Special Hearings — Political Party — 1998-05-06

YASMINE SOOKA: I think the difficulty that we actually sit with is that there's a peculiar group of young people who don't fall within any particular structure, the ANC hasn't really taken responsibility for them.   And many of them claim in their amnesty applications that they acted on the instructions basically of the UDF and the range of acts for which they apply for amnesty basically relate to killing.
 I think the drinking of fish oil, the forcing of people to eat soap powder, many of them regard that as not falling within the ambit of the Act.  And you say at page 11 of your submission that, sorry at page 13 of your submission that:
"We do not believe that the mere assertion by an amnesty applicant, that he or she was acting in the name of the UDF should be entitle such a person to be granted an amnesty"
 I think the parameters, and we need to hear that from you given the background that you've sketched and the context, you say the Amnesty Committee should look at these actions.  Part of our problem is we didn't design the Act and the Act clearly states that you have to prove that you acted with express or implied authority. 
 Now if you look at your submission, the overall thread that runs through it is that you talk about peaceful process and you concede of course that a climate could have been created in terms of which people obviously acting below could perhaps understand that to mean that necklacing, killing of councillors, that sort of thing was condoned and think that's what Mr Mpshe was trying to elicit from you.  
 What would you consider to be the boundaries in terms of which the Amnesty Committee should find that someone was in fact carrying out or could have been found to have been carrying out the instructions of the UDF because that's the difficulty that they sit with.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Morobe?

MURPHY MOROBE: I wanted to raise a matter which could have been useful earlier, before Miss Sooka's input now.  However, just to deal with the point that she was making now.  In terms of express authority from the UDF, I think our submission puts it quite clearly that that would not have been possible, that doesn't obtain at all but it certainly does leave you with the consideration of implied authority in this particular instance.
 And even your own submissions eludes as much, that there is a strong case that can be made for a number of those cases, for them to have implied such connotations to statements that could have been made either considerately or even recklessly for that matter but of course even reckless becomes a mood point in the contents of our known affinity, to be poetic when we speak on public platforms to give things in fairly expressive and flowery language to try to present across a strong message.
 I could argue that matches and necklaces does not necessarily force anyone to go and do anything in particular but in the context of the time it could actually suggest implied you know, acquiescence to particular acts because necklacing and ...[indistinct] could be an expressive and a motive way in giving expression to your anger to the way in which you want an issue to be taken up strongly.
 So clearly in fact in our case it does leave us only with that particular option, considering that there isn't any express authority.  There's never been express authority from the UDF for anyone to do the kinds of acts that constitute gross violations of human rights.
 But the point I wanted to make as well is that, what hasn't come out in our input today is the whole question of necklacing and the role of the previous regime in the promotion, perpetuation and execution of some of these acts.  
 There are submissions that I think have come before the Truth Commission already that do indicate that irrespective of who started the first necklace and who learnt from who, because once the one happens the whole thing takes another spiral, it begins to feed into each other.
 Then you had at the time, if you recall, the National Management Strategic entity and centres, the JMC's of which Mr Roelf Meyer was actually the Chairperson at the time, and they actually got involved expressly in activities that sought at some instances to emulate whatever activities and so on the ground and begin to reintroduce them and make people come in and get involved in activities that will be seen almost as if they are sanctioned by an organisation.
 I don't know how the Committee is going to be able to distinguish between those particular acts because some of these people who are applying for amnesty in respect of this matter, some of them might have been caught in some of those false flag operations that the State had actually engineered at that time.
 Now for us it's difficult to actually be able to separate the two but clearly we tend only to be guided by the broad thrust and sweep of our basic policy but only leave room sufficient enough to accommodate those people who would have been caught in this move and where they would have interpreted their own actions, almost if they were sanctioned by the organisation given the fact that impimpis were not liked in the township.
 And even at times when we didn't make too much noise about necklacing it was perhaps because, who was killed, an impimpi.  Now if you look back at what the consequences of activities of impimpis had been amongst our communities, you could argue that theirs have been much more grossly, perhaps much more gross than what has actually happened to them.
 You can take the operations of the SADF into neighbouring territories, the role of impimpis at that time.  So clearly there are instances here, perhaps there are quite a ...[indistinct] in the applications that we have, where the application of implied authority could be gleaned from, given the fact that the very same people that were acted upon, especially in the context where this could be clearly defined as being either informers of operatives of the previous regime could be seen as being amongst a cluster of people or institutions that were on the opposite side of the liberation movement.

CHAIRPERSON: We've spent quite a lot of time on this particular question but I think it's an extremely important one.  Would I be correct in saying that in general the whole question of implied authority could be summed up in your statement on page 16?  This is under the section D
"Political Climate and Responsibility"
and it begins with the words:
"We concede"
It does seem to me that that is an extremely important concession in the light of our, and sums up for all us I think where you are, would you agree?
 Mr Mpshe, you must be despairing of us because we keep cutting right across you.  I'm sure you would have done a much better job but we feel deeply about these issues.  Could you go on then to some of the other questions and focus on the ones that you think are absolutely crucial?