Amnesty Hearings — Johannesburg — 1998-11-23

CHAIRPERSON: And a question was put to you on page 6, paragraph 4.9 and I will read the question that was put to you and your response thereto.
"In your application you also state you were personally involved in purchasing of arms to further your objectives"
Then the question proceeds:
"What were these objectives, what happened to the arms that you purchased if arms were distributed to other persons?  Give us their names and addresses and positions within the PAC."
Your response appears on page 8 and your response is as follows:
"My objectives were to undermine the former settler regime to use APLA offensive attacks and to secure and maintain the complete unit of the movement.  Arms were given to my commander, Morapapa, and he is the one who knew what he did with them.  I am yours, sincerely."

PAGE HLALE HLELESI: Just to clarify this issue, I'm not fully conversant with English, I thought that I was clarifying myself.  I was supposed to have given these to him, not that I gave them to him.

CHAIRPERSON: ...[inaudible] Mr Prior here has asked you what political objective did you hope to achieve when you committed the offences in respect of which you are seeking amnesty.  Now it is in respect of that that I am putting these questions to you.  I'm just concerned about your response because your response now sought to elicit the evidence that you knew nothing about any political objectivity that you were seeking to achieve because you were merely acting on instructions and this is not what appears in your application.  In fact the body of your application is full of your own political objectivity as you saw it, even at page 3 if you want me to refer you thereto?  At paragraph 10(a)
"State political objective sought to be achieved"
You say:
"Under oppression and frustration of apartheid my aim and objective was to achieve freedom.  My organisation, the PAC, was disorganised in my area so I wanted to support it."
Is that not your evidence?

PAGE HLALE HLELESI: Yes that is true.

CHAIRPERSON: We'll request you to stick to what you have stated in your application and if you do deviate you must give us an explanation why you are now deviating from the evidence that you have already deposed to, which is before us.

ADV PRIOR: Thank you Madam Chair.
	Mr Hlelesi, let's cut to the chase.  The reasons why you committed these acts that you give in your amnesty application at page 3 and at page  8 of the bundle as read out to you by Madam Chair clearly are not correct, are untrue, because the white settler regime had been defeated on the 27th April, eight days before you committed these acts.  Majority ruled, the liberation struggle had been won.  Why would you then have said you committed these acts to achieve freedom and to overthrow or undermine the settler regime?   The war had been won?

PAGE HLALE HLELESI: As you are saying the battle had been won but the war was not yet over because there was a spate of bombings that took place during that time and you cannot say that the war or the battle had been won.  As far as we were concerned the struggle was still continuing in according with Moses Mogaga's instructions and we were furthering the aims of the organisation under the instructions given to us by our commander.

ADV PRIOR: I want to suggest to you and it appears to me from the reading of the papers before us, is that you have attempted to jump on the bandwagon and have tried to use the PAC to explain or to found a political reason in order to escape the very lengthy term of imprisonment of 40 years that you received for these coldblooded and callous crimes that you committed and that is the reason why you say you belonged to the PAC and you committed these acts in the name of the PAC.  Do you want to respond to that?

PAGE HLALE HLELESI: I totally disagree with you on that aspect.  I was a member of the PAC and I did all that I did under the auspices of the PAC and I was a known member of the PAC.  Even the people who know me or who knew me as a member of the PAC would not have come here if they did not know that I was a member of the PAC.

ADV PRIOR: Moses Mogaga, did you ever see him again?

PAGE HLALE HLELESI: No.

ADV PRIOR: What happened to the other members of your unit, Able and Cookoo and these other persons, what happened to them?

PAGE HLALE HLELESI: When I got arrested they fled.

ADV PRIOR: Why didn't you at your trial indicate that you were a member of the PAC, that you were a soldier and that you did these acts in pursuance of a political objective on behalf of the PAC, why did you not say that if that was the case?  We heard the earlier application of Mr Maseko, that at the very outset of his trial indicated that he was an APLA soldier?

PAGE HLALE HLELESI: At that time I knew that PAC was a banned organisation and if I had explained or divulged the fact that I was a member of the PAC I would probably have been sentenced to a maximum number of years because it was a banned organisation then.

ADV PRIOR: Madam Chair, I have no further questions.
NO FURTHER QUESTIONS BY ADV PRIOR

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you Mr Prior.  Ms Bosman?

ADV BOSMAN: I have no questions thank you Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Malan?

MR MALAN: I have no questions Chair.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Hlelesi, in your application, in your written application, you have stated that you received information from a garden boy, I think that appears on page 7 or 8?  Yes page 7.  You say that you received information from a former garden worker of the victim's family about the presence of arms and that's how you started targeting the place and conducting your reconnaissance.  When did you receive this information?

PAGE HLALE HLELESI: The information or I received the information because the people who went there beforehand, Morapapa, then the second time he went with Able.  As to the information and when I got it, I only got it at a later stage after the operation had already ....[inaudible] that they got information from the worker who was there.  All the information came to me after the operation, that is why I'm saying I got the information in that sort of fashion.

CHAIRPERSON: Now you are saying you received information post facto the execution of the operation about the presence of arms and that's how you came to target the house after you had carried on your operation.  How is that possible, I find that completely illogical?

PAGE HLALE HLELESI: I'm talking about myself personally.  Maybe if I had written this in Sotho I would have been able to express myself properly and effectively.  I got the information when he told me that himself and Morapapa received some information from the garden boy.  Because I was also involved, this is how I put it, that we received the information from the garden boy.

CHAIRPERSON: But did Morapapa tell you how he received information which enabled him to target the house?  Did he ever divulge to you how?  So how did you come to say something about information having been received from a garden worker, a former garden worker of the house that you targeted?

PAGE HLALE HLELESI: When I questioned Able as to how they got the information of what was inside the house, that is when he explained to me that he had been told by Morapapa that he got the information from the garden boy but he had been instructed not to tell me but anyway he did tell me, that is after the commission of the act.  I thought they were probably hiding the fact from me because I was still a new recruit and they did not fully trust me with that kind of information.

CHAIRPERSON: Did you disclose that in your application?

PAGE HLALE HLELESI: ...[inaudible, no translation]

CHAIRPERSON: There is no translation that we are getting from the translators.

INTERPRETER: Chairperson, the interpreters did not switch the right buttons, can the witness please repeat?