Amnesty Hearings — Aliwal North — 1998-04-20

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: If you read APLA's submission to the TRC, it made it clear there that they were, they gave orders to the killing of so-called white civilians as a question of reprisal and a question of self-defence.  So, I was keeping those orders by the High Command of APLA.

MR LAX: With the greatest of respect, the submission by APLA to the TRC, and I was present during that submission, makes it quite clear that there is a question of proportionality involved here.

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: Yes.

MR LAX: You remember that?

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: ...(indistinct) explained those questions of proportionalities.

MR LAX: Yes, it does.  It talks about proportionality in relation to both political objectives to be achieved, in other words, a political implication of the attack that might be carried out and it goes from a sense of proportionality in terms of the sense you have used it as one of reprisal.  In other words, if the regime was to hit us, we would hit back at the regime.

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: As it was happening.

MR LAX: Precisely.  So, what, what were you engaging in reprisals for?

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: I have mentioned a few examples, the case of ...(intervention)

MR LAX: The Boipathong was much later than this.

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: It was in line therefor.

MR LAX: But it happened after this event. Had not yet happened.

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: If you read it broadly the statement, submission of the ...(intervention)

MR LAX: Yes, I want to know what specific acts where you in reprisal against?

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: I have mentioned the question of Boipathong.

CHAIRPERSON: How could you be in reprisal against something that had not happened?

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: Which had not happened?

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.

MR LAX: What did not happen?

CHAIRPERSON: Boipathong had not happened at this time, had it?

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: It was ...(intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: When you launched this attack?

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: When did it happen, Boipathong?

MR MBANDAZAYO: I'm sorry, Mr Dolo, my understanding as I was listening to you, are you not mentioning Boipathong as an example of the tragedies that were happening there at the time.

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: Yes.

MR MBANDAZAYO: You went on to talk about train shootings and I understood you to say that it was in that context that this policy was adopted.

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: Yes.

MR LAX: I'm just wanting to know what specific incidents you in your own mind when you formed the intention to carry out these reprisals.

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: I generalise all those attacks which were committed against African civilians.

MR LAX: So you didn't have any specific attack in mind?

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: You may use the one I already used.

MR LAX: Well, either you did or you did not?  If you generalised it then you did not have a specific in mind.  If you had a specific in mind then say which specific you had in mind.

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: I mentioned the question of Boipathong as a specific one and I add that ...(intervention)

MR LAX: Sorry, I beg your pardon?

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: I said I add, I made an addition to the question of the shootings that took place in the trains.

MR LAX: So, by attacking random white motorists, are you listening?

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: Can you say again?

MR LAX: So by attacking random white motorists, you were in  some way hoping to achieve a reprisal for the sorts of attacks that Boipathong and the train violence symbolised?

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: And etceteras, etceteras.

MR LAX: Well what are the etceteras and etceteras?

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: I think I have to go to these medias and organise from them their reports of the killings that took place in our townships committed by whites.

MR PRIOR: You see, you formed an opinion and you formed an intention and you formed an objective.  We need to know from you in order to measure that objective for proportionality.  What went through your mind?  It's no good you going to read the newspapers now.  We want to know what went through your mind then.  Do you understand my question, I'm not trying to be unfair to you, but at the same time, you were the Commander, you chose the target, you formed an opinion.  We want to know what motivated you.  Not in general terms.

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: The question of the attacks, the question, sorry, the question of the trains whereby people were being killed on the trains that was one that motivated me a lot.

MR LAX: You see, the train violence, just as a matter of interest, was in a general third force capacity.  Even to this day, no one knows exactly for sure who did that.

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: I take it we the Africans knew who committed such acts, those atrocities.

MR LAX: But they were totally random.  That's the point we're trying to make.  People were killed randomly regardless of their political affiliations.

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: We are dealing here with the question of the reprisals.

MR LAX: Yes, I'm trying to understand a random attack against all and sundry.  How could your attack against whites be any reprisal for that?

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: I have mentioned some few incidents whereby our people were being killed.

MR LAX: Well, you have mentioned Boipathong and you have mentioned general train violence.

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: And I say etceteras.

MR LAX: Yes, but etceteras is not good enough for us.  We need to know what you thought of in your head.

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: The death also of our people in prisons.  I forget also the name of this Comrade.  One of the APLA Commanders who was also killed in prison.

MR LAX: Was it contemporaneous with this?

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: Those, all those things, all those killings of our African people, they all, all come together and that's how I formed this opinion.

MR LAX: So, are you taking three hundred years of history and using that as a basis for reprisal?

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: You may take it that way.

MR LAX: No, I am not going to take it anyway.  I want to know what you want me to do?

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: Then I am saying to you take it that way.

MR LAX: No.

MR MBANDAZAYO: Mr Chairman, ... (intervention)

ADV SANDI: Sorry Mr Mbandazayo.  Mr Dolo, you have given to us what seems to have been the general context as you understood it at the time in question.  Now, can I ask a question?  You have referred to murderous assaults which were being perpetrated on the African people at that time.  Were you holding the white population in any way responsible for that?

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: Yes.

ADV SANDI: Can you explain that please?

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: It was generally known that the people that committed such acts where white and APLA take a decision then that if there would be such atrocities against our people, they will be engaged in revenge or as I mentioned reprisal, and also in self-defence.

ADV SANDI: Are you sure that all these acts where being committed by whites.  Don't you think you need some explaining to do on that one?

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: That will be the work of the Police to give us who committed those acts, but we, we the people the limit we generally know that those people who committed acts where white.

MR LAX: You see, to this day there is not one shred of evidence that a white person went onto a train and killed and shot and threw and stabbed anyone off the train.  Those were black people who did those things.  So they didn't commit them as white people.  That's what I am trying to understand from you.  That's a fact that everybody accepts in this country.  No matter whose side you're on.  Whether the orders might have been issued by whites that's a different issue, but you are saying those acts were committed by whites.   They were not.  The facts at the moment, and we've delved very deeply into this as the Truth Commission show that they were committed by black people.

PHILA MARTIN DOLO: And were said by whom to commit such acts?