Amnesty Hearings — Durban — 2000-04-12

CHAIRPERSON: Good morning.  We want to start the proceedings.  Can we get some order.  For the record, it is Wednesday the 12th of April 2000, we are continuing with the amnesty applications at that Christian Centre in Durban.  The Panel is constituded as has been indicated on the record earlier.  We have on the roll this morning the amnesty application of S P Khumalo, amnesty reference AM1584/96.  It's been indicated to us that there are some difficulties with the matter.  Ms Patel, what is the situation at this stage?

MS PATEL: Thank you, Honourable Chairperson.  It appears that the applicant in this matter has legal representation on the basis of legal aid.  Mr Webster was instructed by our offices to appear for the applicant.  The applicant has however indicated that he wishes Mr R Dehal to represent him.  As a result thereof I contacted Mr Dehal, who has indicated that he doesn't have an objection to representing the applicant, however he is not available for this week, he is committed elsewhere.  And that's the position as it stands.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes thank you, Ms Patel.  Mr Webster, are you able to shed any further light on this, in view of what Ms Patel has advised us?

MR WEBSTER: Mr Chairperson and Members of the Commission, I confirm that I was instructed about three weeks ago to represent the applicant.  He was duly interviewed, and yesterday I received a telephone call advising me that Mr Roshan Dehal was instructed by the applicant to represent him.  I established from the applicant himself this morning, that he indeed preferred Mr Dehal to represent him.  In the circumstances, I would ask leave of you, Mr Chairman and Members of the Commission, to withdraw from the matter.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr Webster.  Mr Khumalo, just indicate to me, is your headset working, can you hear the interpreters?

MR KHUMALO: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: Have you listened to what Ms Patel and Mr Webster told us?

MR KHUMALO: Yes, I heard.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.  Can you keep it on please.  Do you want Mr Dehal to represent you and to handle your case for you?

MR KHUMALO: Yes, that is correct.

MR WEBSTER: And have you heard from what Ms Patel has told us, that Mr Dehal is not available for the rest of this week to deal with the matter?

MR KHUMALO: Yes, I heard her.

MR WEBSTER: And perhaps I should explain to you that the Commission does its business by reserving a certain period of time in a particular place and then it goes somewhere else, so we are only sitting here in Durban for this particular session since yesterday and we had planned initially to sit until tomorrow, whereafter we will be leaving and we will be going somewhere else.  Do you understand that?

MR KHUMALO: Yes, I understand.

CHAIRPERSON: So that the result of all that is, if we don't hear your case now, your case will have to be removed from this roll and it will have to be reinstated onto a roll at some future date, which one is not sure when it will be though.

MR KHUMALO: I do not have a problem with that, as long as all the people here with me, who are involved in this case, would be represented properly.  As I was told that Mr Dehal is the one who would be able to represent us in a proper manner and as we expect him to do as comrades.  He's got some background, because he got some information from the other comrades and he was told that since we've been there in prison we didn't know what was happening about the case.  We only got a breakthrough when Mr Dehal sent some lady to come and tell us that he was prepared to represent us, and then this lady told me to make an application, to send it to Cape Town and tell the TRC office in Cape Town to ask Mr Dehal's representation.  It's not that I have a problem with Mr Webster, or I know him for something else that is not right, but I cannot sit here and have him represent me.

CHAIRPERSON: We assume that you are still in custody, you're serving a sentence in connection with the matters that you are applying for amnesty.

MR KHUMALO: Yes, that is correct.

CHAIRPERSON: And do you understand that if your matter is not heard now, it will in all likelihood be matter of months before the matter can be re-enrolled and be heard by the Commission.  Do you understand that?

MR KHUMALO: Yes, I do understand that.  Even if we would start today with the case, I am sure that I was going to encounter problems because the other comrades, Madala and Jabulani Nzimela, they also applied for amnesty but their forms got lost mysteriously in the Cape Town office.  Therefore, there are incidents where they are also involved in and the lady who is working with Mr Dehal, told us that if I'm going to testify here about things that I did with Madala ...(indistinct) and Jabulani Nzimela, at the end they are going to encounter problems because they will look like people who did not apply for amnesty.  What actually happened - I hope that it is also going to help them if we wait for Mr Dehal, maybe their applications will be found in the Cape Town office.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes, no the point that I was just trying to emphasise is that you accept that you will probably spend some further time in custody before you can hear what the outcome of your application is.  You understand that.

MR KHUMALO: Yes, I do understand that, Chairperson.  I do not have a problem with staying for a while in jail, knowing very well that eventually what we are going to say here is going to help the other people who were also victims in the incidents and the other people who were also harassed during the struggle.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.  And I'm raising these questions because we as an Amnesty Committee have a duty to try to get the cases of people who are in custody done as quickly as possible, because although for everybody the applicants are important, for them perhaps it's slightly more important than people who are not in custody, and that is why we are raising these things with you, to make sure that you do understand what the consequences are of the matter not proceeding.  So that's the sole reason why we are raising these things with you.

MR KHUMALO: I appreciate that, but truly speaking, I am obliged not to get any further with the case.  As I've already explained that there were other comrades who were with me in the struggle, if I testify today I know very well that it won't be a good idea, things won't be the same tomorrow because I will look more like a person who is implicating the other people.
	Even the fax of Madala, the one that was received last Thursday, it stated that he forwarded the application after the deadline, but we knew very well that that was not true and we didn't know what happened, how did they get lost in the office.  Mr Dehal told his clerk that if we wait for the moment they will get a chance to investigate, because he didn't want myself, Madala and Jabulani Nzimela getting into problems or a conflict.

CHAIRPERSON: The other considerations that we normally take into account are matters like there are other people who also are interested in this matter.  As you can see, there are quite a number of people present here, there are two further lawyers, apart from Mr Webster and Ms Patel, who are here and we must take all of those factors into account when we deal with these matters, so that's why we want to make sure that what we are doing is assisting your case but it's not doing harm to the interest of the other people.  So these matters, unfortunately, always also concern other people whose interests we must take into account, so we're trying to be fair to everybody.  But we're not blaming you for anything, I'm just mentioning to you how we should look at these matters.