Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 1997-07-07

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.  Very well.  This matter is now going to be adjourned for argument until nine o' clock tomorrow morning.  The applicants need not be present.

ADV LOURENS: Thank you Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: Is that understood.

JUDGE WILSON: Mr Lourens, do you think it would be possible for you to get the copies of the documents you are going to, well, certainly the one I would like to see, the document which you said you are going to refer us to.

ADV LOURENS: Yes, I will ...

JUDGE WILSON: Rather than us have to make notes ...

ADV LOURENS: Yes.

JUDGE WILSON: ... if you could.

ADV LOURENS: I will attend to that Judge.

CHAIRPERSON: Will you?

ADV LOURENS: Thanks.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.  We adjourn till nine o' clock tomorrow morning.
COMMISSION ADJOURNS
ON RESUMPTION ON 08 JULY 1997

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Lourens, the document you have placed before us will go on the record as Exhibit C, EXHIBIT B.

ADV LOURENS: B.

CHAIRPERSON: Rather ...(intervention)

ADV LOURENS: Yes Mr Chairman.  Mr Chairman, might I just state for the record as well where this extract comes from.  I did not have an opportunity to write that on the relevant pages.  It is an article called Political Pawns.

CHAIRPERSON: Political?

ADV LOURENS: Pawns or Social Agents, A Look at Militarised Youth in South Africa.

CHAIRPERSON: Just say that again.

ADV LOURENS: Political Pawns or ...

JUDGE WILSON: Political Pawns?

ADV LOURENS: Pawns.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.  F O R M S.

ADV LOURENS: Pawns.  P A W N S.  It is pawns.

CHAIRPERSON: Well, if it is Political Pawns or Social Agents.

ADV LOURENS: Or Social Agents, A Look at Militarised Youth in South Africa.  It is by Monique Marks and Penny MacKenzie.  Monique Marks is a researcher at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation and Penny MacKenzie is a researcher at the Group for Environmental Monitoring.  The article, I understand, was presented at a conference this year in May.

CHAIRPERSON: Conference of?

ADV LOURENS: Organised by the Institute of Criminology of the University of Cape Town.

CHAIRPERSON: You say it was in May this year?

ADV LOURENS: That is so Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.
ADVOCATE LOURENS ADDRESSES COMMISSION ON MERITS OF APPLICATION

ADV LOURENS: Mr Chairman, then if I might begin.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.

ADV LOURENS: I draw the Comittee's attention to the last paragraph on page eight of the extract which I would read into the record.
"By 1984 there was upsurge of resistance in most urban townships.  The State met this resistance with increased repression.  In 1985 a State of Emergency was declared.  The Congress of South African Students was banned and activists detained.  From 1985 to 89 the State attempted to crush resistance through States of Emergencies, bannings, banning organisations, censoring the media and detaining and killing activists.  It was the youth who were most active during this period and who were primarily targeted by the State.  Both the State and civil society became increasingly militarised.  Violence was seen to be an effective means of achieving change on the part of State opponents or crushing resistance of any form on the part of the State".
If I then could draw the Committee's attention to the second paragraph on page nine, the last sentence which begins,
"The aim of the campaign of ungovernability was to render organs of Government inoperable through mass action and/or violent opposition",
and in the next paragraph, the last sentence beginning,
"Oliver Tambo, then President of the ANC, stated in a well distributed speech within South Africa that Pretoria has carried out its murderous plans to extreme.  We must now respond to the reactionary violence of the enemy with our own revolutionary violence.  The weapons are there in white houses.  Each white house has a gun or two hidden inside to use against us.  Our mothers work in their kitchens, we work in their gardens.  We must deliberately go out to look for these weapons in these houses.  It is a matter of life and death to find these weapons to use against the enemy.  The lone policeman must be made a target, he must be destroyed so that we can get his weapon.  We must learn to lay ambushes for the armed personnel carriers and the police cars that patrol the locations",
and then finally,
"Township youth, in particular, heeded the call of Tambo and spearheaded the intensification of the revolutionary strategies employed by the mass democratic movement".
Mr Chairman, I quote rather extensively from this article by way of introduction to my argument, by way of background to the situation that the three applicants before this Committee found themselves in in 1985 which is the relevant period in which the incidents which form the subject of this amnesty occurred.  The message here, I would submit, is one of violence.  The applicants themselves and, according to their evidence, came out of a extremely violent situation.  Violence was perpetrated against them in Mbekweni and the message was clear, they were to retaliate with violence.  
	To accomplish such retaliation firearms, ammunition were a very necessary part.  I would ask the Committee to consider, as well, before I commence with the actual evidence, that the three applicants were part of a group of six to seven, of six or seven people and that the remainder of that group is not before this Committee and we have the applicants' subjective views, the individuals views of what occurred on 15 April 1986 at Vlakkeland.  I submit that the applicants gave a full disclosure of what occurred on the 15th of April and that their evidence and their submissions collaborate, in material respects, each other.  In this regard the applicants gave evidence of the prevailing conditions in Mbekweni and I would submit that that is, in fact, common cause and common knowledge at this stage.
	The applicants gave evidence which accords one with the other of the way in which they came together on the 15th of April 1986.  Meeting first at Block D, that applicant number one, Maxam, arrived to find out if any people had been arrested or detained or hurt in the violence that had occurred, that they later met at Block G, that applicant number three, Tisana, was the one who had the information from Nelson Sono about the arms that may be found at Vlakkeland.  Their evidence of their arrival at Vlakkeland, meeting with the farmer, Mr Noble, applicant number one asking for employment.  These important aspects of the events preceding the actual robbery and shooting accord with each other.  
	Now, as to the events at the actual farmhouse where the shootings occurred, it is clear and it is common cause that it was applicant number one, Maxam, who was the only one who had a firearm, he was the leader of the group and it was he who actually did the shooting.  If I might just, I will deal with, I shall shortly deal with applicant number one's evidence regarding the shooting and his reasons or motives therefore, but if I might say that applicant number two, on his evidence, was not, in fact, present when the, both shootings occurred and the particular point in his favour, in that regard I would submit, is that after they arrived and the gardener said to number two, Ndinisa, please do not shoot me, he went to number one and said do not shoot him. It then transpired number one did shoot him afterwards.  
	I do not want to make a heavy issue out of this, but I presume that number two, applicants two and three were convicted in the trial in this matter on the doctrine of common purpose as were the others who were convicted for the robbery on common purpose and I would ask this Committee to have regard here to the individual roles and the individual explanations of each of the applicants.

JUDGE WILSON: They say they had no common purpose, therefore they are not guilty of these offenses.  Is that not what it amounts to?