Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 2000-11-21

URIAL ABRAHAMSE: Mr Chair with your permission I would first of all like to clarify the circumstances because it appears that there is some confusion in this regard.  It's not everybody who left South Africa as a political activist and being absorbed immediately into ANC structures, in the way in which we've heard Ms Anderson talking about being absorbed into ANC structures.  Lots of people just left the country, either legally by means of crossing the border by means of a passport, or illegally by means of skipping the border.  When you get to Botswana, or let me say when we got to Botswana, you were required to apply for refugee status.  That involved going to the police station and declaring yourself a refugee.  The standard procedure of the Botswana police was to ask you, do you want to join the ANC, do you want to join the PAC, do you want to join the - AZAPO didn't have any organisation in Botswana, it was called the Black Consciousness Movement.  The Botswana Police would ask you do you want to join the BCM or did you not want to join any organisation.   The ANC was the only organisation which had a clear organised presence in Botswana in the sense of having had what was then called a Chief Representative.  In the even where you said that you wanted to join the ANC, the Botswana police would call the ANC chief representative, who at the time was Mr Isaac Makoko and Mr Makoko would come to you and would require two things.  The first is he would require you to write what was called a biography.  In other words you had to write a statement about your life up to the point where you arrived in Botswana.  The second is that Mr Makoko would require from you a decision as to whether you wanted to study or whether you wanted to join MK and that was standard procedure for the majority of people who left the country and became ANC members.  In the even where you wanted to study, there would be further options available.  It was possible to remain in Botswana and study there or it was possible for the ANC to take you from Botswana to Tanzania to Somafko, to Solomon Mahlango Freedom College where you would await the opportunity for a scholarship.  I think the distinguishing factor between remaining in Botswana and going to Somafko was your choice of study.  The University of Botswana for instance could not offer a course in architecture and therefore one of the chaps who lived with us, Alan Samuel, wanted to become an architect, had to leave Botswana, go to Somafko from where he went to German, he is now a successful architect practising in Germany.  That was the procedure.  Further to that, if you had indicated that you wanted to undergo military training or you wanted to undertake a course of study which was not offered in Botswana, you would be taken to live in Dukwe refugee camp, which is not too far from Francistown in the Northern part, well it's really central Botswana, but in terms of the road which crosses through Botswana, its in the North.  You would be required to live at Dukwe Refugee Camp until such time as the facilities were there for you to leave and then undertake your course of study, so if we were to take the definition offered by Ms Anderson, in other words of a person being an ANC member who is active within a unit of the ANC who is receiving direct political instructions, then Mike was not a member of the ANC.  Does that answer your question.

MR BERGER: Well you described a whole process of what would happen when you came to Botswana.  Do you know whether, when Mike came to Botswana, he declared himself as a refugee?

URIAL ABRAHAMSE: Yes, he did declare himself as a refugee.

MR BERGER: And do you know what his choice was when offered either studies or military training?

URIAL ABRAHAMSE: His choice was to join the ANC, number one, and number two, to study at the University of Botswana.

MR BERGER: And what was he studying?

URIAL ABRAHAMSE: Mike was doing a BSc.  He had, in my understanding, he had already completed the first year of his BSc at the University of Natal, Durban campus, and he was accredited with that first year, he was allowed to proceed straight into his second year at the University of Botswana.

MR BERGER: Was he involved in any way in military training, or military activities?

URIAL ABRAHAMSE: No, Mike was never involved in military activities and Mike certainly had not undergone MK training.

MR BERGER: And you ...(intervention)

MR MALAN: Mr Berger just before you pursue this, you used the definition of Ms Anderson, Mr Abrahamse, but in explaining to us the procedure when crossing the border, if I'm not mistaken, I heard you saying that you had to call at the Botswana Police Refugee status, they would ask you which organisation did you want to join.  If you did say the ANC, then they would call Isaac Makoko as the representative.  He would ask you to do a biography.  As far as the Botswana police is concerned, were they thinking that those people were joining the organisations?  In other words, what would that understanding of membership be?  Could there be a different understanding of membership?

URIAL ABRAHAMSE: That is what I am suggesting Mr Chair.  I am saying that officially in terms of a membership status, a membership card type of status, as Ms Mbethe had said earlier, we were all members of the ANC, Mike and myself, we were officially members of the ANC in the sense that we had submitted our biographies and we had said to Mr Makoko that we wanted to join the ANC and that we had generally accepted to live in Botswana as students belonging to the ANC.

MR MALAN: I understand.

URIAL ABRAHAMSE: We were not required, because of our student status, we were not required to be involved in structured political or military activities.

MR MALAN: Thank you, I understand.  Thank you.

MR BERGER: You say you were not required, were you or Mike Hamlyn involved in structured political or military political activities, or any political or military activities?

URIAL ABRAHAMSE: We were never involved in military or political activities.  We were involved in the MEDU Arts Ensemble, as I explained earlier and I did explain also the nature of our involvement in the MEDU Arts Ensemble.

MR BERGER: Would you regard the MEDU Arts Ensemble as a cultural structure?

URIAL ABRAHAMSE: It was most certainly a cultural structure, Mr Chair, in the broad sense of the word.  Not an ANC cultural structure, it was a cultural organisation.  I mean, I'll give you an example.  At one stage I was responsible for co-ordinating the activities of the children's unit in MEDU and on June 1, which is International Children's day, we had arranged a cultural day for children at the museum in Gaberone where we took the children around through the museum, explained to them the value of a museum.  We had a juggler there, we had people teaching the children how to draw.  Yes it was to do with the arts and culture.

MR MALAN: I think perhaps I haven't expressed myself all too clearly.  Ms Anderson's evidence was that there were ANC Units in all of the structures.  I think she regarded structural structures as political.  My question is really was there sort of an ANC call it then a cultural unit within the MEDU Arts Council?  Did the ANC have a particular interest as ANC in MEDU Arts?

URIAL ABRAHAMSE: I cannot say that Mr Chair, I did not participate in structured ANC activities, therefore I do not know whether the ANC regarded MEDU Arts Ensemble as an ANC front.

CHAIRPERSON: But, or MEDU regard itself as a structure of the ANC?

URIAL ABRAHAMSE: I am not too certain about that Mr Chair.  As far as I know, throughout my involvement in MEDU, MEDU never regarded itself as an ANC structure.

CHAIRPERSON: Let's put it into time perspective.  Maybe 6 months either side of the attack that we're discussing now, was MEDU, did it regard itself as possibly a arm or a tentacle of the ANC?