Amnesty Hearings — East London — 1998-04-14

CHAIRPERSON: You seem to be avoiding the question.  As I understood the question it was: "You were sent to this place because you were told it was frequented by the security police".  If however you had found that there were no security policemen there but merely a lot of old women, would you have felt you could question your orders and say: "You must have got the wrong place"?

VUYISILE LEBRAN MADASI: Where would we be getting that?  Would we discover ourselves that the place is full of grannies or would it be an order from above that we must ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: You would discover yourselves when you went to check on it, Nxeba could come back and report to you that he didn't see a single security person there he just saw old grannies.

MR MBANDAZAYO: Mr Chairman, can I just for clarity assist here in explaining to him what is wanted by the Committee, just in his mother tongue as maybe he's having problems with that.
	The question is, for a moment forget that there were security men there as your order said.  Say you go there and you get there and there are grannies, old people only, now the question is, would you continue and attack the place?

VUYISILE LEBRAN MADASI: Yes, we would Sir.
...[end of tape]

MR LAX: ...[inaudible] answered my question.

ADV SANDI: Mr Madasi, just a follow-up to your answer here, is that to say that in those circumstances you wouldn't have felt any obligation to go back to those who had given you this information and orders, to go back to these people and say that: "The information you gave us about this place is wrong, it's incorrect", you would not even have done that?

VUYISILE LEBRAN MADASI: Advocate Sandi, your question is clear.  I wouldn't be able to do that, I had to carry out the order, not because I was forced to do so or because I could not ask any question but as I said, after I received the training I kept on asking myself: "when am I going to be sent into the battle"?  I was proud, I was glad that I was sent into battle because it was my contribution to liberate this country, to liberate the oppressed.
	I wasn't going to go back and ask our commanders about the order or the nature of the order.  Even if there were grannies there we were going to attack, I wasn't going to go back and ask questions.

CHAIRPERSON: Are you saying you were proud and glad to have been told to go and kill people and you wouldn't go to anything that might stop you doing that?

VUYISILE LEBRAN MADASI: Judge Wilson, it was a war between the oppressor and the oppressed.  As we were fighting, anybody who was oppressed wanted to fight against the oppression to overcome the oppression because even the oppressors, they used their own tactics, their weapons to fight, to oppress us.  Yes, I am proud.
	I left home, my parents loved me and I left them behind, volunteered, yes I was proud to fight, to be in the battle.  I don't regret having taken part in APLA.  APLA consists of soldiers, different units inside South Africa.  I feel that the struggle the Africans took part in was a good thing, it was noble.
	It would take the day to list the number of things that Boers did against the oppressed, the cruel things that they did.  It was not sinful what we did.  APLA fought for the oppressed.  I hope I've answered you.

UNKNOWN: Mr Madasi, - and I'm referring the Committee to page 47 and 49 of the bundle, there were two statements from employees at the hotel on that evening.  Page 47, that's the statement of Bingklela and I refer to paragraph 5 there of Mr Chairman and the statement of Kameni at page 49 paragraph 2.
	Now I just want to draw your attention to the fact that the staff were told by a gunman who appeared in the kitchen area to keep, that they must keep quiet and that this person then moved past them deeper into the hotel.  My question is, it would seem from that - and I'm putting it to you, that the staff were told to keep quiet, they were left alone, they weren't threatened by your unit.  That is what appears from their statements that they made when this hotel was attacked.
	Now I'm putting to you that this seems to fly in the face of your evidence a short while ago, that it made no difference whether there were black people or white people there, you were simply there to attack the target.  Would you care to clarify that or answer that?

VUYISILE LEBRAN MADASI: First of all you must also ask yourself a question that, how can you pass a person and then move onto others, what if this person hit you from behind because you don't know this person?  In the matter that you say that the gun - the people say that the gunmen passed them, I'm not going to say anything about that because I don't know.
	If they say that he did not heed the blacks, I don't know why would he leave them behind.  I don't want to say anything about that because I don't know about it.

UNKNOWN: So obviously that wasn't you, it must have been one of your other comrades, Mr Diamoneng or Mr ...[intervention]

VUYISILE LEBRAN MADASI: Excuse me, this I'm not going to confirm this.  I'm not denying it but I'm not going to confirm it because first of all it's the first time I hear about this, that there were people who say that there was a gunman who passed them.  I don't know about it so I'm not going to confirm it.  I don't know whether it happened or not.

UNKNOWN: Well I'm putting to you that it happened.  These two witnesses have made statements, those statements were given to your attorney on Wednesday of last and I assume that you had been informed of that.  And I'm simply putting to you a portion of the paragraph where you they say: whilst they were in the kitchen area a gunmen came in, told them - when they started screaming, to keep quiet, they were unmolested and the gunmen then went past them into a different place of the hotel where the shooting then occurred.
	 Are you saying that that didn't happen or are you unable to comment on whether that happened or not, possibly because you weren't in that portion of the hotel?

VUYISILE LEBRAN MADASI: When I gave in my report about this operation I did not include this because I don't know anything about it.  If the comrade Nxeba perhaps was there and knew that that had happened he should have reported it and we would have included it in the report.  There was no such report and I don't know anything about it.

UNKNOWN: Did your co-applicant, that is Mr Diamoneng, was he also in the hotel or was he outside the hotel when the shooting occurred?

VUYISILE LEBRAN MADASI: He was outside next to the window.

UNKNOWN: So was it yourself and Nxeba who entered the hotel?

VUYISILE LEBRAN MADASI: I think you are mixing the whole story up.  It is Nxebe who went round the other way ...[intervention]

UNKNOWN: Just tell us ...[intervention]

VUYISILE LEBRAN MADASI: Please give me a moment Sir.  It is Nxeba, I and comrade Mlungisi - I opened the door by the bar and I shot whilst I was standing by the door.  It was Mlungisi and I who was inside, Nxeba was standing at the back.

UNKNOWN: Did you shoot the person who was sitting at the bar?   And I want to refer you to page 28 and 29 of the bundle which shows the deceased, Mr Jerling slumped over the bar, was it you that shot at that gentleman?

VUYISILE LEBRAN MADASI: I can't say whether it was me or Mlungisi because we both shot, we were shooting towards the place where there were people.   I can't say whether I'm the one who shot him or it was Mlungisi because we were both shooting towards the same place.

UNKNOWN: Did you ever go into the kitchen area of the hotel before shooting in the bar?

VUYISILE LEBRAN MADASI: I have no idea which side the kitchen is.

UNKNOWN: So you never saw any black employees of the hotel before you shot in the bar, is that what you're saying?

VUYISILE LEBRAN MADASI: I did not see any black people there.  We got off the car and we started shooting, it was all fast.