Human Rights Violation Hearings — Cape Town — 1997-06-10

UNKNOWN: Thank you very much.  Perhaps I should begin by saying that I am a Priest in the Church of the Province of Southern Africa, I am a psychotherapist.  I was in charge of post-ordination training in the diesis of Cape Town at the time and on one of these occasions I had 26 Anglican clergy with me.
 I was also team Rector of the parish of Wynberg which has five churches and on another occasion that is the 9th of June, I had eight members of staff with me, five clergy and three full time lay people.
 In addition to that, I was the Chairperson of the Sacla Health Clinic and project in Crossroads.  And that is really where my story begins because we were experiencing a good deal of conflict and difficulty with the Executive Committee of Crossroads.
 And I have here an agreement that was drawn up between us.  It was in fact signed on the 14th of May but we had a number of meetings in order to reach this agreement and on one of those meetings, I am almost certain that it was the 2nd of May, which was the Friday of 1986, our meeting went on after dark.
 One or two people were slipping away but then before we had finished the meeting, three policemen came into the Sacla Clinic and to my amazement they handed over rifles to members of the Executive Committee of Crossroads who later became known as the "witdoeke".  This was as early I think as the 2nd of May.
 When I challenged that, they said that it was simply to ensure that people got home safely that night because it was after dark.  When I said then why aren't you giving it to everybody, why aren't you giving rifles to everybody here, why just to one side they said that that was none of my business.
 They would not identify themselves and they were not wearing any form of in terms of name tags and so on, any form of identification and having handed over the rifles and ammunition, they left immediately.
 In retrospect I realised that I was pretty naive at that point.  The next stage of my evidence concerns the afternoon of May the 20th 1986.  Not May the 22nd as in the outline of my submission.
 My wife couldn't read my writing, I made a change.  It was the afternoon of May the 20th and there was a meeting in Cape Town at which people spoke and particularly it was the leaders of the comrades spoke about the burning of homes in Crossroads and I was present at that meeting and was asked afterwards to come and witness these events.
 I went on that occasion with about 15 other people, between 15 and 20.  I talked to the Captain who appeared to be in charge of the operations of Magobe Drive and said that I wanted to go in with these other people, into Crossroads and I wanted to talk with the leaders of the "witdoeke", many of whom I knew personally.
 I was told that that wasn't possible, that people had too much to drink, they were on drugs, that we would get shot, that we would get killed, that we would get burnt and I said well, that's a chance that these people are prepared to take, we want to go in to see for ourselves.
 The 15 or 20 of went, had only gone about 50 metres or less than that, when that same group of policemen under the Captain to whom we had spoken fired I would estimate at least 10 canisters or tear gas all around us causing pandemonium in the group.
 Because I felt some leadership responsibilities, I felt concerned for the group, some of them were running the wrong way down wind, and so I tried to get them out because the tear gas was quite overpowering.
 I went back to the same Captain who again would not identify himself and remonstrated with him.  He then said that it was not possible for anyone to go in and he was sticking to that.
 I then said that we wanted to negotiate that and in the end after probably 20 minutes of negotiation, it was agreed that three of us would be allowed into Crossroads.
 One was Joe Seramani who was then with the South African Council of Churches, the other was Selakitch who was Chairperson of the Board of Social Responsibility of the Dieses of Cape Town and the third was myself.
 We went into Crossroads, it was quite clear that no attempt whatever had been made to keep apart what the police called the warring factions.  They were beginning to lay blade wire at this stage and they were laying it along the perimeter of Magobe Road and the perimeter of Crossroads.  There was no question of trying to keep the Nyanga Extension or Portland Cement, those sort of area, separate from the rest of Crossroads.
 One horrific experience was cries from a shack that was burning and it became clear that in fact there was a baby in there trapped and a desperate mother and I regret that we were unable to save that baby.  The memory of that haunts me still and has come back to me in my dreams in the last few days.
 When we got onto the high ground, the centre of Crossroads, we encountered about 70 "witdoeke" and contrary to what the police had said, it was quite clear obviously to them that we were unarmed, we were received courteously.  We were able of course to greet them by name and to address them personally and I think that that helped.
 Joe Seramani to my amazement, said please gather around, I am going to start with a prayer.  To my astonishment everyone removed their hats or covering, bowed their heads and we had an astonishing moment of silence, still in the middle of all this burning and then he said a prayer.
 We then talked to them from the group of 70 we identified five people as leaders.  All of whom were on the Crossroads Executive.  The leader appeared at this stage to be someone who had arrived fairly recently in fact, Prince Gobingca and we asked whether we could talk further with them and whether they would be prepared to consider negotiations with the leaders of the comrades.
 For that purpose we in fact went through towards the Sacla Clinic.  In fact in retrospect it was quite clear that they had no real intention of negotiating - it was a way of simply get us off their backs because they said they were willing to negotiate and we then contacted the leaders of the comrades, but actually no negotiations took place and I felt very sad about that because I took quite a lot of responsibility for trying to get that off the ground believing that it could help.
 In retrospect I was naive, I hadn't realised how profoundly organised and orchestrated this whole thing was and I was only realising at that point to what extent hostility, mistrust and misinformation was in fact being fermented by the police.
 The third day that I want to talk about is the 9th of June 1986, now in KTC.  I made out quite a lengthy affidavit about this which - and I acted as a witness for a week in the KTC trial and therefor that is on record and I think I won't burden you with much of the detail, but my understanding is that the reason why there was some value in my evidence, was essentially not because I had seen anything different from other people, but simply because I had taken contemporaneous notes.
 I had in my diary jotted down casper numbers, registration numbers, numbers of shots fired, direction in which they were fired, what kind of shot it was and all that sort of detail and ... (tape ends) ... think I need burden you with now.
 But on the 9th of June, I arrived with eight members of the staff of the parish of St John's Wynberg, at about 11.15 am and I had been rung by Bishop Patrick Matalengwe about half an hour before, asking me to go in his place.
 I arrived at the Zwolani Centre, there were two people with me at this point and the Zwolani Centre was already burning and then the three of us saw the two red and white Red Cross tents on the right of the Zwolani Centre as you look at it from the road, they are next to the Divisional Council Clinic building, we saw those being torched by people with white rags and starting to burn.