Human Rights Violation Hearings — Nelspruit — 1996-09-02

MANZINI ROBERT ZITHA: The name of the lawyer is Mr Novis in Pretoria.  He is in Church Square building.  It has got two doors.  In
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the paper they wrote R300 000 for the incident that befell me.   A date was also written that we should appear before the court of law but I have never been to the court of law.  I was only called by my employer saying come and take this money.  The money was R122 000.  It was deducted and it was down to R77 000.

YASMINE SOOKA: I just want to confirm.  So the amount that you actually got was R70 000.

MANZINI ROBERT ZITHA: It was R77 000.

YASMINE SOOKA: Thank you.

MR LEWIN: Mr Zitha or Mrs Nkosi as well, I just have a simple question, or it might be a difficult question.  What you have told us today confirms what everybody else has been talking, the very peculiar action by the police.  Can you now, ten years later looking back, say how you felt at the time at their actions.  Were you surprised at the way they acted towards you and in Mrs Nkosi's case your son?

MRS NKOSI: I was shocked and I didn't know what to do then after he had been shot but today I have hope that my story is heard and I will ultimately know the truth as to why they killed my son.

CHAIRPERSON: The things that they are telling us are very terrifying.  I don't know what to say really because we started in April to listen to people telling us about the terrible things that befell them.  And we though that when this time comes we would be used to listening to terrible stories but that wasn't the  case because every day when a person relates his or her story ... (nothing further recorded on tape) ... that this world was going into hell but change came to our land and we have taken another direction, a direction leading to freedom.  We want you to
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know that we feel with you.  People had authority and they misused the authority they had.  They would shoot and shoot people at random and shooting people to them was like killing a fly.  What we are doing here we investigate the truth. One of the things, as Hlengiwe had already mentioned, if we say all of us we are ready to work together to ensure that such horrible things do not happen any more in our land.  It shouldn't even be tried that there would be police or anybody, irrespective of the crime committed, then we would ask why were they not arrested if they realised that a person was really doing something against the law.  They used to take their guns you know just shooting as if it was a film, they were acting like cowboys.  We sympathise with you.  We are sitting here today and do you know that sometimes the Archbishop's tears run easily.  We have listened to your story and this happens every time when we listen to horrifying stories. As I am sitting here you are looking at me and you don't cry and I also hold myself, I want to be strong not to cry but your story really goes down to my heart and you know that it goes to many peoples' hearts as well.  We want to thank you that your hearts and your souls were not filled with hatred because you even say that if maybe the perpetrator can come forward to ask for forgiveness you would forgive him and there would be reconciliation.  We want to thank God for giving you that kind of spirit.  We will try by all means to get the truths and we will come back to you, Mrs Nkosi, and we will tell you that we heard that this is the picture as to what happened on that day.  You must have seen on Saturday that the generals, the then commissioners of police, they said they want to come before the Commission to tell us the
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things that happened in the past.  Maybe we will get an idea as to how these things all happened and we will come back to you people and tell you exactly what happened but what we are saying now we say to you please (indistinct) a stone.  You have already spent ten years but today we are opening the wound again and we want to take the filthiness out of this wound and we want to clean the wound and apply an ointment and say God please help them.  We want to thank you.