Special Hearings — Political Party — 1998-05-06

UNKNOWN: Thank you Mr Chairman.  Mr Chairman, in concluding this aspect before I move to the next cluster, just for the sake of absolute clarity Mr Chairman, I'm making a follow-up on the question of ill disciplined activists.
 I would say here in retrospect, what is the attitude then of the delegation or the UDF leadership to these young men or to these young people who were sometimes referred to as the young lions?  Does the former leadership accept these young men, own them who made this country ungovernable or were they outside of the bounds of what the UDF regarded as acceptable?
 If I have to clarify this, we do have this young men Mr Chairman and members of the panel, amnesty applications have been filed by these young men and the TRC and perhaps Amnesty in particular does not have a way of dealing with them, especially when one has regard to what has been said in the submissions, that the question of ill discipline was not - if I may use my words, a sanctioned one but it happened due to the incapacity referred to. 
 Now my question is based on the question of whether they own these young men who some of them or the majority of them are in jail or do they regard them as people outside or people who acted outside the boundaries of what UDF would regard as acceptable.

CHAIRPERSON: That's a pretty tough question, who would like to answer that?

AZHAR CACHALIA: I would just like to ask for clarity because you seem to be suggesting in discipline, I don't know what you mean my undisciplined action firstly.  Maybe you should clarify what you mean by that because in general the generations of young people from 1976 onwards have been, are amongst I would say, should be amongst the most admired citizens of this country.  They laid down life and limb to wage the struggle.  What do you mean by undisciplined, young lion is not necessarily synonymous within discipline.
 Generally the young lions were doing a wonderful piece of work I think.  None of us would have been here - maybe should just clarify what you mean so that we can deal with the answer more carefully.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Mpshe?

UNKNOWN: Mr Chairman, I'm referring here to actions that were taken by these young activists.  Somewhere in the submissions - I cannot lay my hand on where this was actually referred to, where it was said that some leadership in certain regions or areas came out with  statements that would regarded as irresponsible and this led to these young men or these young activists acting in an unacceptable manner.
 To quote but one: let's take the consumer boycotts that took place then where a person would be seen walking out of OK with an OK plastic, who would be made to eat the soap and to drink the jik, I wouldn't call that a disciplined action at all and this is what I'm referring to.

AZHAR CACHALIA: Chair, if I could try and explain this, I think we have set it out in our submission.  I think the way we approached this question is like a father, like parents would approach let's say, an aberrant child, that child is part of your family, these were people who were oppressed people, part of this history.
 Now, if a child misbehaves and hopefully disciplines that child and shouts at the child and does what is possible within the limits of that family alright, but they don't disown those people.  For us to disown those people, for us would - in a sense it would mean that we don't understand the history of these people tended to do these sorts of things.
 So they were undisciplined in some instances.  When they did that they were not acting within UDF police but we own them, they are part of us and they are part of our history and we accept them as part of our family.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.  Let me try to explain our dilemma, and I understand what you're saying entirely.  Our dilemma is, if a person applies for amnesty and says that the actions that they took - and let's go way beyond consumer boycotts, let's talk about burning somebody to death, necklacing, which people are applying for amnesty now and we heard your comments about that.   If they claim that they were doing this as membership or part of their membership of UDF and you are saying to us that that was not your policy but you understand or that you cannot disown them, if doesn't help - and I'm not saying you should help, I'm not saying you have to, but it doesn't help the Amnesty Committee to decide whether or not this was simply unbridled rage without political motive, education, structure, discipline or whether they saw themselves genuinely as part of a UDF structure which was trying to make the country ungovernable because the present governors were unacceptable.  That is why we were asking the questions about means and ends, does the end justify the means.  You're saying to us: "No, it doesn't but we lacked the capacity to control".
 Our dilemma, which Mr Mpshe I think put very well, is when we listen to the applications from these people we've got to understand in what context way we're doing this, whether we're doing it because they were members of the UDF, did that kill that Councillor because they believed the UDF had that approach.  That is our dilemma and that is why we are pushing this, not because we want to go on and on and on but because we are aware of our responsibility to a whole lot of people who are in jail.

MR NTSEBEZA: Can I just add on that and say, maybe you are attempting to answer that on page 13 of your submission, the very last sentence in the 1st paragraph, well not paragraph yes, where it starts
"An ordinary member or supporter"
I think that is where you are dealing with this phenomena but I'm interested in your last sentence where you say:
"At the same time however, the fact of a necklacing, even though gruesome should not disqualify a person from being granted an amnesty"
 Now maybe as I understand it you are attempting to answer exactly the question that Doctor Boraine has put but perhaps you want to contextualise that and say in what way you see a person who had applied for amnesty for a necklacing can be granted amnesty.  What factors do you think should be taken into account in that event.

MR MURPHY: Chair, I'm sure most of us would like to say something on this but I think we start from the point where we say that the fact of a necklacing should not exclude somebody.  Now we are now talking about, we're making some fairly general points.  The Amnesty Committee is going to have to test whether a person was acting indeed with a political objective.  Part of that would be to analyse what this activist or this person did over the last, let's say, one year.
 Was the person marching in campaigns, was the person doing different sorts of things or did this person say one day: "Hey, now is the time to go for this guy.  I haven't liked his face for the last six months and now I'm going for him".  So you would have to test that alright?  
 What we are comfortable in saying is that if a person says he understood UDF policy, even though he may be wrong, but if he understood UDF policy to include attacks on individuals which may involve necklacing, we would say that that given the time and some of the statements that were generally being made would not have been an unreasonable inference to draw as a general proposition.  Thereafter you are going to have to look at the facts individually.