Human Rights Violation Hearings — Soweto — 1996-07-23

YASMINE SOOKA: Could I just stop you there and ask you a few things.  It seems very much that when the police were facing the students that they might have panicked as well and that as they shot their way to get through, that they might have panicked at seeing this crowd of students facing them.  What is your opinion of that?
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MURPHY MOROBE: Well, I mean, I do not know whether they panicked.  Certainly when we were on trial and they gave evidence, they never suggested that they panicked, you know.  I would imagine that panicking in a situation like that is quite normal.  We panicked ourselves, you know, we were being shot at.  We were students that were being shot at and we panicked and when you panic, it is necessary, it is quite usual that you will do, sometimes you can do a stupid thing, but whether what you do can be justified on the basis of panic, especially if a police force that had at its disposal, you know, the kind of shooting power that they had, that had armoured vehicles that could protect them and that had the benefit of radio communication, etc.  I am not sure, but when I heard this policeman testifying in our trial, it is possible that some of them might panic, but it is also possible that some of them were just, you know, used, you know, in that situation.  They had no control over their action because there was this white commander whose prerogative it was to issue the orders for them to shoot.

YASMINE SOOKA: Just in terms of, did the police fire any after they sent the dog in?  Did they issue any kind of warning statement asking the students to disperse?  You mentioned that there was one teargas canister, but did they not try any other means of getting the students to disperse before they actually shot off with ammunition?

MURPHY MOROBE: There were definitely no other means because where I was standing I had a very clear vantage point of seeing the police line from the top of the hill.  There was no attempt whatsoever, you know, to tell us to disperse.  I certainly did not see any instrument that they would normally have to use to actually make that kind of
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announcement.  It was a matter of them stepping out of their vehicles, taking position alongside their vehicles and sending the police dog into us.  He might have shouted, you know, but any well-trained policeman who respects human life would know that he or she would have to do that in such a way that the people for whom that announcement is meant, hear it.  Otherwise, even if he did it, for the fact that it had been said in a way that we did not hear it, it probably in my mind would mean that it was not meant to be heard.

YASMINE SOOKA: You mention also that what shocked you was the fact that the policemen who actually shot under the command of this white Officer, were black policemen.  Are these policemen still, were they ever charged, are they still working in the police force, are they still living in the community?

MURPHY MOROBE: I mean, I know this particular one that came to give evidence in our trial and my recollection is that he would have left the police force because in subsequent years I use to see him on some of the advertisement boards.  So he must have become a model or something because he was advertising some product or the other.  As to what happened to the rest of the policemen, I have no way of knowing because they certainly did not appear at our trial.
 I think that when it comes to our trial, it is one of those things that really grieves me because I think what happened was that we then had to be used as a scapegoat for their own inaptitude at handling the situation on June 16th.  They had to find a scapegoat to charge us and to do that they had to go and uncover an old charge that was never used since Bambata because Bambata, the Bambata Rebellion was about the last time when this charge was used against 
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anyone, you know, it was more than 50 years they did not use that kind of thing.  They used the charge of sedition against us and the built up these charges so that we had to bear the responsibility of all the things that happened in the township.  One of the, because my charging, our charge, the charge was laid against us not in 1976, but only in 1978 in solitary confinement and they then brought the charges against us only in 1978, June, but before that they then put in place the Cillie Commission, you know.  
 The Cillie Commission was then put in place and used to try and find justification for what the police did in Soweto and other townships.  They interrogated us at John Vorster Square, they tortured us to get statements from us, statements that would implicate other people and statements that would suggest that no one was behind the planning, students could not have planned this.  They came and said, no, Winnie Mandela must have been involved in this, Dr Moklana must have been involved in this.  There was clearly someone else other than you chaps who were involved in this.  So they used the Cillie Commission to try to find a place where to put blame on and they pulled us out of our detention cells at John Vorster Square, they took those same statements that were extracted from us under torture and they forced us to read them before that Cillie Commission.  So that the judge can then say, this statement proves what the police have been saying and they were able to use a tactic at that point to try to actually get the message out to people out in Soweto like Dr Moklane that this was going to happen.  We were then to find a way of actually cancelling out those statements which caused us later to be recalled to the Cillie Commission where when the police came SOWETO HEARING GAUTENG PROVINCE
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and said to us, are you going to take this statement and confirm it to the judge?  We refused and we knew what refusal meant because we were still in detention, we did not have visits, we did not have access to anybody, but the police, but we still refused to accept that those statements are true, in fact, and justifiable statements to be used in that Commission.  We then refused and that actually demolished the police case and they were not able to get to the point, but I was in detention.  I do not know what the outcome was, but it seems subsequently somehow Justice Cillie managed to find some magical conclusion that would actually say that the police were not responsible for what happened.  
 That set the basis for us being charged in 1978 for having organised the march on June 16th and also for everything else that happened including the burning of some of the security policemen's homes in Rockville, the houses of Majoro and Leklake, I think it was that stayed in 155 and 154 Rockville.  They came and testified, but it was all circumstantial and we were basically held up as being the ones responsible for the events.

YASMINE SOOKA: Could you also tell us about what sort of actually happened after June 1976 in terms of the events that followed later which were prior to your own arrest and detention and focus a little bit on how you tried to link up with the liberation movements?