Amnesty Hearings — East London — 1997-03-17

MR HOLE: Thank you, Commissioner. There is this reference to an impending attack which they obtained and he says
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"The Elite Unit had information that there was going to be this attack."
	And if one looks at the evidence of Mr Thompson and Mr Thoba, especially the annexures that are given by them,  Mr Chairman I am referring to the annexure, relating to the case of Gen Genda, Col Genda, where detailed evidence was given by a W/O Magaoli of the Elite Unit who had infiltrated the Illisolomzi.  Who gave information and testified in court about the plans that Illisolomzi had about toppling the Ciskeian government.   He gives a graphic picture of the infiltration of the presidential guard and the capturing of the President, taking him to Radio 
Ciskei where he would be forced to make a statement in terms of which he will be standing down.
	There is also reference to the President, being killed in the event of him refusing to step down.   I think one should look at that picture against unsophisticated police who had very little evidence and who had three victims from which they had to get as much as possible.
	If one looks as the affidavits of all of them they say pressure was being put on them to find the President's son alive.
If one looks at this broad picture one can see clearly that the act which these people were committing was directed at a political opponent and not just against private individuals.   These were private individuals but they were linked to these organisations in the forms that I have just described.
	Then, Mr Chairman, to proceed and look at whether the act, or mission, or offence was committed in the execution of an order or on behalf, or with the approval of the organisation or institution, liberation movement or body of which these people 
were part.   I think my remarks that I have just mentioned apply the same here.
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	This was an attack more on the institution of Illisolomzi and its supporters than it was an attack on the individuals themselves.   Brutality of an extreme kind was meted out to these people, but this was not just blind violence, this was violence meant to extend extreme terror to anybody who might want to join this organisation.

JUDGE WILSON: You keep saying, extend extreme terror, none of your applicants said that that was their intention.  They said they were trying to interrogate these people, didn't they?
Where do you get this 'extreme terror' from?

MR HOLE: Honourable Committee member, a reading of all these applicants' affidavits can only leave one with one impression, that extreme terror was meted out to these people.

JUDGE WILSON: Yes, for the purpose of getting information.  Not - you're broadening it to say it was to terrify members of the organisation.  They were ill-treating, brutally ill-treating these people to make them talk.  Is it not what they have all said?

MR HOLE: That is what they have all said yes.  Now, if I may proceed, Mr Chairman, to deal with the relationship between the act these people have made themselves guilty of and the attainment of their political objective.
	It is my submission that submitting these people to 
this kind of inhumane treatment was done with a view to getting these people to answer certain questions and to confess to certain deeds.   The result of information that would have been obtained by them through this method would have been given to the Commander of these operations and in turn one can assume that the Commander would have given these to the President.  The information they would have given would naturally have been intelligence that would have been useful for the political 
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situation assessment.   Information that would have been useful for the President's son to be found or information that would have been useful for them to know who exactly had sprung Charles Sebe from jail.
	In my submission the acts they had made themselves guilty of were not remote from the political objective that they wished to seek.

SISI KHAMPEPE: Mr Hole, would a reasonable policeman have used the same means which your clients used subjecting the women under the humiliation they were subjected to in order to extract the information that they intended to extract from their victims?

MR HOLE: Thank you, Honourable Member of the Committee.  The idea of a reasonable policeman is a very elusive one.  Certainly I cannot be heard to submit that we know of any in South Africa.   The evidence we have heard from these people is that the methods that they have used on these people, except for Isixwapaxwapa which they admit for the first time, was what was used for interrogations throughout, when they joined the Elite Unit.

HASSAN MALL: That may be so, but the brutality of their methods, are they not out of all proportion to the kind of information that they were seeking from a girlfriend or Sebe or the sister of a girlfriend of Sebe for example?  They are totally disproportionate to the objective that they had in mind.

MR HOLE: Mr Chairman, if one looked at the events in Ciskei at the time, if one looked at the fact that it was their own Commanding Officer who had been abducted, drugged and put in the boot of a car and taken by an opposing party to Transkei and which Transkei was hostile to the state that they was serving, one can understand how such extreme measures were used.
	Also looking at the fact that these ladies were transported from Douglasdale Farm in the boot of a vehicle to the police 
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station, one would assume that there would be people at the police station who would have seen them off-loading people from the boot.   If one reads that scenario, Mr Chairman, one can see that it appears that even the Uniform Branch who might have been manning the Alice Police Station did not care two hoots about what was happening to these people, otherwise they would not have transported them to a police station in the boot of a car.	This is the level to which the members serving in the Ciskei Police Force at the time had sunk.   The transporting of a person in the boot of a car was also done to Gen Kwane Sebe, the son of the President, according to the affidavits of these people, when he was taken to Transkei.
	In my submission Mr Chairman, these applicants have made a proper case for the extension of amnesty to them.   I would, on the basis of this and my argument and the evidence that have tended before this Committee, request that the Committee may be pleased to grant amnesty to each one them in respect of each of these offences.
	Unless the Committee wants to hear me on any further aspect, that would be my address on the merits of the matter.   Thank you Mr Chairman.

HASSAN MALL: Mr Brink do you wish to address us?