Human Rights Violation Hearings — Duncan Village — 1996-09-24

BONGANI FINCA: We thank you all for your evidence.  I would like to make a summary because as far as we can see, this hearing of the Duncan Village massacre, we are not going to put it aside and close the file.
 But I would like to make a summary so that this should be kept in record so that we should know how far we have gone.
 I am therefor going to say the Commission has listened with shock to testimonies of mass murder.  The picture has been placed before the Commission of a village which was turned into a war zone.
 The witnesses who came before the Commission they pointed their fingers to the SADF and the South African police who according to the information placed before us,
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went on the rampage for three successive days engaging themselves in a warfare with a small, impoverished, deprived and neglected community of people who were unarmed.
 In this part of the hearing we have seen men and children and children shed tears for their loved ones.
 We note that according to the evidence, that has been placed before us up to this time, the Government which was in power at that time, whose security forces were involved in this massacre, was left cold by the mass murder of the people of Duncan Village.
 We note also that no action was taken to order a judicial enquiry into this event.  According to the evidence placed before us at this time, even the so called opposition parties in Parliament which have claimed to have a very clean record of Human Rights advocacy have according to the evidence before us, done nothing to force the Government of the day to order an judicial enquiry.
 So as far as we are concerned, after listening from the morning session of yesterday and the morning session of today, the victims of the Duncan Village massacre, we note that this hearing is not closed, the file of this hearing will remain open.
 There are a few things that we want to place on record to be requested.  We are requesting the SADF and the SAPS to deliver to us as a matter of urgency a full list of the officers who were in charge of the SADF and the SAP here in East London at the time, because we will need them to come before the Commission.
 We need the names of Doctors and other medical personnel who were in charge of the hospitals involved with the victims of this massacre.
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 We need a submission by the MD's of Companies who have been cited as accomplices in the testimonies that we have listened to.
 Lastly, for us to complete our hearing we need a submission by a person in authority who can represent the RSA Government at the time to answer some questions which we are having about the massacre that took place.
 As soon as this evidence has been placed before us or this information has been placed before us, we are then going to convene another hearing possibly here in this hall, where we will complete the hearing of the Duncan Village massacre. 
 My colleague has just passed on a note that in my summation I must also request that the attorneys who were representing the victims, specially there is an attorney here who is mentioned constantly, we would like that attorney also to make a submission so that we can then take all those submissions into consideration before we draw our final report on the Duncan Village massacre.
 I would like to thank the people who have given us their testimony and your bravery, the way you have shown that though you have gone through this suffering, we salute those who died.  
 We say that although you live in one of the most deprived areas in the country, one of the most disadvantaged areas.  Yesterday we took a walk just to look round here in Duncan Village, and we were shocked by what we saw, the amount of deprivation that is visible in this place of Duncan Village.
 But these people who have testified before us, have shown that although they come from that kind of area, they 
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remain strong and undaunted and we salute them and we say thank you to them.
 We will come back at two o'clock to listen to other cases as in their correlated (indistinct) at four o'clock, we stand again then until two o'clock.