Special Hearings — Political Party — 1998-05-06

MR SIZANI: Many Amabutu, there was a submission that many Amabutu, whoever was seen to be a leader of whatever kind in the community were arrested and detained during 1986 and 1990 and many people were released thereafter and there was a particular reason why these formations had to come to rise and when there was no such a reason after 1990, they ceased to exist in that particular formation and some people thereafter formed SDU's which were never a phenomenon in the Eastern Cape but in the East Rand, and some SDU's were incorporated in the police in the East Rand in particular.

CHAIRPERSON: You make a very good case for the revival of some form of community policing all over the country, am I right?

MR SIZANI: Yes I am a very strong advocate of Street Committees and area Committees even now and I would really feel if this country would see the reduction of crime on a large scale, the government would be advised to revive those structures in a different form.  Maybe the government would not do that because that's an area of civil society to embark on and the organs of civil society are reluctant to embark on that kind of voluntarism which is a pity, it's regrettable that they are doing that.  I would advocate that those structures are in fact a very very good phenomenon in our history that needs to be revived.

CHAIRPERSON: May I just comment that part of our responsibility is to make recommendations and I think having listened to what you have said, we would want to at least consider very seriously including in our recommendations something along those lines. Thank you very much.  MS Wildschut.

GLENDA WILDSCHUT: Mr Chair my question is around the complex notion of victimhood.  Many of the people who in terms of the act would be regarded as victims have decided that they would not be coming to the Commission.  They see themselves as people who deliberately joined in the struggle or were part of the UDF and so on and would not want to come to the Commission to be seen as a victim but rather as a survivor or victor, and yet many of those persons carry the scars of being involved in the struggle and are in fact in need of some intervention, and the last discussion moved a bit in the direction of recommendations and I wondered whether you have any thoughts on how one would want deal with those peoples' trauma, the result of the trauma that they have been involved with as a result of being in the struggle and being members perhaps of the UDF or of these paramilitary formations?
 A side question to that is, many of those people who were part of these paramilitary formations in fact do not qualify for any of the other state compensations that have been put in place.  For example the Special Pensions Bill, they fall between the cracks in a way and they haven't come to the Commission, they cannot be declared victims, yet they are people in the community who are needing some kind of intervention and we're having a problem with that.
 The second aspect of my question is related to the issue of militarisation and in your submission you refer to the issue of young people being more and ever-increasingly militarised by state-sponsored violence so that the cycle of violence an militarisation continues.  And I'm keen to understand what ideas you have about how we can go through the process of demilitarising, in other words incorporating people back into society who in a sense are very highly militarised and think in a militarised way and how we can in a sense demilitarise their activities and incorporate them back into society.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, anyone like to respond to that.

POPO MOLEFE: Comrade Stone will attempt a response at a number of those questions.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Stone.

MR STONE: I'm interested in the first part of the questions because it continues to be a serious concern for us.  I was interested in your assertion about the non-ability for young people to qualify for special pension as one serious concern, that even the current government is concerned about which they are not able to overcome and in fact this is a trap which leads many young people to feel very angry about because the fact that they are unable to get any joy from the Commission, they are not able to get any joy from the Special Pension, not able to get any jobs on the market because they are not trained to be marketable, nor are they able to find use in society as they were during those days when they were Amabutu and were used to protect society and society looked after them without even compensating them for their activities, and all those societal arrangements which were formal and non-formal have now disintegrated to an extent that they find themselves almost like despondent.  I would want us to search on this particular phenomenon and find a solution perhaps through your forms of recommendation, make a submission in the way it has to be dealt with because it is phenomenon that needs to be dealt with.
 But I would want to make a particular point regarding how the youth of this country really finds itself out in the limbo and how perhaps we need to begin to challenge this particular phenomenon.  The aspect which I'm interested in is three-fold and it is beginning to be dealt with by the Special Pensions concedes to the fact that those young people below the age of 50 who are unemployed; for instance I remember on the island were 14 year-olds who would not be 50 today and would not qualify and in 1976 there were 8 year-olds that were in detention and some of them missed out in education altogether and therefore they would not qualify for any form of either the TRC or the Special Pension or any other form and yet they have no marketable skills whatsoever.  I hear from the Minister of Labour that the Job Summit would include some aspect of a mass public works programme that would seek to engage the communities in mass infrastructure in rural areas in some sense creating jobs but by it's very nature a public works programme is not a sustainable job creator, it is a seasonal and therefor a temporary aspect of this then but some processes could add on to such a phenomena when the government is able to lay it's hands on resources to enable itself to create those kinds of jobs.  But we're at a loss of any sustainable mass method for government to create those jobs and retrain the young people and even the service corps is not able to absorb these young guys which is a very serious concern for me.
 The other aspect of this would the creation of industry, training institutions.  Unfortunately it apparently focuses on employed young people who must be trained for the requirements of the industry and the jobs and it does not focus on unemployed precisely because or the constraints of resources.  Again in this particular phenomenon I would want an investigation to broaden just focusing on employed ones but to include the unemployed young people.
 The third phenomenon is the advent of their rural development strategy of our government because it focuses on young people an women in the rural areas.  There is a phenomenon currently on an exodus into the urban areas and shanty areas which does not give people jobs.  That feeds into crime and other forms of social ills and if there is a concerted effort by government to move this tide by creating activities directed at rural development and programmes perhaps it will begin to address some aspect of this particular aspect.  But unfortunately young people do not see agriculture and other forms of rural infrastructure activities as an enjoyable or attractive aspect of job creating, but perhaps we need to try and go that particular route, thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much for a very useful contribution.   Ms Sooka.