Special Hearings — Mandela United Football Club Hearings — 1997-11-24

MR MOKOENA: I wouldn't discount that, I wouldn't discount that.

MR SEMENYA: And basically again given that moment, I don't know you can tell me that I am wrong, the province of your participation in that area was not really to verify whether there has been criminal conduct of this nature and whether it is supported by proper evidence, it was more a question of diffusing that tension wherever the blame lay.

MR MOKOENA: Precisely, precisely.

MR SEMENYA: Now the question about the young men at the yard, did any one of them aver that they were seen by a doctor?

SIDNEY MUFAMADI: I think particularly Katiza did, but I am not very sure.  To the best of my recollection I think he did aver that they were seen by a doctor not only when we were talking to them as they were still in the residence but I think he repeated that at the Dobsonville meeting.

MR SEMENYA: No I am trying to establish about when they were in the residence, did any of those young men confirm to you that yes there was a doctor here?

FRANK CHIKANE: I think that what I remember it's what Mrs Mandela said to us, but I wouldn't remember the details.

MR SEMENYA: I think what Mrs Mandela said was that she did take Katiza to the doctor which is fair, but what I am trying to establish is whether they doctor came to the residence and my information is not.  Do you own any information inconsistent with mine?

FRANK CHIKANE: No we have no information.

SIDNEY MUFAMADI: No we have no information to that effect.

MR SEMENYA: About paragraph 22 of your memorandum or the report may I just confirm that according to the information that was supplied to you, the boys were in the house out of their own volition?

SIDNEY MUFAMADI: Yes.

MR MOKOENA: Yes, that's correct.

MR SEMENYA: According to my information Mr Mokoena is that prior to the occasion of the burning of the house there was a dispute involving the soccer players in the proper sense of the word and some other team whose members belonged to the Daliwonga School, do you recall that?

MR MOKOENA: Yes I do recall that there was a bit of a rivalry about the name.  You know young people are very impressionable so there are these who felt they also want to share in the name and why should the one group call itself by such a glorious name and not themselves.  So there were these boyish recriminations.

MR SEMENYA: What I am trying to confirm is did you gain an impression that the dispute arose out of playing of soccer?

MR MOKOENA: I wouldn't specially remember but I wouldn't also rule it out because of what I have just said here now that here was a group of youth and you know, or perhaps arrogated to themselves the use or the appellation of a Mandela Football Club and then the other youngsters were jealous about the use of that name which appeared exclusive to the one group and not to the other.  So I wouldn't rule out the fact that there could have been certain negative events that might have culminated into what you have just said now purely because of the choice of the appellation "Mandela".  But as I say it was just part of the rumours really, that story that we had informally banned it, so one can't really crystallise them and say in a formalistic sense that was the case.

MR SEMENYA: Am I correct though that at the time even the Daliwonga students themselves carried with them a particular tag like boys from that school were associated with the jack-rolling which was the term at the time?

MR MOKOENA: I wouldn't say specifically from Daliwonga school but you see jack-rolling became a plague in the township like the Wire Gang and what not, and so quite a lot of young people were involved in those devious acts.  It was quite possible that some of those might have been Daliwonga students.

MR SEMENYA: My information again is long before the burning of the house Mrs Mandela having arrived from seeing Mr Mandela at the time came back and dissolved the team, do you have any information to gainsay that?

MR MOKOENA: The team was ultimately dissolved but I do not know at what point really, my memory is a bit blurred.  I do remember that she did go to see our father, President Mandela and came back and ultimately the team petered out.

MR SEMENYA: But not withstanding there were still the young men who were in that house wearing the Mandela United Football Club outfit, is that correct?

MR MOKOENA: Oh yes they were very jealous of their uniform and you know their outfit and because of the aura surrounding the credibility that this name carried.

YASMINE SOOKA: Mr Semenya I don't want to interfere in your cross-examination but I really want to get a clear answer on this, are you Mr Mokoena saying in your evidence that the team was disbanded and that when you visited the house these were just boys who were wearing the Mandela club uniform?

MR MOKOENA: No, no that's not what we are saying, I am not saying that, I am saying the Club petered out, right and when it petered out I do not know at exactly what point it petered out and whether it was immediately after Mrs Mandela had been to see President Mandela or not, and the fact that people kept on wearing you know these tracksuits and so on and so on, even after there was a de facto admission that the Club had been disbanded.  That's what I am saying.

YASMINE SOOKA: May I fellow that up with another question.  Then why in your press statement, because I assume this is afterwards, that there is one of the objectives to have the Club disbanded?

MR MOKOENA: That it's a question of communication.  I am responding to a question that is unfolding, the climax of which is the fact that the Club ultimately got disbanded, now what is germane here is, when did it disband, and I don't recollect precisely when it disbanded.  And I know that Mrs Mandela went to see Mr Mandela about this issue here and subsequently the Club petered out, right.  That's the one part I am saying.
 Then the question is asked, am I aware that some of the youth kept on wearing the uniform etc etc, and I say that it's a, it was a kind of a fashion for them to carry on doing that even if the Club was disbanded because they liked the aura and that was where the resistance was of these youngsters in not wanting to disband because they were basking in the glory of the Mandela Football Club, I mean that's quite obvious.  There was no ceremony where they burnt all the T-shirts and their uniforms, that's the point I am trying to make.

FRANK CHIKANE: Ja I think I mean the questions to Aubrey Mokoena are related to events before and thereinafter and some, not all of us would know all that.  From the way in which I recollect these events is that I really didn't come close to finding out what the Club is doing, who are members of the Club, and where do they play their football, that's what they were called and we were looking at the collective in the house ultimately, in its totality irrespective of whether one is in the Club or not.  The question for us was the young people in the house where - was our concern, that was the issue, I wouldn't know when, whether the Club dissolved or .....

MR SEMENYA: Now maybe just to tidy up that area a little, when you make the communication and you describe them as a football team on what did you base that description, that they were a football team?

SIDNEY MUFAMADI: Communication in which document on page what?

MR SEMENYA: If you look at Annexure C on page 3 there are sub-paragraphs there, the third one reads
"That the Football Club be dismantled forthwith".
When you use that terminology, "The Football Club must be dismantled forthwith", did you have, as a fact, that there was a football club in existence?