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

MR JOSEPH: I'm going very fast.
 Unfortunately, in Commissions of this nature it becomes necessary to determine who is telling the truth and on the route to determining the truth, there are lots of collateral issues which arise.  Some of those collateral issues have been put by learned friend Mr Vally.  The two collateral I wish to refer to is: (1) the denial that your anonymous committee went to Mrs Mandela and questioned her about the children, she gives an unequivocal answer that this did not happen and I put it to you that this is a lie.  I say it's a lie because a woman in her position would in no way have been confused as to the purpose of your meeting.  Is that correct?

CRISIS COMMITTEE: That is correct.

MR JOSEPH: In regard to the document which she denied was authentic and which she claimed to be a piece of propaganda created by an agency of the regime, there too she lies.

CRISIS COMMITTEE: Well, from the record ...[intervention]

MR JOSEPH: She lies when she says: "You can speak to these gentlemen, these gentlemen will tell you that this is not an authentic document.  She lies because - not because she says it's not an authentic document, because she never spoke to you gentlemen - that is the lie.

MR SEMENYA: Chairperson, may I with respect state that even as a matter of law, a lie must be a mis-statement of facts knowing the opposite to be correct and ...[intervention]

MR JOSEPH: I take my learned friend's point, I retract it.  What she said was not correct.

CRISIS COMMITTEE: I was going to say that it's a perception on her part.

MR JOSEPH: Yes.  She will explain how she ...[intervention]

CRISIS COMMITTEE: So we cannot categorically say: "She's lying".

MR JOSEPH: I take the point.  Not everything I say has to be accepted.

CRISIS COMMITTEE: I would like to say that the document is annexed as ...  We have declared that Annexure C is part of the documentation and submission of ...[indistinct]   I really want to say something because in terms of the record as it was read to us - and if I misunderstood I stand to be corrected, in terms of that record Mrs Mandela is supposed to have said that she had a discussion with me and in the course the discussion - on behalf of this Committee, I disowned this particular document which is today annexed to our submission.

MR JOSEPH: Mr Minister, what you're saying is perfectly correct.

SIDNEY MUFAMADI: Now I want to say, that is incorrect and I wouldn't even say it's a mis-perception because there's no mis-perception on my part but if somebody has misperceived something, they will explain themselves.

MR JOSEPH: It is very, very difficult for anyone to understand or accept that a document of that importance presented to a woman who holds the high office that she does and dealing with the personalities who she mentions over here, she say on oath that she spoke to you about the document and according to your evidence she never spoke to you.
 I am not the tryer of fact and I'm not going to decide whether she consciously told an untruth, the fact of the matter is that is incorrect and she will have to explain it.  Let me go and tell you about an enormous improbability - in fact a matter which is not improbable, it just does not stand up to scrutiny and that is this, there were allegations that I think, four males had been sodomised and that they had been rescued and that they were being cared for by Mrs Mandela - that's on the one side, on the other side there's the allegation that four males were kidnapped and were being held against their will by Mrs Mandela or by the Mandela Club.  
 If you put in to these conflicting allegations, facts which cannot be disputed, it seems to me that there's only one answer.  The facts that I have left out are these, you have a 29 year old man, you have a 20 year old man, you have a 17 year of man or an 18 year old man, now how on earth a 29 year old man - how on earth these young adults if they were sodomised against their will, how on earth they required in the first instance to be rescued by a wisp of a woman like Miss Falati and why they then required to be protected by Mrs Mandela.   Did this not strike you as being so improbable?
 And let me just add into it about the rescue etc., so the drama is seen in it's real context, who are they being rescued from?  They're being rescued from a man who did not appear to me to be tremendously bit, he's an ordinary slight man, he's on holiday more or less, over this period of time and he is a minister who is not a jailer.  So when you were told that men of this age were rescued and were now being protected by Mrs Mandela, did this not seem to you to be so improbable that you could not believe it?

CRISIS COMMITTEE: I may be making a wrong assumption that you are addressing your remarks to the Commission so that they must take your assessment into account when they determine whether the truth ...[intervention]

MR JOSEPH: No, I beg your pardon, I'm asking you, taking into account that two conflicting versions were give to you and knowing that you're dealing with young adults, how credible was that?

CRISIS COMMITTEE: At that stage I wouldn't have known the ages myself and so I would not have actually have used that as a determining fact but we listened to everybody else, tried to determine what the issue are and the key issue for me ultimately was: "Where are those young people"?  That was the critical issue, it wasn't establishing whether they were sodomised.
 When a team went to Doctor Asvat, it was really to collect as much information to understand the context and the circumstances but the key issue for me was where are the children, were they assaulted, not assaulted, should we remove them etc., it was a rescue operation in a sense of intervention so I didn't have to form an opinion at that stage in terms of probabilities.  You could have it but it's probabilities and we are not working on probabilities, we wanted to track down - to make sure that those young people were okay, that was the primary responsibility.

MR JOSEPH: You see, the lapsus linguae  that when you respond to me - even now today, you refer to them in the first instance as children.

CRISIS COMMITTEE: Sorry?

MR JOSEPH: You refer to them in the first instance ...[intervention]

CRISIS COMMITTEE: We did say: "In an African context".

CHAIRPERSON: Order please.

CRISIS COMMITTEE: I think it's important - I mean this issue about children and young people, I actually never knew their age, I didn't ask them how old they were but the language in the community at that time was "children" and in the media as well, it was children so I wouldn't have formulated my position in terms of whether they were called young people or not young people.

MR JOSEPH: ...[inaudible] you explained perfectly the material that you had available and which you relied upon in order to form your opinions and views.  All I'm suggesting to you - I'm not arguing with you, is that it is incredulous to believe that a 29, 20 year old, 17 required to be rescued and protected.  Would you agree with me?

CRISIS COMMITTEE: We didn't - as our convenor said, we did not behave like sleuths - detectives who have got that approach that you are talking about.  If that was our mind set, then that would have been fair to ask that question.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Joseph ...[intervention]

MR SEMENYA: Chairperson I don't know, may I ask - I don't follow the question, who was 29 that was rescued?

MR JOSEPH: My information is Kenny Kgase was 29, Pelo was 19, Thabiso was 20.

CHAIRPERSON: Just before you do that, can I find out when you will - I've given you more than the statutory five minutes ...[intervention]

MR JOSEPH: : I mentioned to you Archbishop earlier on, you only have to look at me.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes, but I would want you to have ...[intervention]