Amnesty Hearings — East London — 1999-06-15

MS COLLETT: You see I want to put it to you that the only reason that you took Nqoya hostage on that evening was because you wanted to hold a kangaroo court and make him answer to certain allegations.

NSIKILELO RICHMOND NKWENKWE: I cannot dispute that or I cannot be against that because according to the issues that came up, he can analyse that and say that it was a kangaroo court, but we were gathering there whether it was legal or illegal, but we were gathering there.

MS COLLETT: I put it to you that the hostage taking of Comm Nqoya had nothing whatsoever to do with the alleged political motive of having Brig Gqozo step down because he had already stepped down at the time Nqoya was taken to the college.

NSIKILELO RICHMOND NKWENKWE: What I want to explain all this is that if there is a problem the senior officers are the first people to be taken there because you had to deal with those in senior positions so that they cannot mobilise against you.  So Nqoya was one of the senior officers.  We wanted to take him first so that the leader, Gqozo, the one that was used to scare us, could see that things were very bad.  Even if Gqozo would change his mind during the night, we knew that when Nqoya was amongst us Gqozo had no chance to do anything else because he was very close to Gqozo.

MS COLLETT: And I want to put it further to you that the interim administration in the form of Goosen, Jurgens and Finqa had already visited with you that evening.  You would have been well aware of the fact that everything had been legitimately done, that Gqozo had legitimately stood down and that Pretoria knew about it.

NSIKILELO RICHMOND NKWENKWE: Yes everything was legitimately done.  Goosen and Jurgens were all there, but I'm still saying that we wanted this to be seen as having blessings of Gen Noqya who was very close to Brig Gqozo, irrespective of what time they arrived there.  Even when Jurgens arrived in the morning he saw Gen Noqya there.

MS COLLETT: And I want to put it to you that even Jurgens, Finqa and Goosen who were the interim administration, asked you to disperse.  There was absolutely no logical reason for you to have continued with the action that you did at that police college  on that evening.  Once Gqozo had stepped down, which was supposed to have been your main objective.

NSIKILELO RICHMOND NKWENKWE: We wouldn't be able to disperse on that particular night, the agreement that we had with Brig Gqozo was that he was going to address the masses the following day in the morning at the stadium, the civil servants and the community at large, so we wanted to make sure that we were together and then we would go there to the stadium as one.  There was a need to get Nqoya so that he can be together with us when we were going to the stadium and indeed that did happen.

MS COLLETT: Finally I want to put it to you that you are retrospectively trying to justify an absolutely unlawful action which was not politically motivated at that stage, in keeping inter alia Comm Noqya hostage the entire evening.

NSIKILELO RICHMOND NKWENKWE: I can't do otherwise, I have to justify why Nqoya had to be there.  Moreover, Nqoya himself, you are forgetting that I have already said before, that he promised the police that he was going to come back to us, that was at 11 o'clock, even though he came back the following day.  So, as he was the person who had told us that he was going to meet with Brig Gqozo, he was supposed to come back and report to us and he did not do that, so we had to look for him all over, then we did find him eventually.

MS COLLETT: I finally want to put it to you that Comm Nqoya at no stage on the 22nd said that he was going to come back to the college after he'd been there initially.  In fact he said he was not coming back, he had nothing further to discuss with you people.

NSIKILELO RICHMOND NKWENKWE: Insp Mfene who gave testimony yesterday, if you had put that to him, he would have answered you but I will answer for him because he is my colleague and he was my colleague on that particular day.  I was talking to Mfene and he said that Nqoya said that we have to wait for him there.  We waited for him.  There was no senior officer who would give an order for us to wait for him and then we would have waited for him if he had given us that order.  So we waited for him and the police got bored and them some issues came up.  We didn't actually want Nqoya, we were not interested in him, we wanted Gqozo, but in order to reach Brig Gqozo you have to go via Nqoya and Nqoya had bodyguards and we took those bodyguards because they were also junior members, we took their firearms and we told them to go inside the hall.

MS COLLETT: But if you didn't want Nqoya and you actually wanted Gqozo, you'd achieved your aim because you got Gqozo before you got Nqoya.  You got Gqozo face to face.

NSIKILELO RICHMOND NKWENKWE: This is like this.  In order to get to Brig Gqozo, Nqoya had to gather the police.  That was Nqoya's meeting, he is the one who called that meeting, but we went to that meeting with our hidden agenda.  That is how we eventually got to Brig Gqozo.  But in order for him to know that or to see that the police were against him, we wanted even Nqoya to be together with us.  Even when we were in the state house, we told him that we knew that Nqoya was with him in the state house.  We wanted him to take him out so that he can be part and parcel of the police and listen when he was addressing us.  Those are my direct words to Brig Gqozo and Brig Gqozo said that Nqoya was not there, there were no bodyguards there.  So Gen Nqoya's presence in the college was very important so that Brig Gqozo could see that the police were united.  Even if we were not going to brief Gen Nqoya saying that we had taken over.

MS COLLETT: But Sir, you've said, you've just testified to the effect that the reason you wanted Nqoya was because you needed Nqoya to get to Gqozo.  Yes or no?

NSIKILELO RICHMOND NKWENKWE: The reason why we wanted Nqoya first was because we wanted to show Brig Gqozo that Nqoya was part and parcel of what was being done by the police.  All the officers and all the police members irrespective of being an officer or not, so Nqoya's presence was very important to us so that Gqozo could see that we were all united with a common goal, even though there were different ways for them being there, but we wanted Gqozo to see that he was part and parcel of our group.

MS COLLETT: But you didn't trust Nqoya because you thought that he was big friends with Gqozo.

NSIKILELO RICHMOND NKWENKWE: We didn't think that he was a close friend of Gqozo, we knew that because he used to have meetings now and then with Brig Gqozo but we wanted him to be present in the hall so that if the South African police would shoot at us they would shoot at all of us with him present.  Let's say for argument's sake, if South Africa had arrived, when they would see that our general was there, they would go back, when they would see that Gen Nqoya would be there.  We had that hope.

MS COLLETT: So the fact of having Nqoya there really didn't affect what Gqozo thought, because Gqozo would have known when Nqoya's alliance ... (indistinct) because he would have seen him earlier that day.  Do you agree?

NSIKILELO RICHMOND NKWENKWE: No, I don't agree.  What I'm saying is, in order for Gqozo to see that the police are all part of this, it was necessary for Gen Nqoya to be there.  There was nothing else we wanted to achieve.  Irrespective of whether he had resigned, Gqozo had resigned or not, Nqoya was a policemen, he had a
force number, so we wanted all the police with force numbers to be there, even though he was the best, or close friend of Gqozo.

MS COLLETT: You see, I want to put it to you that your actions were unlawful and there's no political justification for what you did on that evening.