Human Rights Violation Hearings — Empangeni — 1996-11-05

MR LYSTER: with Renamo.  He was linked to violence in a number of areas - Umlazi, what is now Gauteng, what is now Mpumalanga and also up the North Coast.  Whilst in Mandini he was working together with the KwaZulu Police and a local chief who is allegedly deeply implicated in the violence.  Mdanda was linked to a number of killings in Mandini and was never ever brought to book.  I've mentioned one example in my submission where Mdanda was arrested together with another feared man called Bongani Mthimkhulu.  They were arrested by a member of the police in Sundumbili following two murders in 1990 and after Mthimkhulu threatened to become Nofamela No 2, which of course relates to the famous hit squad revelations, and demanded to phone Brigadier Mathe, there was intervention by senior members of the KwaZulu Police, including Captain Manzini and Hlengwa, and Mdanda and Mthimkhulu were released from the custody of the police and taken to the home of a prominent IFP leader in Esikhawini.  That's not the only time that Mdanda was arrested and released after intervention by senior policemen.  And not only KwaZulu policemen;  the same thing happened in Durban and he was released after intervention by some of the most senior members of the South African Police in Umlazi in 1985.  So those were some of the major patterns which emerged in the Mandini area and in fact I also give an example in my submission of what was quite typical.  Ainsley, in his role as Democratic Party president of the unrest monitoring group wrote to Minister Vlok warning about attacks in an area called Nembe and Vlok responded and said the matter would receive attention by the police, senior policemen.   /The police

MR LYSTER: The police never ever bothered to get in touch with Ainsley and the situation worsened.  More people died.  There was no intervention.  Now, that was fairly typical.  We have a lot of correspondence.  We have a lot of records of appeals to the police which were totally ignored.  So they can't say they didn't know.  That was the Mandini area.  Eshowe - I'm just moving up gradually northwards - Eshowe was relatively quiet until 1990.  What I find very noticeable, these areas where I worked fairly closely with people in the eighties which were so peaceful, suddenly from 1990 became transformed into violent war-torn zones.  It is not possible for this to have happened without a degree of orchestration and organisation.  One of the early instances in January 1990 in Eshowe was allegedly perpetrated by, amongst other people, a person attached to the KwaZulu Police.  The violence escalated tremendously from 1993 onwards.  Now, Eshowe was policed by members of the South African Police and what the police - the government did was to bring into the area KwaZulu policemen which was directly contradictory to their stated policy of reserving certain areas for the KwaZulu Police and certain for the SAP.  It was also completely contrary to the recommendations of the Goldstone Commission which had said that no more policing areas should be handed to KwaZulu.  Following the introduction of the KwaZulu Police into the area the violence intensified dramatically and there were many killings in 1993 and 1994.  It continued after the elections.  There were four people constantly named by people in Eshowe as perpetrators of violence, key perpetrators.  Two of  these people had very clear police connections.  One of them was a person who was at that time a policeman and has since become the chief of the area, B I Zulu.  The other person was supposedly a nephew of B I Zulu who moved to the area around the early 1990s.  His name is Thulani Ngcobo and he at one stage was believed to have been a KwaZulu policeman but it seems that he was one of these special constables.  Thulani Ngcobo was notorious in the killings in Pietermaritzburg and was linked to dozens if not hundreds of instances of violence and political killings including, allegedly, the killing of prominent trade unionist Jabu Ndlovu and her family in Pietermaritzburg.  Thulani Ngcobo settled in Eshowe and maintained his links with the police and also maintained a reputation for being deeply involved in instances, cases of violence.  Now, what all this suggests is that this was allowed to happen by both the government and by the police management.  Again we had - and I say we, monitors and also Amnesty International - had sent a number of appeals to the police regarding policing powers, asking for protection for people and our calls went unheeded in Eshowe as elsewhere.  In Mtunzini area, I don't go into detail there but the pattern was the same, that there was a series of attacks, particularly in the period 1991/92/93 in various areas in the magisterial district of Mtunzini and around the town itself and the pattern was the same all the time.  The police would be warned about attacks, would take no precautionary steps and would not investigate afterwards.  This is all documented in the records that we kept during that time.  I want to give more attention  /to the