Human Rights Violation Hearings — Durban — 1996-10-24

MR DLAMINI: (Inaudible) ... we were so confused, neither my wife nor my son nor I recognised him at an ID parade we had that very day at lunchtime at the police station, you know, such is the confusion at the time.   You know, maybe one's mind doesn't want to recognise the person, I don't know.  But it was him all right, and he was tried and acquitted.  It was a good judgment, because there was an element of doubt and it  should go to  the accused, but  he was guilty all right.   And he was thereafter extremely vengeful about it all, and my friend, Phil Greenberg, who was a reporter  at  that  time on the Tribune, got a - made a tape of a conversation with this fellow which was quite bizarre.  I mean, he was going to follow me to the end  of my days, and take  vengeance for the  fact that his wife and 13 year old  daughter didn't  speak to him any more and I hadn't apologised to him for the inconvenience I had caused him, you know, and that ... (inaudible) ...      really quite loony, but ... (incomplete)

MR DLAMINI: Would you take us to the other incident, the second attempt?

WITNESS:   Yes.  Well now the night before judgment was to be given in this trial of Jeffrey Wright, at a quarter to three in the morning my wife and I were asleep in a big double bed at the front of the house, when somebody fired over the gate with an assault rifle, firing fully automatic, and it is a dreadful sound, you know, rat a tat tat.  And there was the smell of explosives and the sound of splinters and bits of masonry flying all over and I pushed her out of bed with my foot, you know, she fell on the floor, and I said, "Duck behind the wall",  we had one masonry wall in this house, and we hid behind that while the bullets tore through this house.   Some of them went right through front to back, you know, and at that time my daughter was sleeping in the front room and my son was sleeping on the little verandah at the back.   Some of the rounds passed within half a metre, you know, or 50 centimetres of his head, and one of them could easily have taken him out, you see, but once again the police were around.   I must say, in both of these cases, most of the policemen that came around thought it was something of a joke, you know, they sort of giggled to each other, when one explained one's distress.   I was very distressed, especially  for my kids.   But we were all out in the street.   They collected a hand full of doppies and  cartridge cases, I think, eight  or  nine from here and there, there were others lying in the plants, for ballistic tests and we were looking for more out in the road where there I noticed an old club footed milkman, who for years and years been coming around at that time of the morning to deliver milk.  And he was standing looking at all this and he said to me, "Are you looking for the people who shot over your wall?", and I said, "Yes", and he said, "They went that way in a green kombi" and nobody thought of asking him when he was just the guy who delivered the milk, you know.   But everybody then questioned him and there had apparently been a pale green kombi which they leapt into and driven off in, you see, and it turned out - all this is as I remember being told, so I suppose it is hearsay, but I was told later that down at Morgan Naidoo's place a woman - shortly before the time of the shooting at our house, a woman had been cycling her restless baby on a balcony down in a block of flats in which Morgan Naidoo lived in, and there she saw men arrive also in a pale green kombi, and fire into his flat with a shotgun from such close range that one of the wads from the shell ended up inside his flat and the curtains, I think, were burnt or something like that.

MR DLAMINI: Were you able to get the registration or any identifying particulars of this kombi?

WITNESS:    No, no, no, but I was asked  thereafter to  go to Cape Town to give evidence against the trio who had fired at Colin Eglin's flat, and apparently they were the same Scorpio crowd as this lot in the green kombi.   I didn't eventually give evidence, it was found to be unnecessary. I think a guy by the name of Van der Westhuizen got 7 years there, but I think it was the same crowd.  And I think their attack was a gesture of solidarity for Jeffrey Wright, you see. And he may have been associated with them in some way.

MR DLAMINI: In all these incidents, I believe the family was heavily affected.   Do you want to share a little bit of the effect it had on the family?

WITNESS:   It had a very bad effect on my family.  I mean in part it was the cause of the collapse of my marriage, you know, you can't really sustain a marriage for too many years under those conditions, you know.   And it has had the most devastating effect on my children.   My daughter, who was going to come and sit with me here today, when she heard Fatima starting to talk, she sent me a little note saying, "I am taking flak, I have got to go, I will see you later", you know.  She is getting shock therapy still to today, you know, and I am sure there are many causes for that, but at least some of them are - go back to this year.  My son is finished.   He is a total disaster, you know.   You know, when the bullets had finished flying past his face, whilst he was eating his supper, and when the whole sort of epoch of living with this ugly shotgun and the talk of violence all the time, and the precautionary measures we took, you know, I fortified that house like a Rhodesian farmhouse in the bush war, you know.   I built up the front verandah.   I got a piece of ship's plate from the Bayhead and I welded up a sliding rack, so that, at night, we could slide this piece of steel across the front entrance to the verandah, with great ... (inaudible) ... padlocks at the bottom.  I put grenade screens on the windows.   I built the garden wall up to two metres and put a great heavy gate there.   And at the back verandah door where the shooting had taken place, I had built a screen wall so that nobody could shoot straight into the door and to come in, you would have to walk around this wall and all of that, you know, and we never stood in front of open windows, and it is not good for a kid.   And when that ended for him, some six/seven years later, he was due to go to the army now and get some more of it.   And he just disappeared.   He disappeared into Africa.   I don't know how he got across the borders.   I mean MK could have learnt a couple of things from him, I  dare  say, but he  would be - he was all over Botswana;  Zimbabwe;  Malawi, where  he really got into smoking "nsangu", dagga, in a serious way.   And his life really fell apart, you know.    He spent years dogging the army, he  just wouldn't respond to their calls, you know, he just vanished.   And he would appear every now and then  really dishevelled and, you know, his life had become  totally meaningless and it is still is.  He is unable to work.    And, you know, I am sure  there are  other reasons for this, some of them may be genetic or circumstantial in  other ways, but  certainly this is very  important amongst  the things  that have damaged him.    Yes, I don't have to say that it is a sad experience and - but one admires your courage and listening to you when you relate one would think that you are talking about somebody else, not you.   I just want to pay tribute to that gift you have.   ---   Thank you.

MR DLAMINI: And perhaps trying to draw to the close, I just want to clarify one thing you mentioned here about Sergeant Ray Skinner, who is not a lieutenant.   And you suggested that we should approach him.   Is there any specific area where you think perhaps you perhaps might throw some light?

WITNESS:   I am not quite with you?

MR DLAMINI: You mentioned here Sergeant Ray Skinner, of the SAP, who was ... (intervention)