Amnesty Hearings — Port Elizabeth — UNKNOWN

MR NYOKA: And you have no lie against them and you have nothing to gain for lying against them?

JOE MAMASELA: No, there was no way I could just out of the blue decide to lie against people, committing myself, implicating myself in 40 murders.  I mean that will be ridiculous for me to can do that.   Lie, implicating myself in 40 murders, lying, I couldn't do that.

MR NYOKA: Mr Chairman, I just want to illustrate a point.
	Mr Mamasela, can you look on the ground floor just before the people, what is the condition of the floor?  How would you describe it?

JOE MAMASELA: No, I will describe that in my true opinion as squalid conditions which are not fit for human habitation, they're dirty, they're filthy.

MR NYOKA: If you say that, would you be having a bias against management of this hall?

JOE MAMASELA: To me it will not be biased because I will be talking what I see as fact with my own eyes.

MR NYOKA: So if you say someone is a lapdog, would you have a bias against that person, including yourself because you said you were a lapdog of Cronje?  Would you be biased against that person?

JOE MAMASELA: No, I will be describing the situation the way I'm describing the situation, as a fact and as the truth and absolute truth.

MR NYOKA: Thank you very much.  Our clients' instructions are that the PEBCO 3 were still seen alive long after the event, what is your comment about that?

JOE MAMASELA: My comment about that is that that will not be true, it's just that when something happens and people keep on looking for their loved ones missing, there will always be other people trying to help but in a misguided way, misguiding the people: "We saw them so and so", it's gossip, it's mere gossip.  That is not the truth.

MR NYOKA: But applicants van Zyl, Mr Niewoudt, Mr Lotz say they drugged, shot and killed and burnt the bodies round about the 9th of May?

JOE MAMASELA: I do not for a moment, I do not for a moment believe anything they said because I was there as a matter of fact and they don't dispute the fact that I was there.
	Both factions have different versions of what happened and both factions placed me one way or the other, into the assault and the others put me into the murder, therefore Mamasela was put in the assault and the murder case.  
	And this theory of these people being burnt and their ashes being thrown into the river, as far as I'm concerned that's fantasy of it's worse kind.  I don't believe until this day that those people were burnt and their bodies, their ashes were thrown into the river, I don't believe that.  And I've got reasons why I don't believe that.

MR NYOKA: It was alleged that you lied in various forums and you said you did so because your master, former masters told you to lie.  Would you therefore say that those lies originated basically from them and not from you?  In other words you acted as a parrot or a puppet of theirs?

JOE MAMASELA: Yes Sir, I will put it that way because I am the one and I'm proud to say it, I am the one who first came with those facts that I am the one who lied.  I was never caught by anybody in a lie.  I testified in de Kock's trial and for the first time I told the truth, that I was told to lie in the McNully, I was told to lie in Lingagele, I was told to lie in the Harmse Commission.
	I'm the one who came out with that, now everybody jumps into the bandwagon and says: "You lied, you lied".  I'm a self-confessed liar, yes but they never found me out themselves.  I found myself out, I discovered myself.

MR NYOKA: It was also pointed out that you made certain exaggerations, would you say that those exaggerations were extensions of the lies that you were instructed to make?

MR NYOKA: That is positively correct.

MR NYOKA: Had you not lied as instructed, what would have happened to you Mr Mamasela at that time?

JOE MAMASELA: The same thing that happened to my colleague and my friend and my fellow Askari, Brian Mulunga, would have happened exactly to me because we were involved in the Harmse Commission together and he was killed for attempting to expose those lies.

MR NYOKA: One of the applicants, Mr Snyman who gave the order to kill the PEBCO 3 lied in 1990 at the Harmse Commission, would you take comfort in the fact that some of your former masters did lie like you did?

JOE MAMASELA: It was a batch of lies, even de Kock himself said he lied, everybody lied even the van Rensburg, the Generals, they lied.  Everybody said we lied.

CHAIRPERSON: I don't think that is evidence really.  He may take comfort in that but that is certainly not evidence.

MR BOOYENS: And my information is, and I've got the Harmse Commission records available, not here but in Pietermaritzburg, that Snyman never testified at the Harmse Commission.

MR NYOKA: Your Worship, I was under the impression that he did because I did put a question like that to him if I'm correct, unless it was Mr du Plessis.  But if that is not the case, no offence to the other side.
	Are you no subject of the dictates and whims of your police masters for you to lie?

JOE MAMASELA: No, I have exonerated myself.  Like I've said, I will never subjugate myself to the whims of other people.  I even said it, I have little or scant regard for public opinion.  I even said that I'm an independent thinker, that is why I came out on my own in 1994 and that is why I am here alone.
	I was not the lone Askari operating, we were more than 300 Askaris but I'm the only one sitting here taking all the blame to myself because I chose to tell the truth.

MR NYOKA: Just briefly on your loyalty aspect.  You said you were not a lapdog of any person of the ANC.  I will assume that you are the lapdog of God because you say you owe your loyalty to God.

JOE MAMASELA: That is absolutely correct.

MR NYOKA: But, are you not proud of the fact that the organisation that you joined voluntarily in 1977 is now in power for the same principles that you fought for?

JOE MAMASELA: That makes me very proud that at last we achieved something for the people of this country but at the same time the economic power still lies in the hands of the few whites.
	The people have nothing to show and that pains my heart, that is one aspect that pains by heart.  We may have a political freedom, we want economic freedom for the people to uplift their lot.

MR NYOKA: My clients have instructed me to test your loyalty or the genuineness of your loyalty by asking this stupid question and I hope you won't say I'm unscrupulous.  Let us assume for a moment that the far right wing takes power through force and the ANC is forced to flee into exile, where would you go?  Go back as an Askari or join the ANC, what would you do?

JOE MAMASELA: I won't join both, I will join the people.  I will fight side by side with the people, not with any political organisation but after the people win their war and they decide to be PAC, ANC whatever, it's their choice, it is their own democratic right to do so.  But I will go back to christianity and become a God's slave, not a man's slave.

MR NYOKA: I read in either the December 1997 or January 1998 City Press a report attributed to you where you said that it is not true that the person who pretended to be a British Consul or whatever, was a PEBCO informer.  You made a mention of the person, can you comment about that?