Amnesty Hearings — Pinetown — 2000-02-15

MR DEHAL: Indeed, yes.  Mr Chairperson, apart from that we have the brother of the deceased and Alzina, the common-law wife or girlfriend of the deceased to have testified.  I deal firstly with the brother of the deceased.  I submit respectfully that his testimony is not one that can be accepted.  His testimony is pitted with contradictions of material value.  He is one who had, for want of a better term, to gain effect, to show that the applicant was really a criminal, pitched his entire version on the basis that this was a criminal act but yet in contradiction concedes the correctness of his wife's statement about the political motivation being present, that these persons being IFP and ANC being correct.
	Now on the probabilities, Mr Chairperson, you raised one important aspect with this witness.  If his father celebrated on the New Year's Eve, to have been so under the stupor as not to have known that the applicant - sorry that the deceased had spoken or not, then surely if the witness had celebrated as indeed he must have, then he also would have been as confused as he would have us believe his father was but he did not respond to say he did not celebrate, he evaded the question.  The probabilities favour the conclusion that he must have celebrated the night before for it was a New Year's Eve night, that if his father was in fact under a drunken stupor as to be confused then surely he must have.  But the probabilities are part, the contradictions are so apparent, I mean he talks firstly about:
"my father having reached the spot of the deceased on the ground"
sorry, on the sports ground,
"well after I reached there so my father cannot tell that the deceased spoke or not"
and this in explanation of the term used by the father in his written statement that - sorry, if I may just get to that - on page 14 of the bundle, where in the second last paragraph the father says:
"he was unable to speak".
When this aspect is put to him and he is asked about:
"What do you mean by your father was confused or celebrated the night before?  If he arrived later you see then you need to explain that?"
He says:
"Well, my father and I did arrive there together"
reverting to his first version which he had used in response to Mr Sibanyoni,
"And that because we arrived together"
he then adduces the explanation that:
"Oh well, my father could not have heard me speaking to the deceased because he celebrated the night before and was confused."
Now when this is again dealt with he alters it marginally and indeed pads that version to distance himself from it endeavouring to explain it again and again.  All those four contradictions were put to him, he could not explain it properly.  
	He then talks about three stab wounds not being possible, he pitches it at a level of being more than six stab wounds.  He says so evident were the stab wounds that the lungs were showing.  Now if one ties his version with Alzina's version, which I must submit at this stage is the more believable of the two.  By the two I mean between the brother-in-law Frederick and Alzina.  Then Alzina's version is that the deceased has a stab wound right here in the larynx and it must obviously follow that speech would have been debilitated to such an extent as to render the version of Frederick that he has this ongoing full version and discussion with the deceased implausible to say the least.
	Now to tie that together than more than six stab wounds as against the entire documents before us, speaking of three stab wounds, unfortunately we don't have the post-mortem report etc., but it would appear as though in the formulation of this record having regard to the court record, one stuck to three stab wounds and that might have been common cause in the trial.  Now to say more than six stab wounds is really pitching it at the worst.
	He then talks about the child.  No doubt he must be mistaken about the age but he talks firstly about the child being four years now.  When Mr de Jager questions him how could it be possible that the child could be four when this murder took place in 1992 he says he doesn't know because he has not seen this child for a long time, the child lives on the farm if I recall what he said.  Mr de Jager then correctly tells him well, that if the death occurred in 1992 then the child must be 10 now.  He easily concedes yes, that's possible.  Now if he is that intelligent man he wants us to believe him to be, then surely he must know the difference between four years and ten years, even at the level of a mistake.  My submission is that he was simply trying to distance himself from the reality to show a child very young to buy sympathy and shows that he was not sticking to the truth generally.

CHAIRPERSON: What is the purpose of that?  He knows his brother died in 1992, he must know the whole world must understand the child must be 8 or more?

MR DEHAL: Correct.

CHAIRPERSON: So it's entirely pointless, it surely just shows that he was in a state and wasn't able to think coherently.

MR DEHAL: That or the following, that when one ties Alzina's version with his version and looks at them as flip sides of a coin, here is a man, Frederick, who no doubt on Alzina's version has been seeing this child regularly.  In fact the child has been visiting his home and he has been visiting the child, he is the elder brother in the family.  In the nature of things, that must be the more believable version.  That is as true as Frederick's version is untrue about his having not seen the child for many years.  He says "I don't associate with the child, the child since the death of my brother has gone back to the farm, I've not seen the child."  So at that level I say that there is a ring of untruth in his version and therefore that reason must be unbelievable, his version must not be acceptable.
	But then there is another contradiction.  He says he last met the deceased and Alzina - sorry, may I just look at my notes, bear with me?  Yes, he said he last met the deceased and Alzina on the morning of the 1st January and when questioned about this he distances himself from that and says "no, no, I did not meet them, this was a report made to me by the children".  Now Mr Chairperson, against the background of this I submit that Frederick was a man who was simply stretching the elastic to it's limit in his desire to gain effect.  His version must be rejected.  Alzina on the other hand I concede immediately is a believable witness.  She comes in here and she says it with so much of candour and truth that even I could not cross-examine her to break her at any level.  There are, despite that, contradictions between her written statement and herself.  Indeed the contradiction relating to the three stab wounds as opposed to one stab wound and the contradiction between "the body having been loaded into Mbambo's vehicles at the time I got there" as opposed to "having already being loaded in there when first I got to Mbambo" are versions that can be argued away on the basis that no doubt she made a statement as is common cause as is evident on the statement on the day of the death so she must have been at level disturbed.

CHAIRPERSON: Isn't there the possibility if not the probability that somebody at the police station took notes and then prepared statements for them all?

MR DEHAL: Exactly the same argument could go for the applicant's statement, I concede that.  At that possibility one could even say ...(intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: The applicant was not the morning of the killing when they were all there together, the applicant was some considerable time later?

MR DEHAL: Oh no, no, no.

CHAIRPERSON: They said they all went to the police station and isn't it from the experience one has of these, some policeman is given the job and he makes notes, writes it out and he says sign this, sign this, sign this?

MR DEHAL: Absolutely possible, absolutely acceptable.