Amnesty Hearings — Durban — UNKNOWN

MR ALBERTS: That is correct Mr Chairman but it's my submission that it is not necessarily for amnesty to be granted that they had to act on specific orders or even with the implied authority of the party and it's my submission even where they act in contradiction of the party's, as a whole, ideology of non violence still they believed that they were acting on behalf of the party.
	And that was their bona fide belief.  That's my submission.  It's exactly that, they believed that they were acting correctly although they knew that they were not acting with the consent of the party but they felt that they acted on behalf of the party.  Further it's my submission that they did both show that they do have remorse.  
	They did apologise for what they were doing and the relationship between the commission of the act and the purpose that they wanted to achieve in the end turned out to be quite far removed in the sense that innocent people died.  But it's my submission that that was not the initial intention of these people.  When they acted they had a bona fide belief that they were attacking ANC members at the start at least.

MR MALAN: Mr Alberts on this point, when confronted with the question as to proceeding with the shooting after realising that they had the wrong target, their reply was given that they continued because they wanted the ANC to feel the same pain that they had felt.  Now measured by this proportionality principle against the objective, would you argue that on whether they qualify for amnesty?

MR ALBERTS: Yes.  Their evidence was even at the time when they realised this is not the same people they thought would be in the vehicle, they still thought these are people from the ANC area and therefore they thought they were still attacking ANC supporters at least.

CHAIRPERSON: I think it must be said quite clearly that nobody believed that the people whom they were attacking were in fact the people that shot and killed the school children.  Because nobody knew the identity of those people.  They all belonged to an organisation, it was believed they were members of the ANC.  So when they were attacking the bus they weren't in fact attacking the very same people who knew caused the death of the children.  They just killed a group that belonged to the other side.  Belonged to the ANC.

MR ALBERTS: Mr Chairman their evidence was that they believed this bus to be involved.  Mr Dladla said that one of the people at the scene where the children were killed made mention of this bus.  Therefore their initial belief was that they were now going to act against this bus.  Their bona fide belief at that stage was this bus was connected to the violence and the occupants would be the perpetrators of the violence.

MR MALAN: Mr Alberts my question relates, we're not arguing that, my question relates to the fact that if we should accept the evidence, that, and I think that's common cause at least for the second part, that at some stage they realised that these people were not perpetrators or part of the enemy, they were simply occupants of the bus, on their evidence, coming from a specific area which on their evidence was an ANC area.
	The argument then, on the evidence is that because they came from that area, if they should be killing them, that would be advancing the cause which is the basis of your whole argument.  The question is, is that not so far removed that it could not be taken into account at all as furthering the objectives through the proceeding with elimination after realising the identity?

MR ALBERTS: It's my submission that, as already stated, innocent people from both sides died.  Their bona fide belief and what they were trying to achieve was to intimidate the ANC.  Now they got the wrong people, they're already busy with the attack and now they decided, as far as I understand the evidence, it was almost at the end of the attack and they did continue but they still were attacking, in their minds, the ANC which was seen as an entity.  It's my submission it is not so far removed.

CHAIRPERSON: At some stage when they saw these were women and it was quite clear that they were not the men that they thought, the ANC men whom they were going to attack, when they saw that these were women, they continued to attack.  Now my question really is, how does the proportionality test get satisfied on those facts.  Isn't their conduct disproportionate to what they were hoping to achieve but persisting in killing innocent women in order to achieve the objective and the objective was to intimidate ANC people?
MR ALBERTS