Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 1999-10-27

MR WILLIAMS: I also want to submit that the applicant had absolutely no grounds for believing that the car in which Pro Jack was travelling contained members of the SAP.  He had not ground whatsoever for believing that and furthermore, that they were now coming to arrest him.  He could have waited a little while, or he could have followed a few steps to ascertain whether that was in fact correct and his evidence in that regard is also extremely improbable.
	He says, he goes on further and he states in his evidence that he shot at the driver and he wanted to make sure that, he thought that there were other occupants in the car as well.  He wanted to make sure that no one escapes alive.  Then the logical thing for him to do would then be to go to the vehicle and see whether there are still occupants in the vehicle.  Why doesn't he do that?  Mr Chairperson, it seems, or the probabilities - it's highly probable that he knew that he was shooting at Pro Jack.  His direct intention was to kill Pro Jack and he knew that whoever else was in the car, wouldn't be in a position to identify him, maybe because of the way his face was hidden, or whatever, but that would seem to tie in more with the probabilities.            	Mr Chairperson he also doesn't dispute the fact that Pro Jack was a well-known figure in the community and the applicant himself was active in community organisations, probably the same organisation that Mr Jack belonged to and it seems highly probable that he knew who Mr Jack was and that he deliberately set out to kill Mr Jack.
	The last thing on this point Mr Chairperson is, if he was convinced that he was shooting at the policemen, why did he still ask his friends afterwards; "Was that a police vehicle?"  That would also not seem to tie in with the probabilities.
	Mr Chairperson, with respect, then my submission is that the applicant's testimony leads us to the inescapable inference that the application of the applicant is a scheme of lies designed to conceal the truth and that he's not making a full disclosure here.
	Just before I conclude, I want to deal with a submission by Mr Riley.  He says that there are other possibilities and that his client could have thought that Mr Jack worked for the establishment or whatever and maybe that was the motive why he could have killed Mr Pro Jack.  Now that flies in the face of the direct testimony of the applicant and if that is in fact the case, why didn't the applicant come and testify to that effect to the Commission?
	Then lastly, my instructions from the ANC are that the ANC completely distances itself from the action of the applicant and they've instructed me to oppose amnesty and to request that the Committee should not give amnesty to the applicant.  Thank you Mr Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you Mr Williams.  Mr Jamie have you got any submissions on the merits of the application?

MR JAMIE: I do, Mr Chairperson.

MR JAMIE: Mr Chairperson, the representative for the applicant, Mr Riley, made a somewhat extraordinary submission to the Panel which does indeed coincide with the submissions that I am going to make but it's extraordinary coming from the applicant.  His submission was, Mr Chairperson, that we will probably never know the true reasons behind the killing of Mr Pro Jack.  They could have been to do with the taxi violence, which was endemic in the area, in respect whereof Mr Jack was attempting to broker a settlement.  It could have been because of the arrest of Mr Toyise and his family over the firearms that were seized from his home, or it could have been as a result of ...(indistinct) action.  Now that is quite correct, Mr Chairperson,
it could have been any of those and the position is, we don't know which of those it is, but in our submission the one thing that it wasn't is a mistake on the part of the applicant who thought that he was firing at a police vehicle that evening.  There are a number of reasons for that submission and they are reasons both of logic and that arise from the evidence.
	If I can begin perhaps with dealing with an issue which appears to cause the members of the Panel some concern and that is whether or not indeed this could have been a targeting specifically of Pro Jack that evening and not merely an accident.  So now I'm dealing with the version of Andile, because there are two contradictory versions.  In our submission and as a matter of basic and fundamental fairness, this Committee will be very loath and very hesitant to find, or it should be hesitant to find that, or let me preface that by saying that the uncontradicted evidence of Andile was that he heard someone, or more than one person calling "Mzwonke, Mzwonke" and in fact his uncle Pro Jack then confirmed himself by saying: "Someone is calling me".  Now the applicant's representative attempted to cross-examine on the first of those propositions, but never ever suggested that the second had not taken place, that Pro Jack in the car, had told Andile: "Someone else is calling me" and that evidence stands uncontradicted.                              	
	Now there are two possibilities here, or three.  The first one is that he's making that up, Andile, and that never happened.  It's not the sort of evidence you can be mistaken about.  You can't be mistaken that someone tells you:  "Someone's calling me" and he also can't be mistaken in the ordinary course of events that you hear someone calling: "Mzwonke".  Everyone called Pro, Pro's common nickname was Pro.  Mzwonke was his formal name, his proper name, so if one is making this up or if you're having a flight of the imagination, it's far more likely you would think that somebody was calling Pro, not Mzwonke.  That's the first point.
	The second is that it's not the sort of thing you can be mistaken about, so if you're going to find that it never happened, then Andile made this all up and he was lying,  the second possibility is the one that was raised by the members of the Committee and Mr Riley then took it up as well when it was offered to him and that is that it could have come from someone else, other people on the scene.  Now the problems with that, some of them have been mentioned by Mr Williams, that there was no evidence whatsoever and this appears to be pure and utter speculation.  There was simply no evidence and it was never suggested that there were other people, but a more fundamental reason that we have for, with respect, saying that that cannot be the basis of the finding of the Committee, is that it was never ever put to Andile and as a matter of fundamental fairness, if a witness is going to be disbelieved on an issue as crucial as this, then it should have been put to him:  "Well is it possible this could have been other people?".  He then could have dealt with it.  He could have said: "Well there were no other people", or he could have said: "Well I did see other people but it wasn't them".  He could have said:  "Well it came from the direction of the people that I did see."

CHAIRPERSON: But Mr Jamie, did he in fact say that it came from the attackers?