Special Hearings — Mandela United Football Club Hearings — 1998-01-28

MR SEMENYA: Mr Bosman, when you are saying the whole country is afraid of Mrs Mandela, what type of statement is that? Is there any factual correctness for the statement?

DANIEL FRANCOIS MALAN BOSMAN: As I have said, it appeared to me as if nobody wanted to touch her and now I will say the same as Col Kritzinger, it felt to us as if she were untouchable.  That is the reality.

MR SEMENYA: Mr Bosman, it is factually incorrect that the whole country is afraid of Mrs Mandela. Is that correct?

DANIEL FRANCOIS MALAN BOSMAN: I am saying, going to tell you, Mr Chair, at a stage no person in South Africa was willing to say anything about the Mandelas, and I will stand and fall with that statement.

MR SEMENYA: I will ask you a very simple question. Are you suggesting in your evidence as a matter of factual correctness, that I was afraid of her?

DANIEL FRANCOIS MALAN BOSMAN: Mr Chairman, I can't say the whole country,  I think it is a general statement that I am making. I don't think it includes each and every person, but the general feeling originated with us, we began to have that feeling, that people were afraid of the Mandela house.

MR SEMENYA: Are they afraid of the house? I am trying to get you to be exact in what you are saying, because there are profound implications of what you are saying. Now after five attempts to establish whether or not you had evidence, that Mrs Mandela at the relevant time when she says she was in Brandfort, she was in fact in Soweto, I still don't have an answer. Is that right?

DANIEL FRANCOIS MALAN BOSMAN: Mr Chair, I am not going to say she was here, I am not going to say she was away. According to the tape that we had at our disposal at that stage, there was a conversation of her on that tape.

MR SEMENYA: And you say the reason this information was not used in the Stompie trial, is because the information was sensitive? Is that your evidence in the first place?  Let's hear that one.

DANIEL FRANCOIS MALAN BOSMAN: Mr Chair, as I said before, all information was passed on.  Whether the investigating officer found it applicable or not, that did not fall within my jurisdiction. I just did my work and when it was done it was done. I didn't know what happened to the evidence further.

MR SEMENYA: I will ask you the same question again, Mr Bosman.  Did you say that the reason that evidence was not used, was because it was sensitive?  Were those your utterances?

DANIEL FRANCOIS MALAN BOSMAN: Mr Chair, I have already said, the information was passed on. If the Attorney-General found that it was sensitive, then he didn't use it, otherwise he would have used it. I don't know.

MR SEMENYA: I will try for the last time. Who said that information was sensitive?

DANIEL FRANCOIS MALAN BOSMAN: In general bugging evidence was treated as sensitive throughout the country. It was not only in Soweto but countrywide.

MR SEMENYA: I will ask it in Afrikaans. I am going to ask, who said that the information was sensitive?

DANIEL FRANCOIS MALAN BOSMAN: Is that on the specific Stompie Seipei matter or in general?

MR SEMENYA: You know what you are talking about. Who said the information was sensitive?

DANIEL FRANCOIS MALAN BOSMAN: Mr Chair, when I took over from the sensor method section, it was said to me that each and every bit of information should be treated as sensitive and highly secret. That's why we had a stamp on every copy of a tape, strictly secret. It was not for every Tom, Dick and Harry to hear. It was confidential.

MR SEMENYA: Apparently I won't get an answer to that one.  Do you recall during 1988/89, reading a transcript which puts Mrs Mandela at the relevant time in her house, as opposed to Brandfort?  Do you recall during 1988/89 you, Mr Bosman, reading a transcript which places Mrs Mandela in her Soweto house at the time she alleges she was in Brandfort?

DANIEL FRANCOIS MALAN BOSMAN: As I have said, there was such a transcription.  The tape was available that she had been during, she must have been in Soweto during the weekend.

MR SEMENYA: Is your answer yes, that you recall in 1988/89 reading a transcript of that form?

DANIEL FRANCOIS MALAN BOSMAN: That is correct.

MR SEMENYA: Let me tell you why it cannot be correct. She was only prosecuted I think during 1992. Isn't that correct?

DANIEL FRANCOIS MALAN BOSMAN: It was 1991.

MR SEMENYA: Isn't that correct, sir?

DANIEL FRANCOIS MALAN BOSMAN: I don't know of her.

MR SEMENYA: But it is the only time where the defence of an alibi was raised, it could not have been of pertinent relevance to you in 1988/89, whether she was or she was not in Brandfort.

DANIEL FRANCOIS MALAN BOSMAN: Mr Chair, I don't know Mr Chair whether they made use of the transcriptions at that time. I am not sure. We passed it on to the investigating officers, but whether they used it, I don't know.

MR PIGOU: Mr Chairperson, for the record, could I state that it was not, in 1990, the alibi was first raised publicly at the Jerry Richardson trial.  Thank you.

MR SEMENYA: What is your answer, Sir?

DANIEL FRANCOIS MALAN BOSMAN: As I have said, I know nothing about the hearing. I was not involved with the hearing, and at no stage, if I passed the tapes on, the transcriptions, then it is out of my hands. They never approached me for an explanation in this regard.

MR SEMENYA: Do you give the transcript over to the investigating team?

DANIEL FRANCOIS MALAN BOSMAN: That was directly after the transcription had been read, then I distributed it and each morning they were distributed to the different sections.

MR SEMENYA: But that's the point I'm making, it must be a couple of days after that recording was made, is that right?

DANIEL FRANCOIS MALAN BOSMAN: No if the tapes were taken off on the Monday morning 7 o'clock then the tapes would have been read by 5 o'clock in the afternoon and distributed by the Tuesday morning, received by the sections on the Tuesday morning at the latest.

MR SEMENYA: But it is that Tuesday morning when I am saying to you it could not have been known, at least by the Security department that she would be prosecuted, is that right?

DANIEL FRANCOIS MALAN BOSMAN: No, it's impossible, nobody would have known it at that stage.

MR SEMENYA: And at that stage no-one would have known that she would be raise a defence of an alibi in respect of those events.

DANIEL FRANCOIS MALAN BOSMAN: Yes, I concede.

MR SEMENYA: Yet at the time Mr Bosman you knew that you have evidence which could overturn her alibi defence?

DANIEL FRANCOIS MALAN BOSMAN: Mr Chairperson, we never destroyed those tapes.

MR SEMENYA: I don't know what you are talking about now.

DANIEL FRANCOIS MALAN BOSMAN: Mr Chairperson, we never destroyed the Madikizela-Mandela tapes before we weren't absolutely certain that nothing had happened.

MR SEMENYA: Can I read from your statement that it is possible for us to go and obtain the transcript that you are talking about?

DANIEL FRANCOIS MALAN BOSMAN: At this stage?  At this stage I think it is impossible, I think everything has been destroyed by now.

MR SEMENYA: I have no further questions.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.  Mr Richards?

MR RICHARDS: May I ask one question, Chairman, which I think is of curiosity to us all. From these tapes, Mr Bosman, would it be possible for you to say with certainty where Mrs Mandela was, whether she was in Brandfort or in Johannesburg or would you simply hear a voice on the tape?

DANIEL FRANCOIS MALAN BOSMAN: Mr Chairman, she had a specific voice with a high tone. You could clearly recognise her voice when she spoke on the phone.   In time you get to know everyone's voice, that is how you know, how you identify people.