Amnesty Hearings — East London — 1997-03-17

MR BRINK: Yes I will not be long.  I see it is five past one, but if we could continue for a few minutes, it will give us time to get the next application ready if we conclude this one.
	Yes, I have no difficulty with the aspects of full disclosure Mr Chairman and members of the Committee at all. And I also have no real difficulty with all things being equal, no difficulty with an assault which may have been perpetrated on a political detainee.  The question is where does one draw the 
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MR HOLE	64	ADDRESS
line?   You have here men having been charged with crimen injuria.  That, in this particular case, amounts to an offence of a sexual nature.  I have grave difficulty in seeing how an offence of that sort can be said to have been committed with a political objective in view.
	I accept what my colleague has said in regard to the situation then prevailing in Ciskei.   I accept that there 
was an awful atmosphere, and I accept that everyone was being rounded up whenever there was the slightest suspicion of disloyalty to government -  (Background very noisy.)

HASSAN MALL: You cannot compete with that noise.

MR BRINK: Certainly not.   As I say I accept that there was -the situation then prevailing in Transkei was such that anyone who was vaguely suspected of being disloyal to the government would have been picked up, detained, beaten up, tortured and so on, yes, but the essence of the problem with which you're faced is whether an offence of a sexual nature can be regarded as having been committed with a political objective.

JUDGE WILSON: It was not of a sexual nature in any normal sense of the word was it, Mr Brink?  It was torturing someone by administering some liquid to their sexual organs, it was not for any sexual gratification.

MR BRINK: Well, I say this with respect if you have a naked woman and you tell her to take off her underclothes, make her lie on the floor and then you mock at her genitalia.

JUDGE WILSON: You humiliate her as much as you can.  You kick her around. It was absolute brutality and humiliation.  It was not in the normal thing that people commit sexual offences to achieve some sort of sexual gratification. There is no suggestion of that here, is there?

MR BRINK: Well, if there had been improper sexual behaviour, EAST LONDON HEARING	AMNESTY/E CAPE
MR BRINK	65	ADDRESS
in the sense that improper advances had been made I take your point, but there must have been some degree of gratification for these men to behave as they did, but I accept what you say, Mr Chairman, I accept what you say in regard to the - it wasn't a sexual offence in the ordinary accepted meaning of the term.  I take the point.
	In conclusion then I ask the Committee to please have these two victims referred, in terms of Section 22, to the Reparations and Rehabilitation Committee.

JUDGE WILSON: It is a relevant factor isn't it which hasn't been mentioned by the applicants that while the attack on Miss Msutwana was taking place it was done in the presence from time to time of a Lt Col who was in charge of them, who walked in and out, who took part in the assault at times.  He knew what was going on.

MR BRINK: Yes, that is relevant in regard to all of this.  I presume or condoning the behaviour.   Of course there is no evidence that that person himself gave a specific order for the assaults to take place, but he certainly associated himself with them.

JUDGE WILSON: Well he kicked her himself.	And the other factor that I think is relevant to indicate the attitude of the Ciskei Police as a whole is the effort made by Col Simandla, to make known what had happened to him and was just ignored.  He told the Station Commander, he said oh nothing can be done about it.  He told a visiting Colonel, nothing was done.  He saw the injuries, but apparently no further reports were made, it was allowed to drift on, which would appear to indicate that it was accepted by those higher ranking and in other things that this was the way things happened in the Ciskei at the time.
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MR BRINK	66	ADDRESS

MR BRINK: I agree.

HASSAN MALL: Mr Hole do you wish to reply?

MR HOLE: I have nothing to say in reply.  Thank you Mr Chairman.

HASSAN MALL: The Committee will consider the application and make known its decision in due course.   Thank you.
	We will adjourn now and resume at two o'clock.
COMMITTEE ADJOURNS
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