Human Rights Violation Hearings — Bisho — 1996-09-10

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.  I don't know, I mean my colleagues may want to ask some questions although we obviously have had your submission just now as it were but it may be that there are people who are able to respond or react quickly.  Perhaps let me retrace my steps.  My colleague here suggests that perhaps we should ask your colleagues accompanying you as it were, or sitting on the podium with you, who didn't have written submissions, I mean that they might in fact have a perspective by just a verbal submission, a brief verbal submission indicating the thinking and their own perspectives on this march and the tragic consequences.

MICKEY WEBB: Your Grace I am happy to stand down but I would like to make an observation that I have not consulted with any one of the gentlemen on the podium and I don't believe that there has been any common vision shared at this.

CHAIRPERSON: What we are just trying is perhaps to hear from them and then have the opportunity of questioning.  No, no, you don't stand down.  You just move away from the microphone.  Yes.

MICKEY WEBB: With pleasure, with pleasure Sir.

TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION: BISHO MASSACRE - DAY 2 - 10 SEPTEMBER 1996

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. Order please! Mr Jacobs?

MR JACOBS: Thank you Your Excellency.  My verbal submission does not run very far away from my colleagues.  It is exactly what he has said, you know there was a high strong point of departure between the then Ciskei government and the ANC.
 Now you of course I suppose because of manipulation in the dark because Ciskei was between the ANC and the RSA and the RSA was a domineering power which you have if you serve it you tow the line here and there otherwise they hold the purse.  
 Now many delegations came up to the then government, eminent ministers of religion, a Doctor Geldenhuys who was a peace monitoring officer and many others trying to persuade the government to allow the marchers to come up as far as Bisho.  But the government was adamant because the government then feared that should they come to Bisho, what we think is that they may usurp everything as the placards were saying that.  That was the fear now from this side of the government.
 Now on the day of this, unfortunately I was with him in Pretoria.  I cannot describe it very graphically the 7th September.  On that day we attended a meeting on federalism but from what we heard, when the marchers went into the stadium, when a group of them went through a hole in the fence of the stadium and rushed towards the area where the soldiers had some kind of a road-block for themselves, then it is then that the shooting took place but we couldn't get the answer who gave the direction or the instruction to do this  [indistinct].
 Then after that day then there was a commotion, a high tension in the area.  People's houses were burnt down, some of the security forces were removed from their houses to be housed at Mount Cook.  That's my verbal contribution Your Excellency.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.

TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION: BISHO MASSACRE - DAY 2 - 10 SEPTEMBER 1996

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Zantsi?

MR ZANTSI: Can I begin sir?

CHAIRPERSON: Yes please, I thought I had already said please come.  Thank you very much.

MR ZANTSI: Thank you very much.  Your Grace I would like to state categorically that at the time this event happened I was not involved in Ciskeian affairs.  I was a schoolmaster at Hill Town.  I gave my staff permission, they asked for permission quite early and I gave them permission, I said since I have got to go via Fort Beaufort I will follow.
 So unfortunately the Indian, Mr Ragavan, whose transport I used to commute from Fort Beaufort to Hill Town was not available at the time so that I had to go home and not come anywhere into Bisho.  
 When I got home my wife told me that in the news at 1 o'clock there was this announcement that all was not well at Bisho, so that the first that I got to know of what was taking place was what I got from my wife when I got home on the 7th September and I do hope that - I only came onto the government in February 1993, 1st February.
 So that the goings on before, I was not aware of.  It is only when I came in and even then the matter was now history so that I cannot contribute materially about what took place.  But Mr Chairman, I do believe that the happenings of 7th September emanate from the event which culminated in the establishment of a Ciskei self-government.  
 In 1972 when Koornhoff and De Wet Nell dug the first soil here saying they are making self-government possible and it will interest the Commission to know that those of us who were  [indistinct]  then, stood up vehemently and opposed this.  We said we want to remain as part of South Africa and I really cursed the day that the Ciskeians decided and labelled some of us as traitors because we could not accept the concept of self-government.  And from then during the Sebe regime we were sidelined because we believed we were part of South Africa and this dividing of South Africa into states was not conducive for us so that, Mr Chairman, I was in no way connected with it but my views which are known even to the Supreme Court in Grahamstown when I contested the legality of the elections which were held to set up this homeland.  Mr Chairman sir, that is all I can say.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.  Order please!

TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION: BISHO MASSACRE - DAY 2 - 10 SEPTEMBER 1996

CHAIRPERSON: Colonel Peter please have the podium.  I am going to give you a warning.  If I have to repeat - we have come here, I don't know what you have come for, but we came here because we have been given a job to do which is to hear every point of view.  Whether we like that point of view or not, that is not the point.   We have to hear everything so that we are able to describe as fully as we can what it was that happened.  Now I don't, I am not yet cross but I am going in that direction.  I don't want that to happen because I know that you are also interested and your feelings are strong feelings but if your feelings affect how we listen here, we are then going to ask you to take your feelings and leave with them.  But I am asking you again that it is a democracy that we are trying to build up and many of us are believers and believers say that it is possible for all kinds of people, all of us, to change and be different.  That is why we are talking about reconciliation.  
 You don't get reconciled  [indistinct]  you get reconciled with someone with whom you disagree otherwise there would be no point in having reconciliation.  You do not reconcile with someone whom you have no discordance with.  We would not have a Commission if there was reconciliation already.  This Commission exists because all kinds of painful things have happened on all sides and we are being asked to do a small job in a process  [indistinct].  It is all of us who have to accept the pain of what happened in the past to try to move into the future.  I will then ask you, please I beg you, will you give everybody a fair chance and don't let anybody feel under pressure.  Yes Colonel?