Human Rights Violation Hearings — Lusikisiki — 1997-03-26

ADV SANDI: Thank you General.  I thought you were going to explain about the Lullaby to us.  Maybe you've missed that point.

RODNEY GOBA KESWA: The first "L", sir stands for let.  "U", stands for us.  The second "L", stand for listen, the second "L" stands for learn.  "A" stands for ask, the last "BY" stands for buy.  In other words sir, as we were people who had no way to be educated we decided to go out to other countries so that we can learn and ask and listen.  Ask and listen.
 After that we would buy whatever we wanted to buy.  We did so, we bought things in these countries, we learnt new things in these countries, we learnt by asking and by listening, thank you.

ADV SANDI: Thank you General.  Maybe my colleagues are
going to ask you questions, but for now I will hand over to the Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: Reverend Xundu?

REV XUNDU: Thank you Mr Chairperson.  Except for the allegations you've mentioned, and that you mentioned that you were helping Lethuli and others, in your tours are there any people you suspect maybe they told the Government that you are trying to overthrow it?

RODNEY GOBA KESWA: Honourable sir, what surprised me is that when the police, the Security Police arrived in Inqobo, telling me to write down the allegations, these allegations were connected with the trips I had overseas.
 Sometimes I wouldn't even tell my wife when I was taking these trips, even my assistant wouldn't know because we knew that we were from Transkei and we were not welcome in other countries, due to political reasons.
 But I thought that there were people amongst the Defence Force who took the things that I did and they accused me of trying to overthrow the Transkei Government, that is why I ask or request the Commission to bring forward the person who gave orders for me to be detained.

CHAIRPERSON: General, ... which by your own admission is coming to light for the first time, I am not aware of ever hearing it or reading about it anywhere and indeed it is a surprising revelation.  What I want to know is the statement relates of course to the training of Transkei soldiers by the United Nations Organisation.  I would like to ask two questions.
 The UN is known to have played a major role in galvanising the countries of the world  against apartheid and especially against the creation of (indistinct), I find
it very difficult to understand exactly what logic the UN used to actually train soldiers for the Transkei.  We are running after revelations of the truth and it will be very interesting just to hear the year in which this happened and how the UN was persuaded to take this position.

RODNEY GOBA KESWA: Honourable Chairperson, I hope one day God will spare me to write a book about this incidents.  I don't want to pretend it wasn't, it was easy, it wasn't a piece of cake.
 I will just say it took old fashioned strategy planning.  The boys I sent, let me disclose, to Geneva in Switzerland to train, trained with other boys and other youngsters from all the parts of the world.  I believed through my studies and through my general interest in international affairs that the United Nations must champion the cause of the underdog.
 I took politics out of it and talked to people as human beings and it worked.  Thank God it worked.  Those boys are still alive, they have their certificates.  They are the only ones in South Africa with United Nations certificates, and for good measure, I sent them to Switzerland on Transkei passports.  I did it.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Sandi.  Thank you for that answer, General.  Mr Sandi?

ADV SANDI: Thank you Mr Chairman.  General, earlier on when you started, you made a reference to this Sunday Times newspaper cutting and apparently you were going to bring our attention to certain parts of it, would you like to do it now?

RODNEY GOBA KESWA: Yes.  Yes, please.  There is a paragraph there which says I travelled extensively overseas, studying penal
systems.  If you look at that article, that is a blatant distortion of the truth.  I travelled extensively overseas studying, military systems.  I was not wanting to learn about prisons, I had already stopped working for prisons, I don't know what I was going to do about that.
 ... to discredit my achievements and there is another allegation that I wrote a book Outlawed Communities, I never wrote a book.  That was a manuscript I wrote whilst I was still in the Prison Service, studying as a student of the University of South Africa.  I was interested in prison gang warfare and I got permission from the South African Prison's authorities to conduct that research and I published a manuscript which incidentally was serialised by the Sunday Times, but I never wrote a book.
 And there is also an allegation there that I was arrested because of ANC activities which were banned in South Africa and in Transkei.  The fact of the matter was that I was branded a communist, I was branded a traitor, I was branded someone who hated Chiefs and Chieftainship.
 I assumed because there is an alliance between the ANC and the South African Communist Party.  Anyone who is a communist, therefor is anti-ANC or things like that.  But those allegations, they are distortions.

ADV SANDI: Are you able to remember some of the countries you visited whilst you were abroad?

RODNEY GOBA KESWA: Yes.  I went to Belgium, I went to Turkey, I went to Switzerland several times, I went to Austria, I went to the UK, Italy, Israel, I spent some time there.  I went to Kenya, I went to Zimbabwe.  Those are the ones that come to mind.

ADV SANDI: I suppose in all these countries you would
meet people from the army or Heads or state.  How far would you be from those people, people who were the politicians of the countries concerned?

RODNEY GOBA KESWA: Not directly.  I would go to a country and seek intermediaries, a connection, to try and establish a link with the military of that country.  I didn't go directly, for instance to Austria and went to the Commander of the Austrian Defence Force, I couldn't do that, because of the politics.
 Every time I had to try and get the politics out of it and meet the people behind the politics.

ADV SANDI: Thank you General.