Human Rights Violation Hearings — Krugersdorp — 1996-11-11

RUSSELL ALLY: Mr Mvudle, thank you very much for your very comprehensive statement.  I am actually, requested from the Chair, that we actually break now to give you a chance also, after that long statement, just to get your breath back and when we come back after lunch, what time?

CHAIRPERSON: Ten past two.

RUSSELL ALLY: At ten past two, if you do not mind, we would just like to ask you a few questions, but we will be very brief.  So, if we could break for lunch.  If we could stand while the witnesses leave, please, and come back at ten past two.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Mvudle, I hope you have had some lunch and you have had some rest.  Dr Ally is going to start off with some of the questioning again.  So, if we can proceed.  Thank you.

RUSSELL ALLY: Mr Mvudle, you gave us a very comprehensive account of your understanding of the conflict in Khutsong.  I am going to ask you a few questions.  I am going to try to be brief because we have had you here for a long time and I do not want to keep you here too much longer.  Just to try and help us to understand what was actually happening.
 Now these incidents that you describe is mostly in the early months of 1990, throughout 1990 and you describe the conflict.  You say that a group who once considered Comrades, who still believe themselves to be Comrades, actually involved themselves in activities which could not really be politically justified.  This group you identify as the Gadaffi group and it was their activities, their 
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assaults, rapes and abductions of people which forced a response and often that response was also a violent response from the other Comrades.  That group became know as the Mazimzim.  
 But we have also heard, and I am sure you were present in the hall, testimony from the other side.  In fact just before you Mrs Nomandla who actually blamed the Mazimzims and implicated them directly in the death of her husband who was shot.  Now, how do you respond to that accusation?  That the Mazimzims themselves were also a group that resorted to violence and they were also responsible for deaths of people?

MR MVUDLE: My answer to that would be amongst us we had a lot of people who had been harassed.  Therefore, people wanted revenge in a way.  We could not stop them.  We were not clear as to what happened and who caused the chaos.  We had problematic people within our group.  People who we also suspected that were informers.  They would befriend the police.  When we would try to advise them against this, they said they are protecting themselves.  We would hear that something has happened in a certain place.  It is like Mrs Nomandla.  A lot of us were not in the township when it happened, when her husband died.  We read it in the papers.  By then we were trying to calm down.  Therefore, I cannot say I know what happened at Mrs Nomandla's house.

RUSSELL ALLY: Mrs Nomandla, in her testimony, speaks about Thomas Mvudle as actually being present as well.  Do you know anything about that?

MR MVUDLE: I do not know anything about it.

RUSSELL ALLY: But you are not prepared to comment either way, you do not know.  Is that what you are saying?  You are not
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saying that she is wrong to mention Thomas, you are saying that as far as you know, you are not aware of anything with regard to Thomas in that incident?

MR MVUDLE: As I have answered, I do not know, because I was not in the township at the time.  He could have been there.  I could say that he was there, maybe he was not there.  I cannot answer, I was not there.

RUSSELL ALLY: Thank you for that answer.  And some of the other names which she mentioned, were they familiar to you, like Tony Tshabalala?  Are those people who were actually part of the organisation which was known as the Mazimzim?

MR MVUDLE: As I have said a lot of things were happening in the township.  A lot of people were involved in violence.  Some people were just retaliating.  The Mazimzim would be blamed for a lot.  If anything happened, the Mazimzim would blame the Gadaffis and the Gadaffis the Mazimzim.  Maybe either of the groups had anything to do with some of the violence.  Bodies would be picked up from a lot of places in the township and nobody would know who killed them.

RUSSELL ALLY: And what about the role of the police in all of this?  Do you want to say something, perhaps, on that issue, because with this conflict taking place in the townships, obviously the police were aware of it.  What do you think their role was in all of this?

MR MVUDLE: As I have already said when the violence started in the township it was directed to the police.  Their houses were being burnt down and they were being killed.  We were fighting for our own rights.  The police took advantage.  They thought that we were working together with the group that was harassing them.  They perceived that we were on their side.  As I have said a lot of children died.  We did
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not know how they died.  We suspect that it is the police that killed these children.  The police would not work in the township during the day.  They had to work in the night.  They would work in the dark and then they would leave.

RUSSELL ALLY: You also spoke a bit about the ANC, about the ANC leadership and your constant requests and appeals for the ANC to intervene.  What exactly was the difficulty and the problem with regard to that because here both groups were claiming to be members of the ANC and yet they were killing each other?

MR MVUDLE: As the ANC had recently been unbanned at the time a lot of people joined it because people could freely join it.  The leaders of the ANC would have a problem with criticising them because they realised that a lot of their support came from them.  We are ANC members, but it is only a few of us who stand for our rights and we would clearly stipulate what we did not appreciate.  I think that the ANC was too scared that it would lose some of its members to the PAC.  This is why not everything was resolved as it should have been.

RUSSELL ALLY: In your view what was the political orientation or position of ASASAN before the Comrades went into the ANC in 1990 because you were active in 1985, 1986 and you say that became a label later.  So could you just tell us a little bit about the political orientation?  The way you understood it, of ASASAN?

MR MVUDLE: At the time we were not too politically aware, we were just fighting against any oppression that was focused on the black man.  It is the police that are protest the most.  The Government of the day.  Mogapi who was the first witness said that they would attach the buses.  We
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would fight anybody who was in cahoots with the white man.  That is all we knew.

RUSSELL ALLY: And at that state, what type of political loyalties did ASASAN show?  I am asking this just to try and get some understanding of the developments later.  Where did ASASAN see itself as fitting in in the liberation movement given that there were so many organisations in 1985, 1986?  Are you able to answer that?

MR MVUDLE: As I have already said, in 1986 before I was arrested because the police wanted my younger brother.  I was not politically active.  I did not participate again until I was a member of the Mazimzim group.  So, I cannot answer your question, Sir.

RUSSELL ALLY: Thanks, that is helpful, because I just wanted to be clear that the 1985, 1986 period, there was no sense that this was ANC or PAC or Black Consciousness.  As far as you are concerned, it was just a movement fighting against oppression of black people and that you saw the States institutions like the police and so forth as the enemy.  Was that broadly how the political struggle was understood by you and by others in 1985, 1986?