Special Hearings — Mandela United Football Club Hearings — 1997-11-28

AZHAR CACHALIA: I think some of what you have said, might not be of direct relevance to certain aspects of your work.  Now, what I think we have also tried to do is to give you a sense of the climate.  Also our thinking as people who were leaders in terms of our observations of the situations.
 In my input yesterday I made a comment about the situation where power relations begin to play a role in the way these people related in terms of influencing them to do certain things and not to do others.
 Now, the task for the Commission, I would imagine amongst other things, would be to try to interrogate, you know, the minds of these people at the time, it is a difficult task to try to go back and try to locate yourself at that point, and try to see what was going through their minds, how did they end up where they were, what was influencing them?
 I think those become factors and to the extent that in their minds, they might have believed that they were doing so because it was in the pursuit of the struggle.  I would image that the Commission would then need to weigh that against the balance of probability in terms of the relationship between what they say and in fact the adverse aspects of the fact, their acts could well have been just mere criminal etc.
 The question is where is that link, how do you draw that list?  Is it based on the fact that they decide at some point to abduct someone, why did they do it?  Now, it is an unenviable task, because I think that there are going to be lots of things that fall in the grey area there in terms of what actually is what now.  It is difficult for us to say exactly what it is that you should take into account, suffice it to say that these are the kinds of broad considerations, that I think will have to come into play.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.  Dr Mgojo?

UNKNOWN: Thank you Mr Chairperson.  May I direct Mr Cachalia, to page 2 of your submission, up to page 3.  I need to pose these questions because your submission becomes an official document once it has been submitted.

AZHAR CACHALIA: Yes.

UNKNOWN: You speak here about many rumours which were circulating and you speak of the absence of an independent means of verification, if it was impossible to separate fact from fiction.
 And then on page 3, of your submission, you give us different common themes which reoccurred as a result of these rumours.  Maybe the question I need to ask you first, do you associate yourself fully with these things?

AZHAR CACHALIA: Excuse me, I don't understand the question.

UNKNOWN: Do you associate yourself fully with these themes which you have put here?

AZHAR CACHALIA: What do you mean, are you saying that I believe all of these things were happening?

UNKNOWN: That is right?

AZHAR CACHALIA: Not necessarily.  You know, if you for example take children had disappeared from the Mandela home.  In the pre-Stompie period we had heard that children had disappeared from the home, that parents in the communities in Soweto were saying that they didn't know whether it happened at the Mandela home, so I know about a rumour, but I can't say outside of Stompie, that I was aware that any child had disappeared from the Mandela home.

UNKNOWN: Would you say that some of these things may have the ingredients of facts and some have the ingredients of perceptions?  Would that be a right assumption?

AZHAR CACHALIA: Commissioner, I make the point that there were, it was difficult to separate fact from fiction, so if you go to 8.1, 8.2 and 8.3 I am saying that there will be elements of fact and fiction there.
 I don't know where I could draw the line, but yes.

UNKNOWN: Thank you.  The language in this context who would be the guerrillas, you speak about he guerrillas?

AZHAR CACHALIA: Guerrillas would be freedom fighters.

UNKNOWN: Was it intentional that you used that word?

AZHAR CACHALIA: Again, if you see, just show me where are you reading from now?

UNKNOWN: It is 8.3?  I am saying that was because that was a common word used by the system and then people used to challenge it and say that is a freedom fighters, not a guerrilla.

AZHAR CACHALIA: I am not sure, I think when we would sing freedom songs, we would sing about guerrillas, and when I spoke yesterday, I didn't talk about guerrillas in the sort of neutral angle of......., I just spoke about guerrillas, and I think that is what we referred to ourselves as.

UNKNOWN: Okay, I am not going to debate that.
 Did you mean, were these the MK cadres which were in the Mandela family?

AZHAR CACHALIA: It was certainly my sense that they were sort of trained freedom fighters.

CHAIRPERSON: Ladies, do you know that this is a court?  If you come to the court, when the court is in process, how do you just come and disturb, why don't you bring this note after the hearings?
 How could you just bring this note here, could you please leave?

UNKNOWN: No further questions, thank you.

MR SEMENYA: Chairperson, may I just be indulged, we have already expressed that my client intends to make a reconciliatory contact with Bishop Verryn and Mr Cachalia now says that she framed Bishop Verryn.  Can I just take this up I won't be two seconds?
 Mr Cachalia, should I read your statement on page 4 to mean Paul Verryn was framed amongst others by Mrs Mandela?

AZHAR CACHALIA: Yes.

MR SEMENYA: But I mean the word frame must mean to knowingly put false blame with a view to discredit somebody?

AZHAR CACHALIA: Hold on, do you see 10.3.6, I say Paul Verryn was framed.

MR SEMENYA: Yes.

AZHAR CACHALIA: That is what I say there.  Why I believe that Mrs Mandela was part of that, was that there were repeated statements made by Mrs Mandela as she was being accused of the kidnapping of the youths, and the death of Stompie, Mrs Mandela repeatedly made public statement saying the real problem was not the youth, the real problem was that Paul Verryn had a "medical problem that needed to be solved".  In my view that deflected the attention, the intention was to deflect the attention from the real problem that the youths were abducted.
 I do not believe that there was a bona fide belief at that point, as the statements were made after that incident, that Paul Verryn was guilty of having sodomised the youths.  So that is why I am saying it because it has emerged from Mrs Mandela's own mouth.

MR SEMENYA: Now, let's tidy up what I am talking about.  I am saying is the word to frame, to knowingly put false blame on somebody with a view to discredit them?

AZHAR CACHALIA: You frame a person is because you want to make that person guilty of an offence, so it wasn't a question of simply discrediting it, it went further.
 Criminal charges were laid against Paul Verryn.

MR SEMENYA: Let's tidy the definition, I want to understand whether we are talking the same thing.  Are you using the word frame in the sense of that Mrs Mandela knowing the facts to be otherwise, went ahead and said Bishop Paul Verryn had sodomised the children?

AZHAR CACHALIA: Mr Semenya, you know, there are two if you like, mutually destructive versions here.  The one version is that the youths were taken away from the manse, all right, they were brought away for their own protection, stayed in the Mandela home and then left on their own accord.
 All right, and that what happened there, nobody knew anything about.  The other version is that they were forcibly abducted, they were then made to make admissions that they had been sodomised, which admissions were made to people in the Crisis Committee.  And that Mrs Mandela sat in those meetings where those allegations were made.
 Now, either Mrs Mandela had a direct intention to frame, or alternatively she made statements about Paul Verryn with reckless disregard to the consequences for the man in question.