Human Rights Violation Hearings — Pietermaritzburg — UNKNOWN

WITNESS:   It's Henry Vusumuzi Gunene.  We went to open the tuck shop.  As we were still working we realised that there were people approaching, a group of people running towards us.  They were having assegais, pangas, and we heard even gunshots.  They were in a warpath.  It seems as if they were heading more towards the station, which is two kilometres from the place at which we were selling our vegetables.  I told Bongani that the business was bad that day because people were fighting.  We decided to close the shop because we didn't feel safe.  We packed our belongings.  It was round about half past nine.  We packed them into the car.  Now there was starting to be some unrest.  At that time there were police - there were little mini police stations that were just being put or erected at particular places, and we realised that these mini police stations had been put further up.  Along the way we met another man who was limping because he was injured.  He stopped us.  We know who the man is.  He stopped us.  He wanted us to help him, take him for medical attention, and we told him that we had a problem because we were trying to rush home also, so it was better for us to go home, unpack, leave all the goods at home, then we will take him to the clinic because he was limping.  We went home.  Along the way we went around meeting people who needed medical attention, who needed to be taken to the hospital.  Then we came back, we took him.  As we were driving there was another one who was badly injured who also requested us to help him also.  We took them to the Mpophomeni Clinic and we left them there.  When we left the clinic Bongani said to me we should avoid the other road, we should use the main road, because the place now was full of police and we were scared that they would do something to us.  We decided to use a different route.  I said to him we should definitely use a different route.  On that route that we used we saw other men who were also running away because now the police were shooting at random.  We drove for a little distance from the station.  We saw a police van.  When we saw this police van Bongani said we should take a turn.

MRS GCABASHE: What sort of a van was it?

WITNESS:   It was a police van.  We made a U-turn and we proceeded downwards.  As we were proceedings downwards there came a Hippo which was driving slowly towards us.  We realised that we absolutely had no way, we just had to stop so that the Hippo might pass.  Just nearby, a very short distance from us, there were two white policemen who were showing right at the top of the Hippo.  There's a little hole at the top of the Hippo and these police were having guns.  I decided to take a right turn.  They continued shooting at us, and you know when the boers start shooting they never stop.  They just continued shooting.  Bongani said to me, "We are going to die now."  They shot the wheel or the tyre of the car and we got a puncture.  We lost control of the car.  It went out of the way.  At the time when this was happening there were certain men at the back of the car, and when they were busy shooting I think these men at the back of the car got easily injured.  As we were at the front we had a better chance of surviving than the people at the back.

MRS GCABASHE: Who were these men at the back of your van?

WITNESS:   I knew them.  One of them was my visitor.  He had come to my place to visit us.  His name is Musawenkosi Ndlovu.

MRS GCABASHE: Is he the only one that you know?

WITNESS:   Yes.  Those other ones are my peers, we just grew together, but we are not very close.  As the car had come to a halt Bongani asked me whether I had been shot.  I said no.  He said to me, "No, you had been shot," because he could see blood seeping from below my eye, and I had also been shot on the chest.  I had been shot just below the eye, left eye.  Bongani said to me, "Can you hear the Hippo coming just behind us?"  He said we must try and pretend as if we were dead, because if we didn't pretend like that we were going to be killed.  We kept still and the Hippo stood just next to us.  There were three policemen.  There were two white and one black one.  They asked in Afrikaans, asking themselves whether we were dead.  This other one said, "Yes, they definitely are dead."  But later on he said, "No, they are not dead, they don't look dead."  They opened the door, they said come out in Afrikaans.  I am illiterate, I have never been to school, I don't know Afrikaans, but I did understand that he was ordering me out.  When I went out the other one was taking Bongani out of the car.  Now they made us stand one next to the other.  That's when the whole thing started.  I asked what had we done.  They said, "Can't you see what you've done?  This car has been running up and down in the location.  This car has been causing trouble in the location.  You have been ferrying people to the hospital."  I told them I had been taking people to the clinic.  I said to Bongani he must open the mouth, but he refused.  Because this other boer wanted to put his gun in Bongani's mouth, but Bongani refused and there was an altercation.  The other one was busy pointing a gun at me and I kept on holding the gun.  When I looked at Bongani I saw him fall.  This other one came to me.  He had a badge that was written Mchunu.  He had a police uniform.  He was wearing the ordinary police uniform.  It's greyish.

MRS GCABASHE: Is it the SAP Police?

WITNESS:   Yes.  This other one came, the other one who had shot Bongani came.  Then they were busy having an altercation.  Each one of them wanted to shoot me.  The other one said, "Let me shoot him," and the other one said, "No, let me shoot him."  We were facing east.  Now there was another car that came.  Probably this car disturbed them because they kept on saying, "No, no, no, no, no, watch, don't do anything.  There's a car coming now.  Just wait."  This car kept on coming.  I saw it was being driven by a white man.  Now they took me and put me at the back of the Hippo.  The car came and halted just a bit, but he never got out of the car.  Then they said they were going to arrest me.  They put me at the back of the Hippo.  Then there were certain women who came and put a blanket over my friend, who had now died.  It's our culture to cover a person who has died, or to cover the body of a dead person.  They put him straight and they sat around him.

MRS GCABASHE: Do you know who these women are?

WITNESS:   The other one was Mrs Nxele.  She even got shot, because they said she must move away from that place and she was adamant that she wasn't moving.  Then they ended up shooting her also.  Then police came, quite a number of them came, and they kept on asking, "What is it that's happening at this house?"  That is the house where the women came out of and they stayed beside the corpse.  Now when they got into this house they started harassing the people who were there.  They opened up a window, they threw tear gas inside, and they started shooting for quite some time.  And now the people who were inside the house were spilling out of the house, running away from the fumes of the tear gas.  Now, when this woman came out she was shot, she was staggering, and the other policeman said, "Oh shame, it's a woman."  Then I was taken in a Hippo.  They told me that they were going to take me to a group of Inkatha for the Inkatha to see what to do with me.

MRS GCABASHE: What is it that made you think you were being taken to Inkatha?