Special Hearings — Caprivi Hearings — 1997-08-07

MR DE VOS: Thank you, Mr Mkhize.  Mr Mkhize, I don't disagree with what you are saying and I also don't disagree that there was a war inside the country that involved many role-players, but I am here on behalf of a couple of clients who are all members of the old South African Defence Force and the main reason why we are here is because it is alleged that we foresaw the possibility, we were actually in cahoots with Inkatha, planning as a broad strategy eventual murders on people belonging to other political groups.  Now, I want to put it to you, and that is my instructions, that that was never my clients' intentions.  They thought that they were requested by Chief Minister Buthelezi to supply him with some para-military capability in order to give protection to Chief Minister Buthelezi, senior VIP persons, leaders of Inkatha all over KwaZulu/Natal, and that's why they supplied this para-military capability to Inkatha.  Do you agree with that?

WITNESS:   I do not agree with what you've just said, the reason being that if the aim or the objective for Chief Buthelezi was the one that you've just explained, during that time Chief Buthelezi at that time was the Minister of Police within the KwaZulu Government.  Why didn't he take the KwaZulu Police and give them an advance course?  Why did he have to specifically fetch members of Inkatha and why did they specifically have to use this criterion of using Inkatha members and loyal members who were going to be able to keep the Inkatha secrets?  Why didn't he choose amongst the KwaZulu Police if that is

MR DE VOS: /what you are

MR DE VOS: 3A what you are implying?

MR DE VOS: Mr Mkhize, I don't want to debate it, but as I understand the whole problem, Mr Buthelezi was actually sitting on two chairs.  On the one hand he was the Chief Minister and on the other hand he was the Inkatha leader, and whenever he went into the Inkatha areas he couldn't take the KwaZulu Police with him, because, on the one hand he didn't trust all of them.  Secondly, they didn't have a proper capability to protect him and some other people and, thirdly, he wanted it to look as if he and the organization has got the capability to protect himself and various other important people.  Do you understand?

WITNESS:  I don't understand what you're telling me.  Maybe it would be better if I was talking to people who are concerned.  What puzzles me is as to why don't they want to come before the Commission and clarify their objectives, their reasons.  Why don't they come before the Commission as well as the public and tell the public and the Commission as to what their reasons and objectives were?  They have sent a person like you, who talks and says, "I am representing certain people.  I have heard them saying this.  I have heard them saying that".

MR DE VOS: Mr Mkhize, let's be honest with each other.  You are presently serving a gaol sentence.  You applied for amnesty and you want to get back home.  Is that right?  And go on with your life?

WITNESS:   Yes, that is true, I have applied for amnesty, but there is something I would like to explain to you.  Even if I am not granted amnesty to me there is nothing much more important that whatever I have done before, which is in my conscience, I have today divulged it to you.  I have told the people of what

MR DE VOS: /I have done

MR DE VOS: 3A I have done and that on its own gives me peace of mind and peace within myself.  What is important is the situation under which I was living at that place where I was living and I had this blood of people on my hands, as well as their souls.  Now what is important is for me to reinvoke my conscience once more to tell the people.  I feel some sense of relief.

MR DE VOS: Thank you, Mr Mkhize.  Mr Mkhize, what you are saying to this Commission, you actually not pleading on your own behalf but on behalf of all the Zulus in KwaZulu/Natal to come to an agreement so that there can be peace.  Is that right?  I'm not confronting you.  I'm just trying to summarise what you're saying.  Is that right?  ... [end of tape]

MR DE VOS: 3B

MR NTSEBEZA: ... That it is not - even if he never gets out of gaol, if he never gets amnesty, he is only undergoing this exercise because it is self-healing for him.  Now where do you get this thing that all the Zulus are saying the same thing, when he has said previously to that that what concerns him is that there are people here who should be coming here to this forum and taking advantage of this.  I just don't understand you.

MR DE VOS: Yes, can I help you, Mr Commissioner?   Maybe I can help you out of the misunderstanding.  If the other people must also come forward then it means that they must also come and tell their story and the whole story.  That's what you're saying.  They must apply for amnesty and therefore there can be reconciliation.  In other words, they're going for peace.  That's the question I've put to you.  Am I right?

WITNESS:   I'm happy that you've pointed that out, because there can be absolutely no

MR DE VOS: /reconciliation

MR DE VOS: 3B reconciliation without the truth, because that would be highly superficial.  Therefore everybody should come forward and tell their side of the story.  There could be true reconciliation thereafter.

MR DE VOS: Could I then go back to my original questions?  The Defence Force or let me be more specific, a certain Captain Opperman and Cloete, according to the evidence led last year, was involved as liaison officers here in Natal for the 200 Inkatha trainees and, according to Mr Opperman's statement that I've checked just now, he was transferred in November 1989 out of this post.  In other words, then it's also the time that the Army's involvement stopped in Natal.  Now, the only point I want to make, and I put it to you, is that the Esikhaweni murders happened apparently, according to your evidence, round about 1991.  Do you agree?

WITNESS:   From 1991 up to 1993, when I was arrested on August, the 18th.

MR DE VOS: At that stage you were under the command of the KwaZulu Police?  That's when the murders occurred.

WITNESS:   Yes, I was working as a policeman.

MR DE VOS: Now, why then - maybe you can help us out of the predicament.  Why is the Army then being blamed for the Esikhaweni murders?

MR MACADAM: I don't want to interrupt, Mr Chairperson, but can the witness be entitled to comment on that?  This surely should be a question that should go to Mr Varney.  He was the person who made a submission between the link of the former South African Defence Force and the activities of hit squads in KwaZulu/Natal.

WITNESS:   Can I answer?

MR LAX: Mr Mkhize did say if it wasn't for his training

MR LAX: /he wouldn't have

MR LAX: 3B he wouldn't have been where he was today, so in a sense he does link the murders that he carried out to his training by the military.

WITNESS:   I wish to explain to this Commission that I've never said that the soldiers were killing people.  I've spoken about myself, as well as the syndicate which was under my control, as well as the local leadership of Esikhaweni, superiors in Ulundi, the group with whom I was killing people.  I have never spoken about the soldiers.

MR DE VOS: You see, Mr Mkhize, what I also don't understand from your evidence, you were trained in the Caprivi to become members of the KwaZulu Police Force.  That's the basic departure of your whole story.

MR WILLS: Sorry, that wasn't his evidence at all.  Sorry, whose statement?  He said in his evidence that he was told he was going to join the KwaZulu Police and that's the basis on which he agreed to go from Nhlungwane camp to the Caprivi, but he didn't say that when he was in the Caprivi.

MR DE VOS: I expressed myself wrongly then.  The point I'm trying to make he was all out throughout under the impression that as soon as he's finished with his training he's joining the KwaZulu Police.