Amnesty Hearings — Pinetown — 2000-02-15

CHAIRPERSON: He got the three from somewhere and he puts it all the ...(inaudible)

MR DEHAL: In the nature of things that's usually how it goes, my experience tells the same.  I'm levelling my analogy in comparison and pitching it on the basis that it may well be that the person who took the applicant's statement may well have made notes and if you recall, the applicant at one stage said he came back later with a statement and he said "sign" as though he had taken notes, went back, formulated the statement and brought it to the applicant and where both Alzina and the applicant who says "we did not read our respective statements we signed it."  I'm saying at that level to the extent that the applicant is believable, indeed Alzina is believable.  Now that is where the difficulty begins.  The versions between Alzina and the applicant.
	I must begin by conceding as I've done already that there are difficulties at that level, I cannot for one moment stand here and say you must believe the applicant against Alzina, there is a ring of truth in both their versions but I ask you, Mr Chairperson, to look at it in this way.  What motive would the applicant have to come here and lie?  What motive would the applicant have to come here and lie?  He's served his time, he knows that if he comes here and says that on the basis as most ANC or politically motivated applicants before TRC are doing, "listen I went there, I had an agenda, I had instructions, I executed my instruction and I did it coldly, I had no difficulty with that", the probabilities of him getting amnesty would be all the better?  Now I have canvassed that with him, he's again and again said to me "listen, it was self-defence".  It seemed to me that the deceased on the applicant's version had not chased him, the applicant and the applicant did not respond by stabbing him, it would have been inevitable and conceivable that at some future foreseeable event, the ANC, through the applicant would have executed an agenda to eliminate this deceased and but for this event it just became earlier.

JUDGE DE JAGER: What has been troubling me, according to his evidence the deceased murdered people from 1998 onward?

CHAIRPERSON: 1988.

JUDGE DE JAGER: 1988 and the ANC never took any steps against him?

CHAIRPERSON: Apart from reporting it to the police station.

JUDGE DE JAGER: Yes, the never decided to eliminate him, nobody ordered him to eliminate the deceased, there was no sort of order in any event of attacking, one section attacking the other section?

MR DEHAL: Mr de Jager has actually tapped his finger on the pulse that I was going to address on.  If you tie these two versions, there appears to be a third that emanates from this and that is it may well be that the applicant is lying.  He's the type of unsophisticated, uneducated person who wants to stick to a version that was used at the trial court.  It seems to me that the more real version, which Mr Chairperson, you and the Honourable Members are to look at is this, that given the onslaught of acrimonious fighting going on between the ANC and the IFP over the years, given the uncontroverted version about the ANC and the IFP killing each other over those years, given the uncontroverted version of the applicant that indeed the deceased had killed so many ANC people, had been one that had been an ANC and defected to the IFP, that there must have been a motive to eliminate this deceased and that the killing must have been in the execution of that order to eliminate the deceased.

CHAIRPERSON: So we must assume an order that's he's denied having for his benefit?  I'm afraid I find that very hard to accept.

MR DEHAL: No ...(intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: You are arguing that we must accept that he was carrying out an order to eliminate when he has denied that categorically?

MR DEHAL: Mr Chairperson, as difficult as it may sound, was that is not his version.  It is a version that is in a way plausibly tainted with the version of Alzina and the brother Frederick who says listen, there's an ANC/IFP conflict going on.  I'm not saying that the deceased was IFP and whilst Alzina today said "I'm not saying the applicant is ANC" her statement says yes, they were ANC members.  At that level it must be seen clearly that there were ANC and IFP conflict.
	Now if one takes that a little further, ask the question, is there really opposition before us here today to the applicant's amnesty application?  If you look at Alzina's application she agrees when Mr Mapoma asked the question, that yes, the applicant and his members were ANC members, that is in my statement and I said so, they lived in an ANC area and indeed that was so.  My boyfriend the deceased was in an IFP area, he comes from an IFP area and that's principally the reason for the fight.  Frederick goes further, he says I agree with my wife, it's an ANC/IFP conflict, it's politically motivated.  Now political leanage is established even on the witnesses for the victims.  Full disclosure is the problem and there I have no argument.   Sorry, if you'd bear with me?
	The only one reservation that I have with Alzina's version is that appears to distance herself today until Mr Mapoma raises a statement with the ANC leanage and the IFP leanage.  It seems if at all - I'm sorry, I'm not sure that I can submit this but it seems to me personally that knowing that this is an amnesty application there is a need for political leanage that she distances herself from it.  I do not know what happened at the trial but I'm told by the applicant that she punctuated her entire evidence on the basis that he, the applicant, then an accused, was an ANC man, that the deceased was an IFP man, that this was ongoing conflict between the ANC and the IFP.  That is the only reservation that I have and Mr Chairperson, with those submissions I submit that if one reads within section 20(i) of the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act 34 of 1995, at the level of there being an act or omission or offence without reading too much into the need to establish whether there is an offence here, perhaps looking at whether it's an act in itself, the applicant has made out a case for amnesty, he does have difficulties with Alzina's version looked at against him but there has been many matters of this sort with difficulties for the TRC.  That in itself, like a trial, does not dismiss his application as negatory.  Thank you.