Human Rights Violation Hearings — Bisho — 1996-09-11

MARIUS OELSCHIG: Your Grace, I repeat that I have been a soldier, a professional soldier of 35 years standing.  I do not know how else to express myself than in purely professional terms.  I have seen combat, I have seen fighting and I have lost friends, I have lost family and I have lost people under my command.  It is not given to the commander to publicly show, not even to his soldiers, the grief that he feels.
 A commander grieves on his own and he grieves quietly.  You learn through the years to accept it as such.   I apologise if the Commission expected me really to open my heart and to put it out for public display.  That, that is my grief, that is my concern that I live with as I have during my professional career and as I will until the end of my days.  I am a committed, loyal South African.  I feel very, very deeply about everything that has happened in our country and I have made my contribution where I could.  I have done my very best as an officer and as a South African, to promote what is happening in this country today.  I have honestly, really, professionally done so.
 I accept the feelings of the previous speaker.  I am however, concerned that if it was an attempt to publicly humiliate me and to speak down to me and to slap me down like some precocious young dog, I don't appreciate that.  If that was not the intention, I accept the words that have been directed at me.  I would like to conclude, Your Grace, by insisting that I be allowed to grieve the way I grieve and if in my professional language of expressing my regret that loved ones have been lost and injured, if that is not sufficient, I apologise for that, but that is how I feel.  I am a soldier and I have been taught to hide my tears and I have been taught to grieve on my own.

CHAIRPERSON: Order please.  Thank you very much.  Let me first of all again express the appreciation of the Commission to you officers for your willingness to come forward.  Second, to say that on behalf of my colleagues here, I know, I mean I hardly ever myself ask questions because the team is such a splendid team and there is no malice, it's quite important that you realise this because we are dealing with a very delicate business and it is, I don't want to pretend or make you feel that we are doing a very, very important task but we, in places like this, well in almost every place where people have, as our people have, suffered as grievously as they have done, to help people deal with their pain in a way that is not going to be destructive, is something that we here seek to do.  
 And when Dumisa says what he did, I can assure you that we hardly ever, not with a single person, I mean even the one where we are unanimous is probably someone who needs to be beefed.  I would not permit it for one thing.  I will not permit them to take advantage of their position.  I can assure you that everything we seek to do to the best of our ability is saying to, especially these people, that you have suffered and we have shared a little bit in that suffering.  Let that suffering not turn you into seeking revenge in wanting to hit back.  
 We say to our people and I have said it many times to all of these people, I usually am the one who speaks at the end when I try to gather up everything that we have heard, try and gather it up in a way that will make us as we go home, have a sense that, well one, we have been taken note of.  Our pain has been acknowledged but we can move from this valley, we can emerge from this valley onto the mountain top and all of them here also have to try and articulate in a way that is going to make people handle their anguish because I have said, I said yesterday, I mean we are an extraordinary people, all of us.  
 We end up being an extraordinary people that they can, well I mean you can come, you know, and sit and be able to speak and it is people here, many of them, well these people here will have been injured, they will have lost loved ones and by rights should be saying they want to strangle whoever was involved, and they are not doing that.
 And we want to be helping to nurture this for the sake of this country and saying that pain and anger and anguish, let's change it around so that we can accept you and in a way Dumisa was saying because we're getting strong recommendations from various people that you can't let someone who was involved in human rights violations, and it's not just people, as it were, on the right, it's people on the left, that he is saying, he is making suggestions about how he believes it is possible that despite all of that history, it is possible for us to be one and that you can contribute your professional skills and expertise.  
 Let me just say to end this, which is I'm also saying it to our people and I hope all of those who will come who know they were involved whether willingly or unwillingly, whether professionally or it was not professional.  If they could just realise one thing - the people, I mean, the people actually don't look for excuses.  I mean, they don't, they, you see your colleagues there in a most straightforward way said, I did this.  You see once somebody says I did it and I am sorry, what do you do?  I mean you can't, certainly for those who are Christians, which is the bulk of these people, you cannot but say no, ja, I mean I must move along and grasp your hand.  
 And we are trying to say this especially to people in the white community who think that, I mean, we are looking for revenge.  We say to them, the people who have suffered have an incredible nobility of spirit, sometimes I mean it bowls me over that if someone comes along and he says, I did this I'm sorry.  I mean sometimes you may think but does he really mean it but you know, because we know it's not easy to say I'm sorry and publicly, that people try to reach out and that is all we are trying to do for our country and I would hope, I mean that you would receive it in that spirit.
 We hope, I mean that you will allow us the opportunity of being able to study in more detail your submission so that we are able to recall you and it is important, let me stress this, this is not a trial.  We are not looking so that we prosecute you, no.  We are trying to find out the truth so that we can have reconciliation.  That is the work that we have been given.  Not aaah yes, no, no, maybe I can get away with this half-truth.  Maybe I will get away with it, no, please if people open up then we look at the horror of what has happened and we realise we mustn't take it lightly but having looked at the horror, looked at the beast, we can together turn and say we've done now with that beast, we have destroyed that beast, let us walk together.
 And so we will probably wish to be able to recall you, not in order to put you on the spot.  We are not scoring points, it's not scoring political points or whatever points.  It's seeking to move to a point where we will be on the same, somebody said on the same page.  Thank you very much.  Thank you.  Thank you gentlemen.  You may stand down.  End of Tape 6, Side A.

TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION: BISHO MASSACRE - DAY 3 - 11 SEPTEMBER 1996

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you Mr Jurgens for your being here.  We welcome you and we are putting you under a bit of pressure but I mean you, we had said fifteen minutes but in fact we can go up to 20 minutes so there is latitude.  Thank you very much.