Amnesty Hearings — Johannesburg — 1998-02-17

CHAIRPERSON: Well surely it was vitally important that you should let your organisation know what had happened so they could prepare to deal with this if it suddenly blew up in their face that this young hero of the struggle was a police informer who had been executed by his own organisation.  Wasn't that very important, that the ANC should have been informed of this?

JOHN ITHUMALENG DUBE: Yes, it was important, that I know.

CHAIRPERSON: And you made effort to at all till after July.

JOHN ITHUMALENG DUBE: What I said is that the situation was not conducive for me to have done that at the time.  I was in difficult conditions and it's a different time altogether from now.

CHAIRPERSON: Was it that you did not want the ANC to know that you had been responsible for the death of this young man?

JOHN ITHUMALENG DUBE: No, that is not so, I did want it to know, or the organisation to know.

MR RICHARD: But you did nothing to let them know until very late in the day, in other words after ...(intervention)

JOHN ITHUMALENG DUBE: I deny the fact you've put forward now that I did nothing, I did explicitly emphasise the fact that the situation at the time was not conducive for me to have done that.  The only problem that there is here is that I delayed in giving the report.

MR RICHARD: I put it to you it would have been a simple and easy matter and completely regular and normal for you to break whatever chain of command there was and tell the truth.  It would have been expected of you to do that, nothing less.  In fact you hid your secret.

JOHN ITHUMALENG DUBE: Well that is your opinion, but what I am saying here is that the situation was not at all conducive,

MR RICHARD: I put it to you that it's the only consistent inference that can be drawn from the facts that you've related on your version, not my opinion.  Do you have any comment as to what other inference a reasonable could draw from the facts that you've related to us?  Very well, you do not answer.    ...(intervention)

ADV SANDI: Sorry, Mr Richard, just on this.
	Mr Dube, could you not for example contact Lusaka or Botswana by means of a telephone without revealing where you are, just to give a very brief report that Sicelo was an informer and I had given an order that he should be killed, and you go on to say that the details will be forwarded to you later when convenient, could you not do that for example?

JOHN ITHUMALENG DUBE: I did not refuse that I could have done that, but as I said the situation that I was in was not conducive for me.  It was difficult logistically as well for me to have done that.  I had a person I was reporting to, my senior, and I was involved in these underground activities and at the same time I am commanding people here.  So all these things brought together brought difficulties to me to have acted in the manner that you think.

CHAIRPERSON: But Mr Dube, we know, I think all of us, that by that time there were many people crossing the borders of this country, could you not have merely got a message to your commander that you had an urgent report to make, would he please send someone to contact you?

JOHN ITHUMALENG DUBE: That was possible, but as I keep reiterating the fact that it's not easy, it's not, well it is easier said than done.  It was not as easy for me to have been able to get somebody who could have done that for me, cross the border and carry that.  I also explained yesterday that logistically it was highly impracticable.

ADV SANDI: Could you not make an anonymous call to a local newspaper and say this young man has been killed because he was an informer, and you don't reveal  your identity and where you're calling from?

JOHN ITHUMALENG DUBE: No, that did not cross my mind, or it did not occur in my mind.

ADV SANDI: If Sicelo was an informer as you say, was it not important for other informers to know that they would be killed if they continued infiltrating the organisation, they would be killed like Sicelo?

JOHN ITHUMALENG DUBE: That was of great importance, yes.

ADV SANDI: Did you, generally speaking, did you have any discussions with Dumakude about this problem of informers infiltrating MK units?

JOHN ITHUMALENG DUBE: If I may ask, pose this question, as to when exactly, when I was still within the country or outside the country?

JOHN ITHUMALENG DUBE: Whilst you were within the country.

JOHN ITHUMALENG DUBE: No, because he was not commanding me directly.

ADV SANDI: And outside the country?

CHAIRPERSON: So you're again relying on this chain of command, that because you couldn't go to Lusaka and you couldn't speak to your commander you were not prepared to tell the man above him about the problems that had arisen.  Is that what you would have us believe, Mr Dube?

JOHN ITHUMALENG DUBE: As a disciplined soldier, yes.

MR RICHARD: With regard to Ellis Part, wasn't Mr Dumakude your direct commander?

JOHN ITHUMALENG DUBE: Yesterday I did make mention of the fact that I am not prepared to account for the Ellis Park incident and I'm not here for that incident.

CHAIRPERSON: You will answer the question, the question is not with relation to the Ellis Park incident, it is relating to this incident.  Was he your immediate commander at that time, in June/July 1988?

JOHN ITHUMALENG DUBE: Yes, that is so, he was a commander.

MR RICHARD: Now before I leave this point, to me it's axiomatic and obvious that any point in time a person in the field such as  you were at that time would have an emergency fall-back line of communication.  Did you have such a line of communication between January and July?

JOHN ITHUMALENG DUBE: You mean a line of communication with him?

MR RICHARD: With your organisation, MK.  If there was a real crisis of great importance that you had to communicate things about upwards, was there not an emergency fall-back position in place at all times, depending on the urgency and the need and the importance of the crisis?

JOHN ITHUMALENG DUBE: The only thing would have been for me to leave for Lusaka or go to Lusaka.

CHAIRPERSON: It suddenly struck me, it hasn't been raised, that wouldn't the immediate crisis have arisen in October 1987 when you were led to believe that one of your cell members had been arrested by the police and was perhaps being interrogated by them, that it should at that stage have been important to let the organisation know that there was a possible danger that might arise?

JOHN ITHUMALENG DUBE: That is important, but what's important the most here is the fact that I was a commander in this field, in a war zone field, so I also could have taken the decisions, depending on my discretion.

CHAIRPERSON: There was no decision for you to take if you suddenly discovered one morning armed Security Policemen at your back.  This young man according to you had followed you around, knew where you went, how you travelled, if he was now a police informer it was you who was at risk and all the cells under you, that that was what you should tell your organisation, that you might suddenly find yourself arrested because of information supplied.  Wasn't this very important?

JOHN ITHUMALENG DUBE: First of all, I have to be sure about whatever matter I will report, I will not report based on assumptions, that is not acceptable.
	Secondly, I was not certain as to his whereabouts, I  had to try to find out as to where he was at the time.

CHAIRPERSON: But you knew he had been arrested, that was the first point, he just disappeared, you caused enquiries to be made by his friends in his cell, they were unable to give you information.  That is what I'm suggesting you should have reported, not that he was an informer, you didn't know that, but that this man had been arrested and there had been no word of him since that time.

JOHN ITHUMALENG DUBE: The problem here was the fact that this whole thing was incomplete, I had to be certain about all the facts.