Amnesty Hearings — Umtata — 1998-04-21

MR BRINK: Mr Chairman and Honourable members of this Panel, as was made plain at the outset, all the allegations made in paragraphs 13 to 31 of the affidavit put up in support of this application, are in dispute as between the applicants and the
families of the deceased.
	Mr Chairman, you quite correctly underscore the fact that my cross-examination of the applicants who testified went principally to the question did the applicants in testifying in making this application, give a full and frank disclosure or did they not?
	The version put up by the applicants is rejected in toto by the families where it differs from what they accept to have happened.  The bare bones of it ...

CHAIRPERSON: On what basis?

MR BRINK: I will illustrate.  The bare bones of it are these - we know as a matter of fact that the police station at Bongweni outside Kokstad, or in the Kokstad district was approached by a number of people, I accept, the families accept that the applicants were among them, because it is inconceivable that they would have placed themselves on the scene, had they not been there.
	It is settled and beyond issue that there were two policemen on duty, the two deceased Sergeants, that they were coerced, they were abducted from the police station and that a number of police weapons were taken at the same time.
	It is further settled and beyond any issue that the two policemen were shot dead just along the road to Bizana, just off the turn off, just past the turn off.
	There is a great deal in common in this case, but there are crucial differences and I am going to, my argument is going to be directed at urging this Panel to find that the versions put up by the applicants are so shot through with improbabilities, that they are manifestly, that the versions are manifestly and palpably false and must be found to be such.
	I will start then with what appears to have taken place, what did indeed take place at the police station.  On the version of the applicants, the police after initially being approached with a single pistol and knives, succumbed and were persuaded that no harm was intended to them.
	They were persuaded to accompany the applicants and they all left peacefully.  Against that we have the objective evidence, the telephone wires were cut, the radio handset was cut from the main body of the machine, police uniform buttons, three were found just outside the charge office door and a spent 9 mm cartridge was found 30 metres, 30 paces from the charge office door.
	Now it is true, a button means nothing, anybody any policeman can lose a button from his tunic and it signifies nothing at all, but the presence of three buttons just outside the charge office door, can suggest just one thing on the probabilities, and that is that there was some form of struggle and in the course of wrenching, the tunic or the uniforms of the policemen concerned, buttons were stripped from the garment and fell to the ground.
	That objective, hard evidence negates the submission, the claims of the applicants to have left that police station peacefully with the unresisting acquiesence of the two policemen.
	On that first call, I submit that the evidence should be found to be false.
	Before I carry on, I would ask this Panel to find that all the evidence of the applicants, given by the first applicant in relation to the choice of the target, when it was surveyed and the reason for the attack if I may call it that, on the police station, should fall under the same pall of doubt that taints the rest of their evidence.  If they can't be believed on a central thrust of their evidence, I would ask this Panel to reject the woolly evidence given in regard to what went before the attack on the police station.
	According to the first applicant, the policemen were taken away assured they would come to no harm, and apparently believing this, and led to applicants' motor vehicle, a panel van, a kombi type vehicle.
	They were seated in the back of the vehicle, with the stolen guns at their feet.  Mr Chairman, Honourable members of the Panel, with respect, it is a manifestly untrue statement, it is so grossly improbable, that it can't possibly be believed.

CHAIRPERSON: Let me ask you this then, it was not contested at all that Luzuko was injured that night.

MR BRINK: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: Neither was there any evidence to dispute that in fact he attended a hospital.

MR BRINK: Correct, there was no basis for putting that allegation in contention.  The family is just simply in the dark.

CHAIRPERSON: That kind of evidence stands alone.

MR BRINK: It stands, we know that the man, the Panel ought to accept that the man sustained an injury.

CHAIRPERSON: If he did sustain an injury, the only explanation we have, is what the applicant testified.

MR BRINK: Indeed.

CHAIRPERSON: And therefore while it is surprising that people would leave the abductees free to pick up one of the guns, it appears that it did happen.

MR BRINK: Not at all, with respect.  The version or the description of the circumstances in which the man was shot in the arm, is so inherently improbable that it cannot stand and just because there is no contrary account put up to controvert it, doesn't mean that in the absence of a contrary account, it should be accepted.

CHAIRPERSON: In those circumstances it would have to be palpably improbable.

MR BRINK: That is my submission, that it is indeed palpably improbable.  It is in fact, with respect to the applicant, it is preposterous, wholly implausible.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes, carry on.

MR BRINK: Mrs Ngubo, the deceased Sergeant Ngubo's widow, testified that first applicant was known to her husband and to her.
	She expressed her surprise that first applicant would persistently deny the acquaintance.  The denial is obvious, the reason for the denial is obvious.

CHAIRPERSON: What is obvious?

MR BRINK: The reason for the denial.  On first applicant's version, he had in mind or they had in mind to depart with the policemen, having stolen 14 guns from the police armoury and they had in mind to drop the policemen off at some dark, lonely spot where they would have difficulty finding their way back, but find their way back, they were intended to do.
	If the deceased Sergeant Ngubo and applicant Nyembezi were known to each other, then it seems unlikely that that intention that he could have had that intention at the time.  The likelihood is that he would have formed the intention to dispatch, execute Ngubo in order to put him beyond the witness stand, or eliminate him as an identifying witness, an (indistinct) witness.
	This is the reason for his strenuous denial.  I submit that it is such a peripheral matter and there seems to be so little obvious fruit, so little obvious profit for Mrs Ngubo to lie about this, that this Panel should accept that she has given reliable and truthful evidence on this score, the question of the acquaintance between Nyembezi and the family who lived just two doors down.

CHAIRPERSON: I have a problem with that and I would like you to deal with it.
	She says here they spent a year in the same street, approximately.

MR BRINK: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: She assumes that the applicant must have seen her husband some time during that year, especially when he visited his sister, which is denied.  Let's assume the sister does exist and it is Pumla's mother.

MR BRINK: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: She also says that when he went to the administration block, he must have seen or met her husband.  It is based on those two factors that she says that the two of them must have known each other.
	How far does that take us?

MR BRINK: Well, I readily concede that the second factor, the second basis for asserting that the two men knew each other, is the weaker.  This thing about they must have been known to each other, because he went to the police station, I mean that is clearly, that can't ...

CHAIRPERSON: (microphone not on)