Amnesty Hearings — Pinetown — 1999-03-08

MR WILLS: Thank you Ms Committee Member.  My submission in this regard would be that had that been the case, the applicant was fully armed with a whole arsenal of weapons, which one can see at the final stages of my argument, and he could have quite easily taken that person out completely, without referring the matter to anybody else.  Instead he took the matter to his commander, Mr Mkhize, he disclosed the problem to Mr Mkhize, but even more than that the matter was raised with Gideon Zulu and others at a meeting at Ulundi.  Now there would have been no necessity for that, in my submission, had there, had he just wanted to kill Gumede for the purpose of trying to cover things up.  What I think is the probably is in fact what Mr Mbambo suggests, is that he honestly felt that his was a ploy of the ANC to get him off the streets in Izingolweni, and I think if one considers the evidence in totality, particularly the issue of how the KwaZulu policemen in Izingolweni were investigating the crimes of their colleagues, covering up evidence, and the fact that the ANC had no recourse to the police station, one can understand that these types of desperate measures or different tactics to get rid of a person, would ensue.  For example, there's no motor vehicle theft unit in Izingolweni with the KwaZulu police.  One would have to go to the South African police to get that sort of thing investigated.  That's the first thing.
	And secondly the ANC had lost all faith in reporting incidents to that police station, because there was no success in investigating the issues.  And that in itself would make it far easier for Mbambo to have killed Gumede.  Because he could have killed Gumede and the matter simply wouldn't have been investigated, like the hundreds of other issues that weren't investigated.
	I submit as well in the totality of the evidence, I mean you're touching on the issue of personal gain, there is not one iota of evidence where any of the applicants whom I represent got anything for anything that they did, other than the salaries that they got as policemen.
Now, the only, turning to the incidents of what I've loosely referred to as the indiscriminate attacks, and I use the word indiscriminate specifically in the context that the victims were not identifiably, but the attacks were discriminate in the sense that they were directed against either ANC persons or ANC areas.  But referring to that was what I considered to be quite a seminal event in the history of Izingolweni, and that was the incident where the IFP had a rally in February 1992 at the Izingolweni station, stadium, and Prince Gideon Zulu was due to address that rally, and it was disrupted by the ANC to the extent that Prince Gideon Zulu couldn't deliver his speech as he intended.  And from that point on, right in the presence of Mbabmo and later at a meeting called at Izingolweni specifically to discuss that problem, Gideon Zulu issued the instructions to the effect that "...we must do to the ANC what they are doing to us."  And by that he was referring specifically to these attacks on ANC busses and the like in areas without specifically targeting people.  And that was seminal in the sense that it was only after that that the applicants who I represent, should I say the applicants who'd only been operating in Izingolweni, got involved in that sort of violence.

CHAIRPERSON: The watershed with regard to the policy of random or indiscriminate attacks.  It happened, from the evidence before us, certainly my impression was that it was, that policy came about directly because of what happened at that rally, and because the Prince lost his temper.  He was humiliated publicly, and that brought about a complete change.  Before then it was hit list type work, you know, specified targets.

MR WILLS: Yes, that would be my submission in relation to the geographical area of Izingolweni, but I would submit that the, that that policy was in effect in places like Hammarsdale and Ermelo, much earlier than that, and I'll get onto those issues when I deal with them.  But clearly in regard to Mkhize and Mbambo who only really got involved in these activities in Izingolweni, that was clearly the case.  But Gideon Zulu went further than that, and this is confirmed in Luthuli's evidence, because Luthuli confirmed that whilst Luthuli wasn't at the meeting at Hlalankahle hall when this change of policy was communicated to the local people, Luthuli commented that he met with Gideon Zulu at a later stage, at Ulundi, where Zulu indicated to Luthuli that this change of police had occurred.  And that's documented I think in the statement of, I've got the reference somewhere in my argument and I can find it.
	There's an enormous amount of these so called indiscriminate attacks, and I don't intend to deal with each of them, I want to deal with them quite broadly, and I've listed them at page 14.  These, once these attacks started, there were more specific reasons given for them at certain stages.  You will recall that there was the incident of when some of the IFP hit, some of the IFP operative in Izingolweni were arrested as a result of an attack on the ANC leader Beki Ntuli's home.  They went to Court and there was a bail hearing.  The ANC leader Willis Mkunu gave evidence to the effect that, 
"... since these people have been arrested the violence in Izingolweni has dropped."
And then there was a meeting between Bhiela, Mrs Umbuyazi and the so called lawyer Gabela, that in order to persuade the Magistrate otherwise, the hit squads should be activated, and on that particular evening a lot of havoc was, they certainly did operate in Izingolweni.
	I think as well on that level, referring back to Gideon Zulu, there was that level of pride.  The evidence sort of indicated when Zulu was so furious about this attack, that he accused these well trained soldiers of not being able to do their jobs.  In fact it was the only time, in my going through the evidence of this time, that they were reprimanded.  They were never reprimanded for killing people.  I mean sorry, the only time they were reprimanded was for not killing people.  They were never disciplined for killing the wrong person or going, or doing too much in that regard, and I think that's quite an important point.

SISI KHAMPEPE: You earlier on wanted to refer us to the record.  May I assist you?  I think it's, according to your Heads, with regard to Mr Luthuli and the message that was conveyed by his eminent Prince Gideon Zulu, with regard to the indiscriminate order, appears at page 6, it's on page 6, the second paragraph of your Heads.  It would give you the record pages.
MACHINE SWITCHED OFF

MR WILLS: Thank you.  It is, it's my submission that everything that Hlongwane did in this instance was at the instruction of his leader, Zekeli Mkehle and at times he was provided with ammunition by Luthuli and assisted by South African policemen.  Obviously applicants Mkhize and Mbambo weren't involved here, and there's one incident which I'll relate to, where Ndlovu is involved on his own.
	I don't know if there's anything that the Committee wish me to expand on, apart from the rape incident, in that area, but clearly it was simply a case of Hlongwane being a member of the IFP youth, being a brave and loyal person, and a very useful member of that Inkatha youth, and him performing his function really well in his leaders' eyes, of just disrupting the community.  There are a couple of instances where I think possibly need a little more expansion and those were the ones where a, an innocent person was killed in order to lure a more prominent person into the area.  Now that's ...(intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: That was the one where they wanted to get the brother, I think.

MR WILLS: Yes, Thulani.

CHAIRPERSON: And there was the ...(intervention)

MR WILLS: That occurred in fact in Ermelo ...(intervention)