Amnesty Hearings — Pietersburg — 1997-07-03

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: No.  I didn't notice him anywhere, it is possible I was in a state of shock, it is possible that he could have been there, but that I didn't see him.

ADV VISSER: Now, you then went to where Erwee was and Erwee was busy with this wounded person?

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: Yes.

ADV VISSER: And we know that the wounded person came from the combi?

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: Yes.  Yes, I could see that from where I was standing.

ADV VISSER: Now, when you got there, what did you notice?

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: My first observation was that the man was very heavily wounded and that he was covered in blood, his clothes were covered in blood.

ADV VISSER: Did you think he would live?

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: When I crouched next to the man to speak to him, I immediately noticed and I didn't hear it from other witnesses, but I noticed that the man was shaking, as if he was shivering.
	But it was a lot more serious than just shivering.  And before Mr Erwee told me what I was supposed to ask this man, I thought that I would speak to him in Sotho to try and calm him down and my first question to him was such that he simply would be able to hear that I spoke Sotho and I asked him where do you come from and I asked him that in Sotho.
	Where do you come from and he told me that they came from Gaberone.

ADV VISSER: Did he speak easily or with difficulty?

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: He spoke quite softly, but immediately afterwards when he heard I spoke Sotho, he said I want to work with you.

ADV VISSER: Say in Sotho what he said.

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: I asked him where do you go and he said we come from Gaberone.  Immediately he said in Sotho and that is how I make the inference that he could communicate with me, he said to me that he wanted to work with us.
	I don't think I even told that to Erwee.  He said I want to work with you and immediately afterwards Colonel Erwee said to me, ask this man where they are going.
	Now, this process took time because this person's eyes were closed.  You could see that he was really suffering and that he was losing consciousness from time to time.  	
	I continued talking to him to just try and see whether he could just regain consciousness and he told me that they were on their way to Pietersburg.

ADV VISSER: Did he speak Afrikaans?

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: No, he was speaking in Sotho.  The whole three or four minutes while I was chatting to him, I spoke Sotho to him and told Mr Erwee what he had said, in Afrikaans.

CHAIRPERSON: Can I just interrupt.  I am not listening to the interpretation.   The words which the witness uttered in Sotho, a language which is in fact my language, would accord more or less with what he told us.

ADV VISSER: Thank you Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: I just wonder whether it was put through in the translation, for anybody to access whether the witness does in fact understand Sotho.

ADV VISSER: Yes, thank you Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: If that was not done, then maybe I must just place it on record that it is in fact what, it would be an accurate translation by the witness into Afrikaans as to his conversation in Sotho with the injured person.

ADV VISSER: Yes.  Yes, thank you Mr Chairperson.   Thank you Mr Chairman.
	Could you just continue.  You said that you spoke to him for about three to four minutes, with this wounded person.  He spoke very softly.  Did anything further happen to this wounded person?

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: Whilst I was busy questioning him, I heard Colonel Erwee requesting somebody to come and inject this wounded man.   My honest opinion is and as I already said, this whole situation was not a familiar one for me, I saw how this person, the medical orderly, injected the wounded person in the thigh, in his upper leg or thigh.
	Shortly afterwards it appeared to me that the man wasn't shaking as he had done before, that he had calmed down a bit.  Yes, he became a little bit calmer and I thought he was resting.
	But he couldn't communicate with me much longer.

ADV VISSER: I am not quite sure where you were in the conversation.  Erwee asked you to ask him where they were going to, what did he say to you?

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: Must I repeat it in Sotho?

ADV VISSER: I think the members of the Committee will now know that you can speak Sotho.

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: They told me that they were on their way to Pietersburg and that they would meet a person at the railway station, wearing a yellow shirt or a yellow scarf and it would be a male, Black person.  That is the inference that I drew.

ADV VISSER: Is there anything further?

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: I may just mention that I couldn't do very much more, because the person looked really bad.  In fact I wouldn't have wanted to interrogate him any further, I noticed that this man was really at death's door.

ADV VISSER: And you could see that you couldn't really extract any further information from him?

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: Absolutely not.

ADV VISSER: You later learnt that Mr Van Dyk had made a tape recording of the scene?

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: I forgot to say that.  I saw him, he was very close to me at the wounded man's mouth where we were talking to each other.

ADV VISSER: Did you see him making a tape recording of what the person had said?

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: Yes, I saw that.

ADV VISSER: If you say close to the wounded man's mouth, do you mean the tape recorder was close to this wounded person's mouth?

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: Yes.  Yes, he was speaking very, very softly.  The little bit that he did say, was very, very soft.

ADV VISSER: After this person was no longer able to speak and there was no further reaction from him, what happened then?

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: I heard Colonel Erwee requesting somebody, well I was still in a crouched position next to this person, I heard Erwee shouting get a vehicle, so that we can get medical help for this man.

ADV VISSER: This wounded person, how was he laying, can you remember?

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: Yes, very well.   He was laying on his back, very heavily wounded.  I noticed blood and I could see that he was very heavily wounded.

ADV VISSER: Where was the blood and the wounds?

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: Where he was laying, there was a pool of blood coming from his back and also his thighs, he was heavily wounded.
	I can't say exactly, because he was wearing clothes.

ADV VISSER: But more or less his whole body was covered in wounds?

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: Yes, he had numerous wounds.

ADV VISSER: What happened then?

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: The next moment, Colonel Erwee and somebody else, plus some other helper, took this person to a vehicle.

ADV VISSER: What did you do?

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: Whether I stood there or went to the combi, that short episode I can't tell you.

ADV VISSER: What is the next thing that you did, that you can recall?

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: A while after the person was evacuated in the vehicle, I started helping with the clearing up operation near the combi.

ADV VISSER: When he left the scene from the position where you were sitting next to him in a crouched position, would you say he was still alive or was he already dead?

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: I don't have a lot of knowledge in this regard, but my prognosis was that the man wouldn't live very much longer.

ADV VISSER: But was he still alive when he was carried away?

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: Yes, he definitely was still alive.

ADV VISSER: You heard what Matthews Sehlwana had said.

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: Yes.

ADV VISSER: He said that after you questioned him, you took out a pistol, pressed it against his chest and shot him?

PAUL PHILLIPUS FRANCOIS FUCHS: That is definitely not the case.