Human Rights Violation Hearings — Uitenhage — 1996-08-28

REV XUNDU: I would like to ask you a question, that I hope you will answer in the same context, and that is, the system wanted to create the impression that is was working with one side, so that it should appear to the people as if these Azapo people, or whatever, were in the police Hippos and were working with the police, so they were trying to aggravate the conflicts?

MANDLA NELSON NKOKI: I wouldn't agree with that allegation because I heard them saying so here.  For example, when we first got to no.9 Sodwayi Street, there were a lot of hippos and police vans and we were loaded into them and we were taken to Poswa Bottle store where we were also assaulted.

REV XUNDU: We gave the other side an opportunity to present it's evidence, so would you please keep quiet?

MANDLA NELSON NKOKI: As I said Reverend, this surprised us a bit that we should hear rumours that we were working with the police, but what I would like to stress the most is that the police, on their part saw this as an opportunity for them to use whoever they thought they could use at the time.

REV XUNDU: You are trying to tell us that they were trying to use individuals and not organisations as such?

MANDLA NELSON NKOKI: Yes, we could not point out specific individuals and say that the police were using them, but as an organisation, there was no such thing.

REV XUNDU: When as a organisation, you discovered that you seemed to be drawn into this conflict, did you try, at any of these meetings, to distance yourself from this perception?

MANDLA NELSON NKOKI: Yes, we did hold meetings, plenty of meetings amongst ourselves, trying to analyse the situation with the boers.  For example, a certain Boer boy by the name of Conradie was mentioned, he once tried to infiltrate our ranks via a group known as the Youth in Progress, that was known in Khayelitsha, but fortunately for us, we were able to detect that timeously and we said to him, sorry, we do not want any assistance from you because the assistance that you try to come with was in the form of food parcels because there were these people that were living at Joksville that were living in the shacks there and we had a progress at the PCC, where we were trying to give these people food, and shops such as Jiva, with people who used to give us food and we used to distribute the food in Joksville, and this is where Conradie tried to get in.

REV XUNDU: Tell us now, the PAC, at head office level, were they aware and were they supportive of your stance and the operations here in Uitenhage?

MANDLA NELSON NKOKI: Reverend, the PAC was then a band organisation and it could not openly claim that these were our supporters but I would like to remind you that when you came to Uitenhage, and when we met you at Rosedale, you said that you were sent by comrade Tambo and comrade Mlanbo to investigate our situation here in Uitenhage, so that you could go back to Harare and report to them what was happening.  That, I am sure even you got the idea that the PAC knows these people so much so that it's chairman could give you a mandate to go and meet with these people.

REV XUNDU: I wanted to get an idea.  Was there support for this entire operation?

MANDLA NELSON NKOKI: The PAC, as an organisation, never condoned the feuding here in Uitenhage, I am sure that you can remember that Beni once said in the papers that what happened here in Uitenhage between the Afrika people in the Uitenhage, the PAC does not support.

REV XUNDU: This picture, Mr Chairman, it the one that is thus painted because this is not a court of law, this is merely a picture being painted by the parties and organisations that were involved in the peace making process here in Uitenhage and sketched to us by comrade Mandla in front of us.
 Is there anything that you would like to say lastly, before I hand back to the Chairperson?

MANDLA NELSON NKOKI: No, there is nothing else that I would like to say, except to say that in this house at large, we as the PAC, now and Ama-Afrika then, we would like to extend our hand of peace once more as we have done before through the people that I have already mentioned and in saying so, I would like to say that people scheming from time to time together with people that they thought we would have been killing each other by today, but because of the fact that we had realised that what we were fighting for all along was not there, and that in this feud, there were no winners and there were no losers, and we are saying that we wish that our coming forward to speak here, is not going to create any more animosity amongst us as the residents of Uitenhage.  Thank you very much.

REV XUNDU: Thank you Mr Chairperson.  Thank you Mr Nkoki, we would like to receive a written statement from you in order for us to be able to include it in our files, but we are not sorry that we have granted you this opportunity to come before us and what surprises us is that there are no witnesses from the Ama-Afrika camps and we hope the it will be an issue that will be addressed.  We don't know if it was a collective decision that was taken, but we have not received anything from that side, Thank you very much.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much Mr Nkoki.