Amnesty Hearings — Johannesburg — 1999-02-16

CHAIRPERSON: So you didn't ask him where he got it from?

MR DUBE: I did ask, but I did not enquire about the specifics.

CHAIRPERSON: I didn't get your answer, you didn't enquire about what?  Did you ask him who he got it from?

MR DUBE: He already said that he had been recruited, they had recruited him.

CHAIRPERSON: Who was he said they had recruited him?

MR DUBE: His response was it was the police.

CHAIRPERSON: So he said the police had recruited him, and you thought that's where he got these things from, this transmitter from, is that the position?

MR DUBE: That's correct.

CHAIRPERSON: Cause you see when you wrote your statement you said
"...when I confronted him about these transmitters he said they belonged to this friends."
A somewhat different version.  You now say ...(intervention)

MR DUBE: His first response was that it belonged to a friend.  That is when - at the point when I removed it from him.  So when I explained to him what, that I knew what this device was, it was then that he explained to me that it had been given to him by the police.

CHAIRPERSON: Who had recruited him?  Is that what you said a few minutes ago?

MR DUBE: That is correct.

CHAIRPERSON: Why didn't you put that in your statement?

MR DUBE: Chairperson, I did make a point before that this incident took place a long while ago.  I cannot remember the details specifically, because after the incident I did not record the details about what happened.

CHAIRPERSON: Are you asking us to believe that you would not have remembered that this man told you that he had been recruited by the police and that that was why you killed him?

MR DUBE: I did mention that in the morning.

CHAIRPERSON: You were mentioning earlier as I understood all sorts of theories that because the police had let him go early this meant that he was working with them.  Now you have told us for the first time that he told you that he had been recruited by the police.  I'm quite certain you did not say that this morning.  Did he?  I'm asking you.

MR KOOPEDI: Are you asking me Chairperson?

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.

MR KOOPEDI: Well no, he didn't say that in so many words.

MR DUBE: That was one of the reasons.

ADV SANDI: Sorry Mr Richard.
	All in all, Mr Dube, as I understand what flows from your answers in response to the questions by the Chairman, you are now telling us that we should believe that at the time you were preparing this statement which was submitted to the amnesty Committee, you could not remember, you had forgotten, that this gentleman, Sicelo, had told you that he was recruited by the police.  You had forgotten that.

MR DUBE: No, that is why I mentioned it in the statement itself.

ADV SANDI: It would appear from your evidence this afternoon that you already had the suspicions even before Sicelo was arrested, released, and then disappeared for three months.  You already had suspicions about him.

MR DUBE: As I stated before, I did not know exactly just what was going on.  It was a question I had on my mind.

MR RICHARD: When did you make and prepare this statement, this sworn, this statement sworn under oath as you entitle it.  When did you sit down and type it?

MR DUBE: If I'm not mistaken I was at Shell House, but I do not remember just exactly when.

MR RICHARD: According to the information at my disposal, this was in 1997, sometime that year.

MR DUBE: I would not dispute it, because I do not remember exactly when it was.

MR RICHARD: And then ...(intervention)

ADV SANDI: I'm sorry Mr Richard.  This, are you talking about his statement?  Wasn't that sworn and attested to on the 28th January 1999?

MR RICHARD: The date that it was sworn and attested to isn't necessarily the same as the date on which it was, and I would point out that the amnesty application number is 5310/97.

MR MAPOMA: Sorry Chairperson, for the sake of clarity.  This statement was submitted together with the amnesty application, but they were all not attested to and signed at the time they were submitted, so they were returned to them to sign thereafter on this date.

CHAIRPERSON: ...(indistinct)

MR RICHARD: Nonetheless, what we now have is a situation that while you were in Shell House in 1997 sitting in your office you wrote this statement.  Is that a correct reconstruction?

MR DUBE: Yes.

MR RICHARD: What prompted you to decide then to apply for amnesty?  What was your motive?

MR DUBE: The first reason is that the political situation has changed, we are no longer at, in a situation of war.  And in the spirit of rebuilding the country and divulge all that happened during the apartheid era, those were the reasons that prompted me to apply for amnesty.

MR RICHARD: So you thought very carefully about it and you sat down and wrote the story as you saw it, correct?  And then two years later you get asked to attest it, and you have been thinking about the matter, correct?  Answer?

MR DUBE: Yes, I did think about it, but I discovered that there were a lot of details that I did not remember about the incident because there were many other incidents that I had been involved in.

MR RICHARD: Would you like to tell us about some of those other incidents.

MR DUBE: ...(not interpreted)

MR KOOPEDI: May I interrupt Chairperson.  I did not understand the question, whether it refers to incidences related to this matter or any other incident that the applicant has ever been involved in.

CHAIRPERSON: I understood he was talking about other incidents he had been involved in.

MR RICHARD: I heard the witness say many other incidents.  What were those other incidents, those many other incidents?  Tell us about some of them.

MR DUBE: I was a commander of units.  I have applied for the Ellis Park bombing.  I also applied for amnesty with regard to the Witbank incidents.  Those are such incidents that I'm referring to.

CHAIRPERSON: What was the second incident?  One was the Ellis Park, what was the second one?

MR DUBE: The Witbank incident.

CHAIRPERSON: Witbank?

INTERPRETER: Witbank.

MR RICHARD: Because here I have a statement by, a note of what was said, of a debriefing of one Mamasela, and he informed the taker of the notes that MK cadre Silver, would that be you?

MR DUBE: My combat name is Silver.

MR RICHARD: And the document reads
"...MK cadre Ithumaleng Malinga Silver allegedly responsible for the Ellis Park car bomb, the Hallmark car bomb, the Witbank car bomb, and now allegedly working for the security police."
Would you say that information is wrong?

MR DUBE: What I can at this point is that I am appearing now before this Committee because of the Sicelo incident.  I was also involved with the Ellis Park incident.  So was I also involved in the Witbank incident, but I do not know about the other incident.

MR RICHARD: The Hallmark incident was an incident in 1990, where the largest bomb in the history of the struggle was found in a building called Hallmark in Pretoria, before it exploded.  For the benefit of the Committee, before I push for an answer ...(intervention)

MR DUBE: I do not know anything about the Hallmark building.

ADV SANDI: Mr Richard, just for my clarity, what is the relevance of that incident to the subject matter of these proceedings, the incident in respect of which he has applied for amnesty?

MR RICHARD: The relevance is that for a particular applicant to obtain amnesty he is compelled and obliged to satisfy seven points, one of which is to make a full and complete disclosure.

ADV SANDI: Should I understand you to say that he is obliged to incriminate himself in respect of acts where he may have been involved but for which he has not applied for amnesty?