Human Rights Violation Hearings — Alexandra — 1996-10-29

OBED BAPELA: Yes, the whole idea of a peoples court I think it started in around 1985 by the youth who were continuously mobilising each other around the consumer boycott.  So what happened in Alexandra during that also was that the youth then formed themselves into anti-crime patrol groups, moving from one shebeen to the other, telling the youth not to be drinking in the shebeens and whenever they found youths they would then take them out and tell them to go home and if you are a student they would tell you go and study so that you study and pass and as a result crime came to zero in Alexandra.  The type of funerals that took place ever since were the people who died because of natural causes.  There were no longer such deaths caused by fights and stabbings or gun shootings and so and it worked, that anti-crime campaign and then whenever they found knives or weapons on the individuals they would take them away from them into one centre where they would then destroy them and so, so it worked and as a result of that then people began to have confidence in the youths for this very good wonderful work and they started bringing problems to the youths to say I have got a problem with my neighbour or I have got a problem with my next door kin or I have got a problem with my wife and so forth, so forth.  All sorts of cases that had now flocked into the youth and obviously they were quite selective, they were only looking for those violent type of cases and then they would start putting the complainant and then the perpetrator together and say can we talk amongst ourselves really and resolve this matter amicably.  And then peacefully and go back and stay together as neighbours or as friends and so forth.  So it was more to give advice than
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really to prosecute or to sentence people.  So it sort of spread throughout Alexandra wherever there was a group of youths that would go out on an anti-crime then the residents would go to them to say we need your assistance and so forth and they did the work quite excellently and without any sjambokings and sentences.  But unfortunately as time went around after the six days war when now everyone was angry, it was the deaths and Alexandra was unsettled and some of the youths got excited unfortunately and when people were brought instead of resolving those problems according to what they have been doing they started trialling people and prosecuting them and in some instances then they would sentence them to sjambokings and so forth, so forth.  So it then became a norm in those peoples courts and those were the part of the activities and when we were arrested obviously amongst the charges under sedition and subversion  was that we had run those courts but the intention there from the State was that we have taken over the justice administration, which is the function of the South African government and was now in the hands of the people and therefore we were therefore furthering the aims of the ANC and the South African Communist Party, that of overthrowing the State and replacing it with the organs of peoples power which were in operation at that time and hence then they were charging us with that.  There was no evidence that said I myself did sjambok anybody or any of the accused did sjambok anybody but they just took all those things and then put them on us because when you are on treason it is everything that was done and whether you are there or you are not there or at a given point you are in prison but when charges are formulated you find yourself in that situation. 
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YASMINE SOOKA: But would you not say that part of the strategy was in a sense to form an alternative government structure in Alexandra by the use of street committees and peoples courts?

OBED BAPELA: Well we were involved in a political struggle.  We were involved in a struggle for liberation and then yes as activists and as comrades that was the problem and that was the intention, to undermine the South African government, to make it ungovernable obviously, as was the problem of the ANC it has called from exile.  And I think it is a just war and a just struggle that we engaged ourselves in and we pride ourselves in that particular struggle because today here we are, having liberated South Africa and its people and then beginning to transform it and then so that this quality of life that would then be there for the rest of our people.

YASMINE SOOKA: One of the things you mentioned in your evidence is the formation I think of vigilante groups and it is quite interesting that you talked about being in the Eastern Cape because a similar kind of problem was experienced where Azapo was infiltrated and state agents formed vigilante groups and you mentioned that in Alexandra you had the Amazizi.

OBED BAPELA: Amazimzim.

YASMINE SOOKA: Amazimzim and could you tell us a little more about that please.