Human Rights Violation Hearings — Bisho — 1996-09-11

MARIUS OELSCHIG: Mr Chairman, those weapons that the soldiers have, are their standard equipment.  It is not to be used in crowd control, absolutely not, but that was not the purpose of the Ciskei Defence Force to be used in crowd control.

CHAIRPERSON: Dumisa Ntsebeza?

UNKNOWN: Thank you Chairperson.  General, I must confess that I cannot deal with your evidence by way of three questions and by the ruling of the Chairperson for very good reasons has been that we should restrict our questioning.
 I accept that.  Maybe in consultation with him and maybe after we have communicated our views to you, you might consider being available as and when Brigadier Gqozo comes to testify because it might be useful for us to be able to ask a fairly number of questions when the time will be much more conducive for that sort of exercise.
 If the Chairperson will grant that and if you were to be available, I would like to use the time allocated to me to make observations which my colleagues have already made so that you can reflect on these and use those reflections as a basis for most probably giving your replies if and when that time will come.  I must repeat my concern at what I considered to be a discordant note in your presentation.
 On page 11 of your submissions, just on the question of your promotion.  While I'll accept that you have been promoted and I think for good reasons, maybe because you are very highly qualified, I do not accept that necessarily it is an indication of your broad acceptance by the South African community.  
 Now I say so not because I am myself but because wherever we go as this Commission, we get views from the community and as you know the Chairperson at the end of the day should present a report to the President and that report should reflect what we have been able to pick up in hearings of this nature.
 I can tell you that in a hearing, particularly in Umtata in this very region, even members of the Provincial Legislature who testified expressed a great deal of discomfort that people who were associated with repressive regimes, who were testified about as having taken part in human rights violations and whether you like it or not, your participation to the extent that you have testified about in the Bisho massacre, is one such event.
 Now people have expressed a grave view that people who are associated with those events have not only, and on both sides you heard about how people were talking about Mc Bride and all that, not only have those people succeeded into a democracy and occupied high office, but in your case are also people who are in charge of the transformation process.
 This Commission has been met with testimonies from people who say there must be something wrong, and it is with us now.  We have got to deal with it, and if I look at the way in which you express yourself in saying you have no doubt whatsoever that the present government or Minister of Defence would never have promoted you if Holomisa's allegations were something to be talked of.  It may well be that at that level, that's what they think.  I'm not sure having heard the people at the ground level, that that is also what they would say.  I'm not saying that to criticise, I'm just saying that is the sort of thing that we meet as we go around the country. ... End of Tape 5 Side B...  taking submissions and it might cause you to reflect because there is a sense in which all of us must be very careful that we should never appear to take our people's preparedness to forgive for granted and I think the tone of your submission is reflecting that sort of disposition.
 That you were right, you were a soldier, you did what you had to do and you cannot understand why people cannot forgive you.  You are in fact hardly asking in so many words that you should be forgiven.  
 In fact I can hardly find from your submission that there is a ring of admission that you may have been at fault.  Even when my colleague was putting it, you seemed to be saying the fault lays squarely and squarely and only with the other side.  That's the first observation that I want to make and I would like you to reflect on this because I am not accusing you, I'm simply saying the people of South Africa do not want to be taken for granted and we have already evidence from views that were expressed at Commissions that maybe people, for good or for bad reasons, who were associated with human rights violations of these scales, should never occupy high office.  That is not what I am deciding about you.  I'm simply saying something that people are saying.
 Secondly, and this is again born, bearing in my view what I say is my discomfiture with the manner in which you present your evidence.  You will see even from the tenor of the questions that we seem to be drawing a difference between your testimony and you are a soldier.  No worse or better soldier than the other three soldiers who are sitting next to you but we seem to be saying, we seem to be getting an impression that the testimony before lunch had a disturbing note which the testimonies after lunch did not have and it may possibly be again something for you to reflect.
 In your testimony you did not seem, as I indicated, to have been willing to accept that you gave an order.  In fact if you read your testimony it gets lost as to whether you gave the order.  You say you don't know where the order came from and all that sort of thing.  Those other gentlemen to your left have stated it as they felt it and they have been unequivocal, they have not sought to prevaricate.  I don't want to get the feeling that you were prevaricating.
 Thirdly and lastly, you are in charge of a transformation process of our army and for my part let me say, before I joined the Commission, I represented MK soldiers who were being court martialled for having awolled so it was an event that was of public moment.  Maybe you really want to find out even within the structures of the SANDF whether the transformation is seen as an integration or as an absorption.
 There are views which came out in the court martial that man van staal is on record, that part of the problem is that there are hardened members of the previous forces who do not seem to comprehend the human rights culture that lies at the roots of this transform democracy, and I'm just disturbed about your remarks on paragraph 37.
 If it is still your attitude as a transformer of our South African National Defence Force and maybe I speak as a person who is not a military person, maybe I speak as a person who is just a lawyer, who is neither a politician nor a military man but where you can say on that day you had given an order that if these people come into Bisho they must be stopped at all costs, at all costs.  I'm afraid if that is the mind set of yourself as a transformer of the new order, maybe you want to reflect again whether in the circumstances of today, that is the sort of thing that you are going to infuse in our Defence Force, given that the road is to reconciliation.
 Those are my comments.  Maybe you want to reflect and respond to some of them but direct questions on the events, there are many and I don't want to pretend that I have exhausted them.

CHAIRPERSON: Please, please, you are not supposed to applaud.  If you want to make a response I am mindful of... [I'll get you]

UNKNOWN: I see the advocate is enjoying himself Your Grace.

CHAIRPERSON: No he is, I was scolding him for taking the time and I was just telling him that I shall see him afterwards.