Human Rights Violation Hearings — Uitenhage — 1996-08-28

UNKNOWN: Mr Chairman, I would like to call forward Khululekile Matthews Hens.

CHAIRPERSON: He is not present yet, so we will ask Tozamile John Diamond to come forward please.
 According to the order for this day three, ten first witnesses are going to testify on the matter of the conflict between the UDF, the AMA-AFRIKA CONFLICT because when we look at their statements, we notice that this conflict, though it happened in various placed in different ways, but it is very evident that it was the same conflict between the UDF and those people named the AMA-AFRIKA and it is for this reason that we are going to bring them together so as to get the background of the political context in which all this happened.  We thereafter take the witnesses one by one.
 Our work as a Commission is to get a full picture of what really happened and for us to gain this full picture we therefore would love to listen to both sides of the story, but in the statements we have here before us, we find that we have only statements from one side and mainly from the UDF members.
 We do not at hand have statements from the AMA-AFRIKA.  We did experience this in Queenstown where we were looking into a conflict between the ANC and some of it's comrades and the AZM which was the Ciskei political organisation and 
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we were therefore fortunate that people who came to give evidence, they both came from both sides and then we had a balanced picture of what actually happened.
 It makes us sad that on the side of the AMA-AFRIKA there are not people who have come forward to give their evidence and unfortunately we are not going to compel them to come forward whilst on the other hand we still have an option to subpoena them as to the traitors but if people are victims, we can not compel them to come forward and come and complain to us, they should take their initiative on their wing.
 So most of the statements here that we have, come from one side and this is quite sad to us.
 We are therefore going to ask Reverend to bring forward some witnesses from the UDF.

UNKNOWN: Thank you Mr Chairman.  We welcome you as witnesses who are going to give evidence before this Commission about the conflict and the incidents and experiences that you had as a result of this.
 We are therefore going to ask Mr Toto to give us the political context under which all these happenings occurred and also his perception of this conflict.

NETISI TOTO: (sworn states)

NETISI TOTO: ... the house entire.  Having observed in 1985 how our people were butchered in Maduna the 21 March, we that were on the forefront of the leadership of the UDF felt it was quite of justification that we intensify peaceful methods of resolving conflicts in terms of our small town, Uitenhage.
 This had been a situation that we noted that the state repression was taking another turn but we took a vow that 
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we'll maintain peaceful methods.
 It was in 1986 that we noticed that one of options and motives that the UDF leadership have opted that of consumer boycotts, so as to involve by all possible means all the sectors that happened to be in our small town, including the business sector.
 We felt that matters like consumer boycotts were the most peaceful methods because we had a problem that the State was intensifying it's repressive methods.  There was reimposition of the second state of emergency.  There was forceful removal in terms of our people that were staying at Langa, forced to be taken out to Kwanubushle, a place that is miles from the CBD area.
 We noticed that there were also some strategies that were so meant as to ensure that UDF is crushed, not to operate as a democratic vehicle in terms of it's peaceful methods.
 We therefore view 1986 as a time when there was a complete intention to crush the UDF and so when we saw the steps that were taken like the state of emergency, we were therefore forced to look into this matter and try as much as possible to protect ourselves as residents.  But to our surprise for the first time, it happened that in our town, we saw some of our comrades that we used to work with during the times of struggle, participating and differing in view with us, for example, when the children of the youth in 1985 was dissatisfied about the education, we were together with the comrades, and these were the comrades I am referring to that we differed with in 1986.  Earlier on we supported the youth that we should all attend to the education problem, though we knew that the youth were suffering because they 
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were staying away from school.
 In 1986 we were greatly surprised to find ourselves in a situation where some of our comrades had to leave Kwanubushle, the old side and to move over to live in Khayelitsha.

UNKNOWN: What was the reason for this relocation.