Human Rights Violation Hearings — Grahamstown — 1997-04-02

REV XUNDU: I would like to swear the witness in Mr Chairman.

VUYANI RICHARD BETE: (sworn states)

JUNE CRICHTON: Welcome Mr Bete.  You were meant to testify yesterday and you have three different incidents that you want to talk about. Those three incidents we will come to but I think what we need to understand here is that you are coming from a totally different position to that Mr Mbekele has just described, simply because you were related to a policeman.  Am I correct in that?

VUYANI RICHARD BETE: Yes that is correct.

JUNE CRICHTON: So the three incidents that you are going to tell us about are first of all yourself and the damage to your property, your car and your house, the second incident was the murder of Anele Bete who was beaten to death by the Amabutu and the third incident Mbyiselo Khadi who was burned to death. Now I think it would be good if we can do those one by one, but before I do that I'd like to ask you to explain what your role was within the community, were you a member of a political organisation?

VUYANI RICHARD BETE: I was not anything.  My brother was a policeman.  I would like to speak about my younger brother who died before I testify about the damage to property and the death of my cousin and so forth.

JUNE CRICHTON: Are you talking about Mbyiseli or Anele?

VUYANI RICHARD BETE: I'm referring to Anele.

JUNE CRICHTON: I'm happy for you to do that, let's talk about Anele first.

VUYANI RICHARD BETE: What happened was that Anele was just released from jail three days earlier because he used to break in and steal and so on, so my older brother was a policeman and he asked me if I was living with someone dirty here at home. When I asked him what he meant he said that a policeman was somebody evil, and he had friends who were living in the Tanke(?) area and my granny was living there too.  And three days after his release we went to visit my granny and then at 9 the following morning he wasn't back the following morning and towards half past nine that evening a man who owned a shop in Tanke came with four guys saying to tell us that a boy had been picked up naked in the park and that they had heard that this child lived here.
 My mother then we should go to this park, we got there, we found Anele naked and there was a lady who had asked him whose child he was and he had told her.  This lady then took him to her house and the ambulance was called in and it took him to hospital.  It was found that he had sustained injuries to his head, he was in hospital for two days, he passed away on the third day.
   The explanation which we received from Anele while he was still in hospital was that he was taken by unknown people to him in the Tanke area when they kept him in a house all day saying that they were going to kill him. He said that they let him free that night but that whole day they assaulted him in every way possible, and he kept saying to them that he was not a policeman but that his brother was a policeman.  Their response was that they could not get hold of his brother, so the only way they could get to his brother was by assaulting him and family members. That was basically the explanation which Anele gave and he died two days after being admitted to hospital.
 He was still very young, Anele must have been about 15 years old, he was still very young but he was a very forward sort of curious child.

JUNE CRICHTON: Was he school going?

VUYANI RICHARD BETE: No he was very naughty, he used to break in, he used to pick pockets, he used to steal, he never used to stay at home.  He was just a very naughty child and he would come home and he'd be on the run all the time after having done these naughty things.

JUNE CRICHTON: ...from prison because of a criminal offence in any event, so he belonged to no organisations, no student
organisations?  (end of tape)......Impiwe(indistinct)?

VUYANI RICHARD BETE: Yes he's the one.

JUNE CRICHTON: Alright now could you move on then to Khadi, Mbyiselo Khadi, what happened with him?

VUYANI RICHARD BETE: I haven't finished about Anele.  I'm going to come to Mbuyiselo. What I did was to say to my mum, Mum get rid of this person here at home because what is going to happen is the boys who liked me would come to me and say, listen, talk to your brother, tell him to either resign from the police or leave your home because lots of things are going to happen to you and your family.
 I spoke to my mum and she asked what she's going to do.  I said to her that she can see what is happening, we're all going to die because of this one person.  Why doesn't she ask him to leave?

JUNE CRICHTON: Was he staying at home at that time?

VUYANI RICHARD BETE: Yes he was also staying at home at the time. She didn't know what to do because I was pressurising her on the one hand and there was no one who could really tell my older brother what to do because he was the first born at home, he was the oldest.

JUNE CRICHTON: Are you completed now with the story? Have you completed the story of Anele for the moment?

VUYANI RICHARD BETE: Yes I've finished.

JUNE CRICHTON: Would you like to then move on to the story of Mbuyiselo Khadi.

VUYANI RICHARD BETE: Yes.  What happened is that I left for Kingwilliamstown since I saw that things were bad at home, I must have stayed there for about three months and I came back.  When I got home Mbuyiselo was working at a shop in Xolani and when I got home he was off, I asked him for money and he gave me some.  He was a very generous kind person and he would try in all ways to help because he was the bread winner, so to speak.  He gave me money and I had this red car of my mine and I asked him where he was going and I offered to take him there by car and he said no he would walk.  I heard a noise in the next street and then I heard a whistle and I said to my mother that that is Mbuyiselo, and she said, please don't say that and that I should try and get the police.
 While I was trying to do that the police came and they said that Mbuyiselo was dead in Xolani.  I got into the police van and we went to Xolani Street and we got there and he had been burned.  He was pitch black the way he had burned and the one policeman was standing with him who had tried to douse the flames so that he did not burn out completely. I asked what had happened and I was told that he had been asking for forgiveness from the people and when I got to the mortuary the inquest or the post mortem showed that he had been shot in the neck and then he had been set alight, and I found that these boys were right in saying that lots of things were still going to happen to us at home.  That ends Mbuyiselo's story.

JUNE CRICHTON: Can I ask you a question about that?  You say that he had gone to ask forgiveness for what, for having a cousin who was a policeman?

VUYANI RICHARD BETE: You know when you're being assaulted, whether you have done wrong or not, you'll start asking for forgiveness whether or not you have done wrong.  So I see in that he must have been asking for forgiveness just to get them to stop whatever they were doing to him.

JUNE CRICHTON: This man Mbuyiselo was your cousin?

VUYANI RICHARD BETE: Yes.

JUNE CRICHTON: Is there anything more you want to say before we move on to yourself?

VUYANI RICHARD BETE: What happened was that when we opened his trunk of clothes we found ANC membership cards and discovered that he was a member, and I asked myself these questions. We heard people say that they were sorry they did not know that he was one of them, and they made a mistake, they thought he was someone else and I mean that was a bit too late because he had already died by then.

JUNE CRICHTON: Have any of those people come to the family to say that they were sorry and they now understood that they were wrong?