Human Rights Violation Hearings — Mooiriver — 1997-05-29

WITNESS:   Okay.  On the 10th of November 1993 Clare, who as then 34 years old, and the single parent, the single mother of the two children, was hijacked near her home in Mangusi ... (inaudible - end of Side A, Tape 2) ... the 9th.  Several men unknown to locals approached people in Mangusi asking - and speaking Zulu with a Thonga accent, and asked where the white woman agricultural worker lived.  The next morning, that's November the 10th, at about 6.00 am a neighbour, a young girl, was approached by a stranger, speaking normal Zulu, who asked who was the owner of the 4x4 vehicle parked nearby, and she said that it was Clare's, and the man identified himself as Hazel Buthelezi.  At 7.15 Clare left for work.  Shortly afterwards people still at her house heard the vehicle stopping, and then there was one hoot from the vehicle, but they didn't go down, they didn't - then between that 7.15 am and 8.00 various local people saw the vehicle being driven rather erratically by somebody they didn't know.  It was a very noticeable vehicle because it had the co-operative logo of a cattle -of a cow's head on the - painted on the vehicle.  The driver was driving fast and erratically, and several times took little side roads off the main Mangusi/Jozini road.  Between 8.15 and quarter to nine we presume that she was killed, because at 9.00 am the vehicle arrived in Ingwavuma at a petrol station and there was only a single man in the vehicle.  In the middle of the morning the vehicle, again quite an easily identifiable vehicle, was seen nearby Mfakayi on the road just 30 kilometres north of Mtubatuba, and the person who saw it, who was a member of the co-operative, said there were three or four people in the cab at the time.  And I forgot to say at - before the vehicle arrived in Ingwavuma for petrol the bakkie stopped and picked up a hitch-hiker.  This was when the stranger was driving the vehicle and Clare was sitting in the front.  They stopped and picked up a 13-year-old girl, and later dropped her somewhere towards Jozini, or somewhere further along the road.  Then at 1.15 in Empangeni the bakkie was involved in a minor traffic accident near the road going to Ngwelezana, and when the traffic officer pulled the vehicle over the driver ran off, and an AK47 was found behind the seat of the cab.  We didn't know what had happened to Clare, and for two weeks we had no information and we had no knowledge.  We had no idea what had happened to her.  ---   We searched in various places, in Mangusi, in Empangeni, and the area in between.   ---   And then on the 24th of November a cowherd found her skeleton on the road going up to Ingwavuma, the dirt road going up to Ingwavuma.  It was just five metres or so from the road, but the road's cut on a hillside, so it was above the road and totally invisible from the road.  And then we buried her on the 6th of December in Mariannhill.  At her body, at her skeleton, there were two spent cartridges, and she had been shot through the head and her hands were tied.   ---  We strongly - Clare's family strongly believe that this was a political killing.  Amnesty International has made a major campaign based on the same belief, and the whole style of the killing somehow, from the evidence collected, seems to be that of a hit.  It was fast, organised, shot through the head, no other shots, and it seemed all to have been over within an hour or an hour and a half of the hijack.  There was a police investigation, which went on for quite some time.  The police reports concluded that it cannot be assumed without facts that the deceased was a victim of extra-judicial execution, but - well, we think the police could not conclude that it was an extra-judicial killing, but we also believe that the police were  in no way competent to investigate the various security forces.  And one of the investigating officers was actually at the time facing a court case from Sipho Cele, the father of Clare's second child, alleging assault.  The same investigating officer, Captain Erasmus, was previously censured in court for covering up misdeeds of fellow officers.  So we think he was not in a particularly strong position to investigate the political or security aspects of the murder.  The other investigating officer, Sergeant van der Westhuizen, who was the principal investigating officer, was, by his junior rank, also in a weak position to investigate.

MR LAX: Can I just ask something?  You're alluding to some sort of political motive.  What was Clare's political involvement?

WITNESS:   Well, Clare ... (incomplete)

MR LAX: Sorry, that just hasn't come out at the moment.

WITNESS:   Clare - in Zimbabwe in '97 Clare was ... (intervention)   ---   In 1987.   ---   In 1987.  Sorry, 1987.  She was recruited by the ANC's military intelligence, by Ronnie Caswells and Bill Anderson, to do surveillance in rural South Africa, and she was armed with a camera and given training, brief training.  We believe she took this responsibility seriously.  She continued to have contact the ANC military intelligence when she moved to Northern Natal.  She may have been involved in other underground activities that we don't know about, and so she may have been seen by the intelligence - well, the State intelligence services as a significant person in that respect.  She also - after the unbanning of the ANC she was an active ANC member in a politically sensitive area of Northern Natal.  She helped in setting up an ANC youth group in Mangusi, and she helped organise an ANC lawyer from Durban when some of the youth group were accused in a witch killing case.  She did attend some ANC meetings in Mkuze, and she also visited the ANC Empangeni offices.

MR LAX: So she was quite a high - a relatively profiled ANC person.

WITNESS:   Yes.  She didn't hold an office in the ANC structure.  She wasn't a branch chairperson or something like that, but she had an ANC profile.   ---   The cattle co-operative was not associated with any political party, but maybe there was some association in some people's minds because of Clare's political profile.

MR LAX: Just in terms of the area she was working in Mangusi, to some extent do you have any idea of the sort of political tensions that may have existed there?

WITNESS:  I think it was not a strong ANC area, but neither was it a strong Inkatha area.  There was a whole history of the Thonga independence movement and the kind of Thonga ethnicity separate from the Zulus, and there was also a great - it was the area where Dave Webster was finding out stuff about covert military operations.  Somewhere to the south of Maputoland there were - at the time of her death there were big Inkatha training camps.   ---   That was between the 4th and the 14th of November that there were those large training camps near Mtubatuba.   ---   And there were, amongst the covert military operations, perhaps training camps in those areas for Renamo.  So there was - it was a very - there was a lot going on in that area.  And there is the possibility that as Clare travelled round Maputoland that she saw something, that she stumbled on something.

MR LAX: It's widely believed that that area was rife with gun smuggling, with ivory smuggling, with rhino horn, that sort of operation as well.

WITNESS:   That's right.

MR LAX: And do you think she may have stumbled across that?  Did she ever talk about it to any of you, or ... (incomplete)