Human Rights Violation Hearings — Pollsmoor — 1996-11-27

MR WEAVER: Thank you very much.   At the time of the shooting I was a senior reporter on the Cape Times and my main field of coverage as a reporter was covering the insurrection or  what the police called unrest in the townships on the Cape Flats.  
The - to try and put the events of that day into context - I would like to state here that there was a wide perception  among those of us who was covering events on the ground - but that there was a general lawless - air of lawlessness about the police.  They were effectively out of control.  They were a law onto themselves.  They did not seem to feel that they had any responsibility towards the normal functions of policing.
And in that context, the killing - the killing of the Guguletu 7 was a particularly shocking event.  But it simply fitted into the pattern of police behaviour at the time.  This pattern reached it's most cynical and it's most brutal, not long after the killing of the Guguletu 7 in destruction of Crossroads and KTC later in 1986.
And here, as we  all know there was clear evidence of police collusion  with the witdoek vigilante  so called witdoek vigilante's.   I myself on numerous occasions saw the police among them, many of those police who were involved in the cleanse of the Guguletu 7 - leading the witdoeke into battle.  There was evidence of them supplying weapons to the witdoeke  and it seems at the time that the police collectedly and individually - were determined to crush all resistance and to crush the United Democratic Front and opposition organizations at the times.
I want to digress  slightly here from the actual Guguletu 7 and bring in some history about my perception of the police and the way they were operating.
  From 1983 to 1985 I was the Namibian correspondent for the Saan/Sun Morning group of Newspapers.  That is the Rand Daily Mail, the Cape Times, Eastern Province Herald, Daily Dispatch, Natal Mercury and the  Sunday Times.  I was based out at  Windhoek and from the start of my time in Namibia I began hearing horrific stories about the operations of the police unit  called the Special Operations - K- Unit,  Koevoet - which means crowbar.
The - I began investigating their activities and those of the SADF and despite the very large South African Defence Force presence in Namibia,  Koevoet were responsible for killing more than 80% of Guerrillas and alleged Guerrillas  who died in the bush war in the period that they were operational.
Point to stress here is that  there were absolutely now rules governing their activities.  They operated with impunity.  They used torture, beating and rape as methods of interrogation.  And the way that new Koevoet recruits were blooded -as it were and this was confirmed to me subsequent to my time in Namibia by X-Koevoet operators, was that they either had to kill a Guerrilla in combat or they had to execute a prisoner by shooting them with a handgun, once that  person had been interrogated.
And these interrogations always took place in front of their piers or commanding officers.   The white officers serving in Koevoet were almost all South Africans -   South African policemen.  Most of them from the security police and from the riot squad.  Serving a tour of duty before returning to South Africa.  
When I returned to South Africa, in 1985, and events began to unfolding in Cape Town, it became clear to me that the methods Koevoet had used in Namibia were being implemented in the townships of South Africa.  The killing of the Guguletu 7 and the execution and I use the word execution, quite advisedly here, because that emerged in my trial of at least 3 and possibly 4 of the 7 had all the hallmarks and Koevoet type operation.  
To turn briefly to my trial, I was - I was charged under the Section 27[b] of the Police Act on four charges.
The first was related to an interview that I with the BBC's  African service.  In which I related the essence of the allegations contained in Chris Bateman's front page story of the Cape Times.
The other three charges were related to evidence  which we have heard here today from Ms Miya and other witnesses,  who told me about the police interfering with funeral arrangements.  Trying to stop the funeral going ahead.  Trying to bury the bodies early.  Also by the proprietors of Mashlube Funeral Parlour who made similar allegations of police interference with the burials.
And the pattern started to emerge that the police were keen to bury the bodies as soon as possible, before independent autopsies could be done.  
The - I  believe that the police made a serious error in putting me on trial - if it hadn't been for the superb legal and forensic evidence that came out in my trial, which I had nothing to do with - it was the experts who did that.  The - it is quite possible that the findings of the inquest which were a white wash at the actions of the police would have been buried and not much more would have happened - that  the evidence that came out - would never have actually emerged.   
Part of the reasons, I think, for my being put on trial were that - there was a - was that there was a concerted effort by the police to restrict media coverage of their activities and of any coverage which is critical at the Government at the time. 
And this pressure was not only coming from the police and the authorities, but also from elements within the media.  The Cape Times, where I was working at the time - was owned by Times Media Limited.  I resigned from the Times at the end of 1987.  I since had been informed that the Managing Director at the Times [Pty] Limited, Steven Mulholland, had tried to get me fired from the newspaper because he perceived me as being too radical.
The Editor, Tony Heard, resisted these pressures and was himself dismissed as Editor by Mulholland and I believe his dismissal is a purely political move.
When I was put on trial, the Cape Times, Tony Heard, immediately briefed lawyers and  instructed the local management  [indistinct]  to pay the bills.  Just before, literally a few days before I went on trial - three of the charges were related to Cape Times report - one, two - a Cape Times report, but as reported by the BBC.
A few days before I went on trial the police withdrew all charges related to the Cape Times and within hours Steven Mulholland, the Managing Director, had given orders that no further funding would be given for my trial and that TML  would not actually support me in the trial financially.
With the help of Tony Heard,  Alister Sparks, Gerald Shaw and others - in the media, funding was secured from the BBC and then also through the late Moira Henderson of Dependence conference - funding was secured - I suspect through the International defence and Aid Fund.
The point I wish to make here - is that elements of the media are  as guilty of collusion with the apartheid regime, and as certain elements, certain perpetrators of injustice - by either remaining silent or actively suppressing the truth.
It is perhaps relevant to mention here that when I was a Namibian correspondent  for the SAAN group, the Daily Dispatch for instance  refused to run my copy, because I used the word Guerrillas and not terrorists in my dispatches.  And the Editor accused me of being pro-SWAPO.  The Editor of the Sunday Times, the Late Tertius Myburg, refused to run my stories for similar reasons.  And because of reports I wrote which he perceived to be anti-UNITA.  
These are just two examples amongst many of the kind of pressure which was exerted upon journalists - trying to report the story in Southern Africa.
When I came back to South Africa, working again on the Cape Times, I and I think most of my colleagues, lost count of the number of times we were arrested on the streets of Guguletu while trying to do our job.  During one of these arrests, shortly after the killing of the Guguletu 7, in May of 1996, police liaison officer - Lieutenant  Attie Loubser - came and I was being held in the Casspir, and he asked the other policemen to leave the Casspir and then he said - listen, and then he warned me - he said police had been drafted in from Pretoria and from Krugersdorp.  He said some of them know you from Namibia.  He said that my description and photograph had been circulated and there were orders to get me.  Which I took - I took to be in effect a death threat.
Loubser then said to me - please be careful.  I don't want to have to explain away a dead journalist.  Not long after that my colleague, George  De Arth was killed by witdoek vigilante's  in Crossroads.  A day after I was warned by a contact that the police had ordered the vigilante  leaders to get rid of the media.
Two weeks later one of the policeman involved in the killing of the Guguletu 7, the late Warrant officer Barry Barnard, fired a cartridge of buckshot directly at me during a confrontation in Nyanga.  I was standing to one side of events on my own and was not part of the crowd which were being fired on at the same time.  I escaped injury of death by diving behind a tree.
One last absurd event that I would like to mention in the context of police harassment of media and attempts to suppress the truth.  The funeral of the so called Guguletu 7 was one of the biggest funerals seen in the townships of Cape Town.  In my coverage of the funeral I estimated the crowd and so did other journalists - at between 30 and 40 thousand and my introduction on the story was - that Guguletu had been turned into an ANC strong hold.
The police - when the report appeared, threatened to prosecute me under - for furthering the aims of the African National Congress.  And they issued a statement saying that according to their aerial photographs of the crowd, there were only 5 thousand  people there and I was deliberately distorting the size of the crowd in order to bulster the image of the dead men.
I hope that these - this account helps to contribute to the context within which the killings took place, thank you.