Special Hearings — Mandela United Football Club Hearings — 1997-11-24

CRISIS COMMITTEE: There are two things that I would like to add Chairperson. Just to put it on record because at the beginning we say that we are not able to deal with specific issues that are related to the murder of Dr Abu-Baker Asvat and if I can take you to paragraph 33 of the submission, the background to that paragraph is that during the time when we were talking to those young people in that Diepkloof residence we were told that Dr Asvat had treated and that the sexual abuse story he would be able to actually assist on the sexual abuse story and so in Paragraph 33 you see on the 14th January 1989, three members of the Committee Aubrey Mokoena, Sidney Mufamadi, and Sister Bernadette Ncube visited Dr Asvat, that was the encounter that this Committee has with Dr Asvat in Robville Surgery on behalf of the Committee, I wasn't in the country, Dr Beyers Naude wasn't in the country and Cyril Ramaphosa wasn't available.
 The task of these members was to ask Dr Asvat as to whether or not he had treated the youth and whether or not he could share with the Committee what his findings were because that was important for us and that story is related in Annexure B in a much more detailed form in terms of what was required and extracted and the members of the Committee who went there report that Dr Asvat denied every having seen or medically examined the youth and that is stated in Annexure B.
 Annexure B was written around this particular question because it was felt that because the members of the Committee were the ones who visited Dr Asvat before his death and talked to him about these young people, that the Committee would have information, Dr Asvat would have communicated to them and you will realise that in Annexure B where reference is made to the report which was sent to the President of the ANC at that particular time.
 Now if you can take that Annexure C which was quite confidential which made Mama Mandela quite angry about, in terms of how it was actually sent to President Mambo. But Annexure B refers to that report and says that "If indeed we have extra information that was very confidential" because this was a very confidential document sent by a Courier. A human being had to go there and deliver it and came back and confirmed it's delivered and if there was any extra information we could have given that would have been the best opportunity.
 Unfortunately the answer that we got at that time was "No, I did not treat them" and that created a crisis for us. We are not able to comment why that issue was treated in that way. I need to add, Chairperson, that I personally had a very close personal relationship with Dr Asvat and I got the call, I was in Japan at that time, and got a call that he has been killed and he came to rescue me when I was supposed to leave school, the University, because my parents were not working, and I assisted the family for two years. Basically giving grants to the family and treated the family free of charge, so he was my personal doctor particularly, and this has been a pain to us, but we, unfortunately that's as far as we could go.
 There was other interaction which happens beyond that I know of. Of course when I came back from outside the country, he was already dead, so I had no opportunity to can do that.
 The next thing Chairperson, is Paragraph 34. Just to put the context of all these reports which Mr Mufamadi has been referring to, that there was a meeting at Dobsonville, which was called and members, and I am sorry that Bishop Storey there has made a real story, rather than with an ease of, there is a typographical error there and we apologise for that. 
 In that meeting Sr. Bennett and Mr Sidney Mufamadi attended that meeting where they were invited, they invited members the Crisis Committee and it's in that meeting where very hard things were said, so that reports which tends to be misunderstood in terms of what was that which the Committee believed was true and what is that which was reported as what the community was saying, which I think it is important to read it carefully in that sense that it reported quite some anger from that meeting, angry things were said and there were recommendations of what the community must do and what the African National Congress was saying is that you must not fall into that trap because of this infiltration you are actually then achieving the very objective, so instead of isolating Mrs Mandela, close in on her and deal with the problem and that is the context within which that counts and that is as close as we could come in a broader meeting with the Mass Democratic Movement, because it was community organisations present there.
 I would like to turn your attention again to Paragraph 14, Chairperson, which has been referred to and would like to refer to some of the issues we believed after the burning of the house, are well involved here.
 Paragraph 14 on Page 4. "Although the events leading to the burning of the house was sad to be related to conflict between members of the so-called Mandela Football Club and some members of the community, the Committee intuitively felt that there was a third force involved in this conflict. The Committee suspected that the objectives of this third force were firstly to create conflict within the community and thereby shift the focus of the people's energies away from the struggle for liberation."
 And the second objective of the third force so the Committee suspected was to discredit not only Mrs Mandela but also the ban?? Imprison Mr Mandela and the African National Congress and the total affect of this strategy would be to weaken the Liberation Movement and finally defeat the forces of liberation. That is how we conceptualise it, you would see this struggle in trying to deal with this plan and at one stage when I visited the house during the night because there was an emergency, I myself, didn't feel safe leaving the house after that, because I didn't know who in amongst those boys were actually serving the regime at that particular time, and that I think is important to understand, Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: : Hanif?