Human Rights Violation Hearings — Queenstown — 1996-07-22

BONGANI FINCA: We ask Ntsiki Sandi to lead the witness in her evidence.

MR SANDI: I would like to firstly greet you Ms Matshoba and your daughter, Balakazi.  If I remember when we spoke on Saturday in the room near the door, you Ms Matshoba said that because you did not have full particulars about the shooting incident of you son, Andile Matshoba, your daughter who is seated next to you, Balakazi, is the one who is going to give evidence today.  Is that right Ms Matshoba?

UNKNOWN: Yes, that is so.

MR SANDI: If I remember correctly very briefly, the story that you are coming to tell before the Commission today, is about the shooting and killing of your son, Andile Matshoba and I gather that he was still very young when this happened on the 7th of September 1985.
 Can you just tell us Ms Matshoba why you sent him to Mdantsane with your daughter?

UNKNOWN: The reason I sent Andile to stay with his sister in Mdantsane was that I found that he was very active in the struggle and I realised that he was going to give us problems in his struggle for our rights, for Human Rights.
 And I remember him saying at some stage that we want each yard to have a toilet.  I didn't mention this in my statement, but I remember him having said that we want each yard to have a toilet, we do not want to use the public 
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toilets.

MR SANDI: Can I ask you to please come a bit closer to the microphone so that you can be a bit more audible.

UNKNOWN: I then saw that oh, this child is going to give us problems, he must rather go, because as an old woman, he was going to make me very nervous.
 What I'm saying now, I did not write in my statement as far as him saying that he wants each yard to have a toilet, he also said that we want our rights, we are fighting for freedom and we want our President to be freed.
 Once again I did not include all this in my statement, I'm just mentioning it because I realised that as an old woman he was going to make me very nervous so I sent him to his sister in Mdantsane so that he could stay there and that's where he was shot.
 And she is the one that has more particulars.

MR SANDI: The President Andile mentioned that they wanted freed, who was it?

UNKNOWN: It was President Mandela while he was still incarcerated.  He was saying that we are fighting that Madiba should be freed from jail.

MR SANDI: Which organisation was he involved in?

UNKNOWN: Andile was a member of COSAS and in Mdantsane he was the Branch Secretary of COSAS.
 So the police were looking all over for him, the Ciskei police, looking for him at his sister's place.  And sometimes if they turned up and Andile wasn't there, they would say to my daughter that we are going to shoot him, and thereafter they followed him and they shot him on the 7th of September.
 So my daughter is going to give you better details
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 because he was living with her.

MR SANDI: Do you mean now, Ms Matshoba that the time has - you at this stage want to hand over to your daughter for her to tell the story?

UNKNOWN: Yes, I would like to hand over to her.

MR SANDI: Thank you very much Ms Matshoba.  We would now like to come to you.  When we were talking you said that the story that you are going to tell here today you are going to tell in the following manner
 You said firstly you are going to speak very briefly about what happened between Andile and the police while he was living with you in Mdantsane.
 Thereafter you will speak about what happened on the 7th of September 1985, the way in which he was killed, where he was killed, whereabout in Mdantsane, who was he with and you said you would also speak about what happened while you people were preparing for the funeral, the way in which you were treated after having a child killed, is that right Balakazi?

B MDINGI: That's right.

MR SANDI: Let us start at the beginning.  You said that the - what happened between Andile and the police, what was the situation between Andile and the police?

B MDINGI: Andile went to Mdantsane because we believed that the way in which he would be handled in Ciskei would be better that the way he was handled here in Queenstown.
 At the same time, he was very close to my husband, so I was confident that he would have ways of protecting him and guiding him.  He went to Filamaxole.
 The way in which he was involved at school - I was very close to his teachers and also his colleagues with whom he 
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was involved in the struggle.  In the town there was a lot of conflict in Queenstown, there was also a state of emergency.  There were children at Nombendilo who were killed.
 The students in the whole of the Ciskei then had an uprising and the police would refer to Andile as a troublemaker from Queenstown who should know that the manner in which he conducted himself here in Queenstown, was not tolerated in Ciskei.
 So there were a lot of threats on his life, but we received reassurance from his teachers, because he was very close to his teachers.
 He was a very poetic person, a very diligent student and someone that wrote a lot, so we found that the description that we received was not the same as the one that we were getting from the people at school and the police and at home.
 The people that were killed in the Duncan Village massacre, Andile spoke at their funeral and he did not sleep at home after that funeral because there were direct threats on his life.
 He and his colleagues would be taken around to the places where people were killed.  People such as Eric Mtonga in East London and other students who were detained.
 And it became obvious that they were showing that this is what we do to people like yourselves, we are not going to detain you, we are going to shoot you.  We are not going to keep you alive, we are going to kill you because you are a threat to the stability of the schools in Ciskei.
 So that whole week after the funeral he did not sleep at home, but we had daily contact with him and we were sure 
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that they were protected.
 On the 7th of September according to a report we received from his school mates, we last saw him on the 7th, on the afternoon of the 7th they, according to his school mates, they were sitting at a house in NU 10 where a fellow female comrades of theirs stayed.
 They realised that it was dark already and decided that they are not going to leave that house, they are going to sleep there.
 And this girl said, it will not be a problem with these people, but it could be problematic, so I think you'd rather leave.
 At about 9 pm, they opened the door to leave and there were lights flashing outside which made it obvious that there was a vehicle waiting outside.
 Their first reaction was to run away, because they realised that it must be the police.  From the people that alighted from the vehicle, one of them shouted Andile and he had to react in a way that made them sure that this was Andile, because the shots that followed after that, made it clear that he fell and two of his mates fell at a nearby house and the others scattered.
 Because there was a state of emergency and there was a curvue and they knew that they were being looked for by the police, they could not go out and look.
 They woke up the following day at about 4 am and they went back in the direction of the houses in which they ran.

MR SANDI: Who are we talking about now?  Are you talking about  Mundu Bartman?

B MDINGI: Yes, it was Mundu Bartman and Archie Dundu.  There was also another one by the name of Boboyi.
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MR SANDI: Were these his friends?