Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 1998-03-30

PETER JONES: No, that was not possible.  On the night that I was released, I was served with a banning order that restricted me to Somerset West in Cape Town for a further five years.

MR MTSHAULANA: And therefore it was impossible for you to go back to work in King William's Town and the BPC?

PETER JONES: Also you must remember that the organisation I worked for at the time, was banned, it no longer existed over and above the fact that its national leader had also died in detention.

MR MTSHAULANA: Mr Jones, Mr Biko you say died in detention or whilst he was detained?
	I would like you to tell the Committee very briefly about your own experiences whilst you were detained.  It is not the aim that we write memoirs, I would like us to restrict ourselves to in particular, around what the evidence of Mr Niewoudt was.  In the first place Mr Niewoudt told the Committee that you were interrogated in the same room where Mr Biko was interrogated.  Are you able to confirm that?

PETER JONES: I was interrogated in a small room, on the 6th floor.  It is a room that you could only reach by going through other rooms, it was an isolated room.  I did not know at the time that other people were also interrogated in the same room, but I did come to the same conclusion afterwards.

MR MTSHAULANA: Mr Niewoudt said that you were interrogated or brought to Sanlam on the 24th of August, can you confirm that?

PETER JONES: That is correct.  It was in the evening, at about ten o'clock at night.

MR MTSHAULANA: Very briefly Mr Jones, can you tell the Committee what happened that evening after you were brought to Sanlam building?

PETER JONES: Upon entering the room, I was of course handcuffed by that time, I had a jeans on, no shoes, and a T-shirt, a polo neck T-shirt.  I was unhandcuffed, all my clothes were removed, I was made to sit in the middle of the room on a steel chair, my left hand was handcuffed to the chair, and diagonally opposite me, at the two opposite ends were two desks.
	One desk and one table, behind which on my left was Siebert and on my right was Snyman.

MR MTSHAULANA: Yes.

PETER JONES: They then commenced questioning me.  The questioning covered a very wide range of topics because of my own position in the Black Consciousness Movement and also because it was very clear that these Officers were not well orientated on the history and the activities of the Black Consciousness Movement.
	Very soon however, the questions became very specific and they asked me what I was doing with Steve Biko on that particular trip.

MR MTSHAULANA: About how long - did it last the whole night?

PETER JONES: No, it was not the whole night.  I repeated a story that I had told them earlier on that I had gone to Cape Town on business and Steve Biko just ambled along, he just casually went along.  That was the story that was agreed upon as a first version between me and Steve Biko if ever we got arrested in the course of that trip.

MR MTSHAULANA: Yes, but you say that you told them a story which you had told them earlier on.  Had you been cross-examined before you were brought to Sanlam on the 24th?

PETER JONES: I was questioned the night before in my cell, when Siebert and Snyman visited me and they asked me the same question.

MR MTSHAULANA: So now on the night of the 24th ...

CHAIRPERSON: Where would that cell have been?

PETER JONES: At Algoa Park police station.

MR MTSHAULANA: Did the two officers accept your story and leave you in peace?

PETER JONES: No, when I repeated the story, Siebert jumped up and started hitting me with his open hand, followed by a hosepipe, he hit me over my face and my chest and my back.  Then he resumed his seat and the questioning restarted.
	Eventually I told them that the story that I had indicated that Steve just casually went along while I had formal work to do in Cape Town, was not accurate and that in fact, that our trip had a political objective.  I then briefly gave him an overview of the kind of internal problems we had in the Black Peoples' Convention in the Western Cape and that it had been decided that someone of Steve Biko's seniority should go down with me, to see if we could sort out these particular issues.
	At that stage Siebert and Snyman got up, they indicated that I now knew what they wanted and they were going to leave me for the rest of the night to do a statement on my history, on what we were doing in Cape Town on the trip, what happened in Port Elizabeth.  He indicated that they knew of a pamphlet, there was sufficient people that had given them information and I was required to speak on all of these things.
	They then left me in the company of two new Security Police Officers who spent the rest of the night with me while I wrote a statement which I finished later on and the next morning Siebert and Snyman and the other Officers Niewoudt, Marx and Beneke returned to where I was still seated.

MR MTSHAULANA: Now, two statements were handed in yesterday by the applicant which were supposed to have been written by you, Exhibit A and B.  Did you see those statements?  Exhibit A is a document which starts with your name and Leipoldt Street and Exhibit B is a statement which starts with Cape Town, did you see those two statements?

PETER JONES: Yes, I have it in front of me.

MR MTSHAULANA: Is any one of those two statements, the statement you wrote on the night of the 24th or the 25th?

PETER JONES: The statement referred as B is the one I wrote in the morning of the 25th.

MR MTSHAULANA: That is after Mr Siebert and Mr Snyman had given you - to write?

PETER JONES: That is right.

MR MTSHAULANA: In that statement you basically write about this trip what you have just told the Commission now?

PETER JONES: Yes.

MR MTSHAULANA: Did you write anything in that statement about - or let me put it this way was the statement you wrote, reflecting the true purpose of the Cape Town trip?

PETER JONES: It was not true.  It was an agreed second strategy should our first story not be accepted by the Police.

MR MTSHAULANA: Why had you gone to Cape Town, just very briefly?

PETER JONES: We had gone to Cape Town so that Steve Biko as the leader of the Black Consciousness Movement could further continue his work as the Principle initiator inside the country to explore the possibility of unification amongst all the liberation movements in South Africa and one of the key people that we were going to consult in Cape Town was going to be Dr Neville Alexander.

MR MTSHAULANA: Did you in any way indicate to the Police in the statement you wrote, that you were actually going to meet  Dr Alexander or that you met him?

PETER JONES: No, that information was not given at that stage.

MR MTSHAULANA: Now, when the Security Police came the following morning you said, I suppose they were interested to read what you had written in the statement.  Were they interested?

PETER JONES: Yes, very interested.  Siebert came in, he took the statement from the table where I had left it, he left the room and he came back after a little while, he was infuriated and he threw the statements on the table.

ADV DE JAGER: You said he threw the statements on the table?

PETER JONES: On the table.

ADV DE JAGER: How many statements?

PETER JONES: The statements had two parts, one was on my own personal information, just about who I was, where I came from because they didn't really have a lot of information.  I don't have those pages in front of me, and then the other section of the statement is the one that starts with Cape Town, which was the purpose of the Cape Town trip.

MR MTSHAULANA: Can you then tell me, tell the Committee what happened when the Officers came back with Siebert fuming?