Human Rights Violation Hearings — Pretoria — 1996-08-13

DR MALAN: Thank you very much Mrs Botha.  We are actually here to ask questions.  Can I please first react on your last comment.  You are right that we do only have certain amounts of power.  We do not only just sit with evidence like we now have.  For instance, not just evidence from victims, but we also have Amnesty in progress currently.  We have good reason to believe that a lot of this information will come through during those hearings.  If people are willingly prepared to give evidence they may do so, but I would just like to assure you that there is a long process and hopefully during this long process we will come up with
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all the answers.  I understand your frustration and exactly your question will be take into consideration. I am merely explaining this to you.  I do have question or two for you and I am sure my colleagues have questions too.  Please can you just tell me except for your brother was your entire family politically involved.

DAWN GEORGINA BOTHA: No, we were not a politically active family, but if you stood, if you were on the other side of the colour line you did not necessarily look for politics, politics sometimes looked for you.  Often our parents had to explain to us why we were not able to take part in certain things.  At the time when the ANC was banned, we did expect it, but it somehow still came as a shock when Leon left the country to join the ANC.  Although we were not politically active at the time we still knew what was right and we still knew what was wrong.  We were aware of what apartheid did, but we were unable to say what we felt, but we did have sympathy with him.  It is only after Leon's death that we all, in fact, became politically active.  We did not have a choice, we had to make the decisions ourselves and we knew that he did not have any other choice.

DR MALAN: You, your parents or any other family members were not therefore active in the organisations then?

DAWN GEORGINA BOTHA: No, we were not.

DR MALAN: Just a more sensitive issue.  You have been here all morning and you listened to the evidence of Mr Clarence, you heard what he had to say.  He on a question of Mr Manthata, he said that he realised that there was a war and that he was at the wrong place at the wrong time.  Can you remember this?

DAWN GEORGINA BOTHA: Yes, I can remember.
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DR MALAN: Do you have any comment on that in the backdrop of the evidence pertaining to your brother.  Did you understand his evidence, does it have any link with your brothers?  Can you somehow understand this?

DAWN GEORGINA BOTHA: I did hear when Mr Clarence said that he was at the wrong place at the wrong time.  The difference between him and my brother is that my brother was in his house and that the murder was committed at his home on him and his wife in a very gruesome fashion.  I have sympathy with what happened to Mr Clarence.  It certainly touched me, but at the same time I cannot find any excuses within my mind for the murderers of my brother.  They are going to have to come up with their own excuses.

DR MALAN: The question of amnesty, the fact that people are going to make public their political motives.  How do you feel about this?

DAWN GEORGINA BOTHA: For me it is still the theoretical issue.  The question is actually asked to me in a vacuum because these people have still not come forward and they have still not been questioned.  It would be easier for us to react when they do come forward and once I know the exact circumstances surrounding Leon's death, I might feel differently, but a lot of people will probably not come forward unless they are granted amnesty.

DR MALAN: Thank you very much.  I do not have any further questions to you at this stage.

RUSSELL ALLY: Thank you very much.

THOMAS MANTHATA: Sorry.  Could you tell us any specific action that could have influenced Joe Juluka to be that politically militant as to leave home for Lesotho?

DAWN GEORGINA BOTHA: We lived in the Eastern Cape at that time.  We,
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when the students revolted in 1976 against the structures it was close to us and students at high school, at the high school where Leon was, had their sympathies clearly for their black brothers, many of the students.  From that time children at an early stage had be conscientised.  They knew what was going on in the community.  Children at a young age got shot in the streets and those were the things that the youths saw and things that they experienced. They did not even only have discussions with pupils at the schools where they were.  They had discussions and they reached out to students at other schools and that is where he was being conscientised.  His name was given through later when Security Police started investigating activities at John Bisika High School in East London, political activities.  His name was given through to the Security Police as one of the so-called leaders at the school.  His name, the name of Cliffie Brown, and it was at that stage that he was picked up early one Sunday morning at our house.  I think it all started there.  They wanted to give the kids a good scare, but it did not work out that way.  The children actually became more active and when they were warned against it, when they got warnings from the Security Police they felt that there was some substance in what they was doing and what they were doing, excuse me.

THOMAS MANTHATA: At one time he came back into the country to conscientise the students.  Did the family ever have an idea or a knowledge of which area he was operating or the schools that he was involved with in this kind of conscientisation?

DAWN GEORGINA BOTHA: No.  We had suspicions, but we did not know because they were not allowed to disclose that kind of sensitive information to relatives.  We had our suspicions,
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yes, but we did not know for sure.

THOMAS MANTHATA: Yes, the thrust of my question actually is based on ...

DAWN GEORGINA BOTHA: ... possible person who could have led the Security Police or who could have led these rekkies to Leon's house, but Mr McCaskill disappeared after the murders and he was never heard of again.  We suspected that he led them to Leon's house.  We do not know for sure.

THOMAS MANTHATA: And Dominee Berg?

DAWN GEORGINA BOTHA: You want to know how I feel about him?

THOMAS MANTHATA: Yes please.  I am sorry.  Now that the situation is what it is.

DAWN GEORGINA BOTHA: I feel nothing for him.

THOMAS MANTHATA: We are talking of forgiveness.

DAWN GEORGINA BOTHA: Yes.

THOMAS MANTHATA: If I understand you well is that Dominee Berg had done something, you know, ...

DAWN GEORGINA BOTHA: Wrong to us.

THOMAS MANTHATA: ... something to be condoned.

DAWN GEORGINA BOTHA: Yes.

THOMAS MANTHATA: Yes.

DAWN GEORGINA BOTHA: I believe he did, yes.  I felt he was disloyal to my husband because my husband was also in they Ministry at that time.  I felt that he was part of the status quo at that stage, but personally I cannot say that I bear him any grudge.  It would not help me to participate in nation building if I had any grudges against him and, in any case, the sense of victory that I felt when the country was liberated is much greater than any grudge that I can feel towards people who informed on us.

THOMAS MANTHATA: Thank you.
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