Human Rights Violation Hearings — Uitenhage — 1996-08-28

UNKNOWN: Thank you.  The last question.  As residents    ...- which were given to this group, or were they treated in the same way as the rest of the community?

NETISI TOTO: In terms of municipal services, I will say, we enjoyed more-or-less the same treatment, the old Kwanubushle and the Khayelitsha residents.  In terms of security logistics, then we could see those differences.  For example, our areas were cordoned off by security forces, whenever there has to be some raids, which is something which was not an exercise in terms of the other areas, in particular Khayelitsha.

PANEL MEMBER: Today, as we live in our community, can you in fact identify members of Ama-Afrika, that you knew at the time who are presently living in the community, and if you can, what is the attitude towards them, in other words, I am trying to see if there are any underlying conflicts or tension because they are still living in the community.

NETISI TOTO: I want to be honest with you.  We had quite a
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number of them, even in this gathering here, I identify some of them, but as I have mentioned, the peace settlement that we broke in fact, that we initiated in 1989, I think it was a master plan in terms of, we wish all the country should have followed us in terms of Uitenhage.  It is only Uitenhage that could fit around the table and resolve issues of difference, once and for all and that is why we are very proud of that, and that is why we start to question why Uitenhage is not valued.  I will say, most of them, presently we happen to interact on developmental programmes despite the fact that they happen to be Africans in thinking, but in terms of development, ideology is not what divides us.  This is why I am saying that this is what we are proud of, in terms of Uitenhage.

PANEL MEMBER: I think in terms of taking examples from Uitenhage, what do you think facilitated the move towards this peace?

NETISI TOTO: I would say the - apart from being too artificial, but I think the fact that we happen to know each other, we call ourselves Uitenhagers.  We don't talk of Lange, Kwanubushle, Rosedale, we are saying we are Uitenhage people and because we happen to be Uitenhage people we know each other very well, and we know our mistakes, our weak points, our strong points, and because we happen to interrace on our every day to day social activities in terms of church, in terms of sport, in terms of commercial, in terms of industrial activities, that makes us know each other more than one might expect.  I think that element is the most crucial and the most reinforcing factor that ensures a possibility of creeping of any kind of misconduct in any sphere.  That is why even we could know when our colleagues
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were taking another path, deviating from our original vow deposition that we are going to crumble apartheid.  We could know that our colleagues are now deviating because what we had vowed in 1975, with some of them, in 1986, in the 80's, it made it easy to detect this deviation, and this is why we could say the element of the task force is manipulating elsewhere.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Toto, we thank you, if time was allowing we would spend this whole day talking to you because you give us much interest in this matter.  We are therefore going to go back to the political organisations very soon, especially the matter that has been mentioned by the national party which is the unconventional strategies, where they say that because of the intensification of the resistance, they say they had to resort to unconventional strategies.
 You have mentioned some are here in Uitenhage, which is connected with this matter, and actually even promoting conflict as long as it is targeted on those who are resisting it's policies, and the questions that we are having is how much expenditure went into this kind of support, and how much energy was spent in promoting the Vet Doeks of this world, the ADM's of this world, the INKATA's of this world, and the manifestations that you are telling us about here in Uitenhage.
Thank you very much