Human Rights Violation Hearings — King William's Town — 1997-05-13

NOMZI VIVIE GUZANA: They were arresting him because he was refusing to resign.  Then if he chose the resignation, he would have the opportunity of planning his life, but if he went inside the parliamentary buildings, nobody knew what would happen to him and so they pleaded with him that he should resign and so he resigned.
 When they brought him back to the house, they said they were giving us one hour to vacate the house.  We stayed at my sister's place in Pagamisa then two weeks later, at night on a Friday, we heard footsteps around the house.  It was quiet for a moment and then after that, two soldiers knocked at the door.  When a child opened the door, a firearm was pointed at her and she had to run behind the chairs.
 The soldier in front moved his pistol around the chairs and when he located my husband, he cocked his pistol. When he asked what was happening, they instructed him to go out with them.  Then we realised that the house had been surrounded by soldiers.
 I heard them shouting that he should lay on his stomach in a 4 x 4 that was standing outside.  They took him away, he was detained for about four weeks and was released without being charged and without any restrictions.
 After that he was detained again towards the end of July, during the June school holidays.  When they detained him for the second time, I wrote a letter to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, P.W. Botha, I took the letter with my lawyer to the Embassy.  The Embassy supported my letter and they made arrangements that with my lawyer, we would fly to Pretoria, they had arranged a meeting with P.W. Botha.
 They were supporting my letter because they said they had been informed by the family of one member of the Defence Force who was also in detention, who had been in detention, that the Ciskei Defence Force was training people near Zilene to be hitmen.
 Because the contents of my letter was that I feared that my husband would be killed.  But before we could go to Pretoria, they told me that a retired member of the South African Defence Force was an advisor to Brigadier Gqozo and he always came here on Thursdays, so they would fax the letter to him, so that when he came on Thursday, he would address this with Brigadier Gqozo.
 I never heard again from them.  The only time I heard from them, was on the first day when the schools reopened in July.  When a man was sent to my school with two letters.  One to  my principal and one to myself.  I was being discharged from my services as a teacher.
 And the man had been instructed that he shouldn't leave the premises before I left.  So I had to drive and recollect myself outside the gates and he waited patiently.
 The letter that discharged me, was accompanied by a copy of the letter that I had written to P.W. Botha.  He never responded to me, the only response I got was from the Military Council discharging me on the basis of the letter I had written to him.
 If I go back to the first detention, when I challenged that detention, because as a senior member of the 
Defence Force, he was supposed to be arrested by Senior members of the Police Force, two Senior members of the Security Police signed statements that they had made the arrests, and I couldn't have mistaken them, because one of them was our neighbour in Bisho, but they signed letters that they had arrested him and so I lost the case.
 At the end of the three months of the second detention, he was charged with high treason with his brother who was also a member of the Defence Force.  I had a problem, I had to pay R5 000-00 for his bail.  The money was ready but nobody was prepared to accept it, so after being charged, he had to remain in prison for three days because at the Magistrate's office in Bisho they didn't want to take the money, they sent me to the prison in Mdantsane and again there nobody wanted to take the money.
 It took one prison warder who travelled with us to Zwelitsha and told them that they had to accept the money and he was released.  He had to report to the police station every Friday.
 Then on the last Friday before he was going to appear the next Monday, not on Friday, but the last week before he was going to appear the following week, soldiers started looking for him.  He went to stay with his brother in Pedi.
 On a Wednesday of that week, I went to him with a packed suitcase and some money and told him to leave the country because the soldiers were searching for him everywhere.  He came with us to King William's Town, we got the contact person who was going to take him out of the country but 30 minutes later, they returned and he said he wanted to go to court because that is where he would defend himself.
 But again the soldiers looked for him and on that Friday when he had to report to the police station, he didn't go because there was a police vehicle that was standing outside the police station, waiting for him because when his brother went to report, they said they were not waiting for the Guzana.
 So again on that Friday his brother was approached by members of the Defence Force who asked him to sign a document according to which, if he testified against his brother the following Monday, he would get his salary for all the months that he was out of work and he would get a promotion, and he signed that document and when I told my husband about that, he decided to leave.
 So we left for the Transkei.  Two weeks after being in Transkei Howza gave a statement on TV confessing on his plans with my husband to overthrow Brigadier Gqozo and he said they would get assistance from General Holomisa who was a friend of my husband.
 What was strange in that was that the SABC had released a video cassette speaking in Transkei in 1987, where they had gone to play against the Transkei Defence Force as a token of friendship after the military council had come to power in the Transkei, but the context of that speech which was friendship, was used in 1990 to support Howza's statement that my husband was a friend of Holomisa and so together they would overthrow Brigadier Gqozo.
 I couldn't understand the SABC.  Then my husband met with Mr Sebe before Christmas when he came to fetch me and Nomafakathi to go to Durban for the December holidays. When they came back in January, the second week of January, they arrived during the week, I think it was on a Thursday, then on Sunday there were visitors, it was Mlandeli Kula, whom we thought was an ex-member of the Defence Force with a Mr Nohashe who was a mayor of Fort Beaufort and a Mr Nazo also from Fort Beaufort.
 I don't know what they discussed but from my husband, they had  - Kula had been sent by the soldiers to say they wanted to stage a coup but they would only do that if my husband would agree to be Chairman after the coup.
 This was followed by other meetings and in this meeting Mr Nohashe was there according to my husband, because he was the man who was accommodating Kula because he was not staying at home, he was afraid of the soldiers and he was supporting his family.
 I had to go back to Stutterheim where I was teaching.  When I came back on the Friday of the 25th, January 1991, my husband had gone to Ezibeleni with Mr Sebe and they were already driving the Jetta that had been hired by Mr Nohashe.
 Then he said they were going to come to Ciskei the following day, on a Saturday.  That Saturday morning Kula phoned at 10 am to confirm that they were coming and to say it was raining so they should be warmly dressed.
 They left at about six in the evening, then it was in the morning at about ten that we heard from the radio that there had been a failed coup attempt in Ciskei.  Immediately I told myself that if what they had gone for, had failed, then he was arrested and he would take it as a man.
 As a result when Titi Matanzima came to tell us that my husband had been killed, I didn't hear him, because I knew that he had come to tell us that he had been arrested and if he had been arrested, then he is going to take it as a man.
 It took him, he had to say it for the second time for me to understand that he was saying he had been killed.  And the inquest followed.  For me to come to Ciskei, the members of my family had to negotiate with Gqozo for three days to allow me to come to Ciskei.  When I arrived, we went to identify his body at the police mortuary in Mdantsane.  When we arrived there, the place was full of school kids wearing navy blue tunics.
 And they were being shown Mr Sebe's body.  I didn't see his body but I gathered from what they were saying that his face was disfigured and he was darker than they knew him.  And my sister and myself told the police that that was our person that they were showing to the school kids and the children were taken away, driven out of the yard.
 We called the Sebe's to inform them about that.  At the inquest the soldiers testified that their plan had been planned by Ciskei soldiers because they wanted to kill my husband  and Mr Sebe because they believed they were enemies of Brigadier Gqozo.
 My husband was supposed to be picked up by a Mr  Mguzulwa who was a member of the Defence Force in Stutterheim.  They would only pick him up if everything had gone well.
 Then one evidence by a Rifleman Xotyeni unfortunately for him, he was the only one who said something that was different from the other soldiers, because according to his testimony he had seen Sergeant Ralo and Mguzulwa driving from Stutterheim reporting to the soldiers that the Jetta was not at the spot where they were going to meet, drove towards King William's Town and they later drove again towards Stutterheim.
 Then he said in the early hours of Sunday the 28th, he was awoken by some noise made by the soldiers and he noticed there and then that the bakkie driven by Ralo, was driving down the (indistinct) from Stutterheim with a flashing blue light on top.
 And again what was strange, he said the soldiers who were manning the roadblock were not standing on the road surface, but they were laying in trenches along the sides of the road.  Then when the bakkie approached, he noticed that he was followed by this red Jetta.
 When they arrived at the roadblock, they stopped there, Ralo and Mguzulwa  got out of their car, crossed the road towards Rifleman Xotyeni who was in a buffel.
 Once they had crossed the road, they started shooting at the red car.  The Jetta reversed and when through the roadblock, safely enough not to hit the bakkie that was in front.  It drove for 50 kilometres from the roadblock, in a zigzag and it was  explained that the zigzag was a means of escaping being hit by the bullets.
 Then somewhere it left the road and it went into the field.  Rifleman Xotyeni said immediately Ralo ran to him and said to drive him to that car in the field.  When they arrived there, Ralo got off the buffel, approached the red Jetta and he says after that he drove back to the roadblock.
 When asked why he was leaving Ralo there, he said because he was scared.  Why was he scared?  Because he was watching somebody being killed.  Who was being killed?  It was Colonel Guzana.  Who was killing him?  I don't know.
 But who were with you in the field?  It was General Ralo and Colonel Guzana.  The finding of the inquest was that the Judge expressed his sorrow that Rifleman Xotyeni the only person who had given evidence that was reliable, he last gave his evidence on a Monday, by Saturday of that week he was dead.
 And he allegedly died in an accident inside the military base at (indistinct).  I couldn't understand that.  Well after contradicting statements, or again I find that the decision of the Judge unacceptable, because he says Xotyeni was the only person who gave a reliable evidence.
 He said the other witnesses of the Defence Force was unreliable, but in making his decisions, he said if my husband was shot at a roadblock, he couldn't find that the soldiers were committing a crime in killing him at a roadblock, but the reliable evidence says he was killed in the field.
 Then again the State employed a Dr Trollop as a pathologist, who admitted at the inquest that he never qualified, he was never trained as a pathologist, but the State allowed him to dissect my husband from the throat down.  What he was looking for, I don't know.
 Because although he cut his body, he never commented about a single wound on his body.  His death certificate said he died of head injuries.  But he never said where those head injuries were.  We couldn't even demonstrate in court how one looks for head injuries in a head with hear like my husband's.  He had to be shown in court.
 He identified exit wounds as entrance wounds.  The two fatal wounds on top of my husband's head, he never saw them.  Then we hired a family pathologist who gave a different version, that there were three fatal wounds.  One was at the back in the area of the kidneys and he said if that had been the first shot, he couldn't have driven the car from the roadblock, but the fact that he drove that car meant that he was well, he had not been hit yet.
 Then the two other wounds from the top of his head, he should have died within minutes after those wounds.  And for a man of his height, he couldn't have been standing when those shots were fired.  And if he was inside the car, there was no telling bullet holes on the body of the car which suggested that he was in a kneeling position when he was killed.
 And he said he must not have been killed on the road, he must have been killed in the field.  Which corresponded with Rifleman Xotyeni's evidence.