane. Bearing in mind what you say in your submission the statement by Mrs Madikizela-Mandela to the question,
"So the ANC had no contact with you whatsoever regarding the Mandela United Football Club?"
 The answer,
"There was no such contact Mr Chairman".
is in direct contradiction to what your submission states.  Would you like to comment on this please?

FRANK CHIKANE: Ja Chairperson our submission stands.  This particular call on paragraph 37 was a very extraordinary call.  President Tambo during that time never communicated with me directly like this calling right in my home in Kimberley but that showed that he actually took this issue seriously and he explained the details to say I am concerned about this situation, if it was possible for me to be there I would go there myself.  I am asking you to go there on my behalf.  So this particular visit was a mandated visit which was a particular instruction.  It was a command, he gave that command in a sense and he said to me, I said to him have you talked to Mama about this because how will she believe me, you know, because I had to ask that and he said yes I've talked to her she is expecting you there.
 And then of course when I was there in the house in paragraph 38 which I say lasted five hours, it was a very long discussion, a very difficult discussion, and basically what made it long and Zinzi would remember that because she was partly in the discussion, what made it difficult is that we started talking about annexure - I was confronted with annexure C, and so we couldn't start talking because of that annexure C.  We spent lots of time dealing with that and at that time I had not consulted with members of the Committee so it was like I just arrived from overseas, and so when we came to the stage where Mrs Mandela then said we will make arrangements for you to get Cebekhulu and etc because he was in a house in Johannesburg here, she then said to me Mr Mandela had already advised that the children should leave the house.  And so that's as I remember it and I've recorded it.

MR VALLY: Let me move on to another issue.  You've mentioned a few times that amongst the youths staying at the house there were MK members and this was one of the reasons why you also were contacting the ANC?

FRANK CHIKANE: We were made to - I actually formed that opinion myself that there would be MK members amongst them and because I couldn't understand how all these young people who could be so risky would be around there, and so I thought the ANC through its own network can sort out this, can say so and so is our member, so and so is not, MK, and recall their members because I was convinced at that stage that even if there was an Umkhonto weSizwe unit there because of the infiltration it would even be dangerous for them and therefore it was important for President Tambo to recall them out of that situation or re-deploy them elsewhere if they wanted to.  And he took the report and I don't know what happened so I....

MR VALLY: Mrs Madikizela-Mandela was asked a question, first Section 29 Inquiry page 82
"Were there any members of MK in the Mandela United Football Club?"
 Mrs Mandela -
"How could cadres who have infiltrated back into the country be members of the Football Club?  They infiltrated back into the country and the purpose was in fact to protect them and keep them in safe places, how could they be members of the Club?"
 I ask,
"Were any of these cadres staying in either of your houses?"
 The response,
"Which cadres?"
 I ask,
"The cadres who had infiltrated the country, the MK guerrillas".
 Mrs Madikizela-Mandela,
"Mr Chairman that would be the height of madness to keep an infiltrating soldier in that kind of house which was a police station, that would have been suicide".
 What's your response to Mrs Madikizela-Mandela's allegation that she didn't have any MK people at either of her houses?

FRANK CHIKANE: Well I must answer the question, I said that I didn't know who was an MK member, I had no way of knowing that, but I formed an opinion that there could have been because in terms of security of Mrs Mandela it couldn't be that just ordinary people would be walking around, it was too difficult those days to do that.  Even for myself during those days, I mean there were people who came when I appeared in a hit list and the community arranged for people to be around my house.  So the days were themselves difficult and so I was saying to President Tambo, through your own network you know who you have deployed, if there are people who are in MK their lives are in danger anyway, I mean they shouldn't be there and therefore needs to be withdrawn from there, so I can't confirm and say so and so was you know MK member and etc.

MR VALLY: Let me move on to another issue.  Paragraph 33 of your submission, this is the visit by the Crisis Committee on the 14th of January to Dr Asvat.  What we would like to know is we know that Katiza Cebekhulu was taken to Dr Asvat by Mrs Madikizela-Mandela and I think there were other people accompanying her, but it's not contested, did Dr Asvat tell you about the visit to his surgery by Katiza Cebekhulu?

SIDNEY MUFAMADI: No he didn't but perhaps what is important to explain here is that we went to him and we asked him if he had seen the children, so Katiza would have been one of them, and if he then medically examined them, and if he would be in a position to confirm either that they were assaulted or that they were sodomised, and he denied having seen the children for those purposes.

CHAIRPERSON: Do you think we should take the tea break?  Alright let's break until a quarter to eleven.
HEARING ADJOURNS
ON RESUMPTION

CHAIRPERSON: Order!  Please settle.  Thank you very much.  Hanif are you there?

MR VALLY: I am.