Special Hearings — Political Party Recalls — UNKNOWN

UNKNOWN: Chairperson, you will be aware that the ANC has recently expelled one of it's members in the Natal Midlands, a Mr Sphiso Nkabinde(?), who the ANC is convinced has been working with the old South African Special Branch for some time, and we are convinced that he continues to work to this day with elements within South African Police Service. He was very involved in this conflict in the same area where Reggie Gadebe was in the Natal Midlands. I'm saying we know that he was working directly as an agent of the South African Security Police, we knew precisely what he was doing, who were directing the activities, who stood out as one of your most militant ANC fighters against the IFP, a police agent.
There are people in the IFP who are what are described as warlords who are in precisely the same position, agents of the old secret services involved in this violence, militant fighters against the ANC but agents of the old South African Secret Service, on both sides.
The first thing, you see it doesn't help, it doesn't help for anybody to say that the ANC is crying too much about a third force and not looking sufficiently at itself to say what contribution did it make. We would be very, very. very happy Chairperson if this matter could be dealt with.
Let's identify who has been whom in this conflict. When Eugene de Kock talks about these huge quantities of weapons that they shifted to the IFP, what happened to those weapons, where are they? Whom were they arming? Were they arming some neutral Black as a result of which there was Black on Black violence, politically neutral Black or not? In that particular trial, I don't know what is going to happen in the consequence of it, various names of very well known IFP people were mentioned by de Kock as people with whom they worked, political leaders of one kind or another.
I was saying Chairperson I was relating a story about a Special Branch officer who was busy setting up civic associations in Johannesburg, that same officer related to Penwill Maduna and myself how they used to supply weapons to particular persons in the leadership of the IFP around Johannesburg, to arm them, who were agents of the Special Branch who would go out and then do this violence. They come back, a political noise is made, it is decided, I'm talking about the '90's, this post-1990 period, ANC makes a lot of noise, this and that and that, he then decided to raid, he says it was part of his responsibility to raid hostels, he said it was part of his responsibility to go and alert these people. He would go and say there is a raid that is coming tomorrow at such and such a time, they would put together these weapons, he would collect them, this police officer, and go and store them in a police station. They would leave two old rusted weapons there, the police would find them, television cameras would be called, we found these two weapons, the go away. A couple of days later he would transfer the weapons back to the hostel.
Two known leaders of the IFP was identified, militant fighters against the ANC but I'm saying they had militant fighters in the ANC against the IFP. That's in the entirety of this conflict which was described as a conflict between the ANC and the IFP. This matter was very fundamental.  Why does the State transfer these hugh volumes of weapons to the IFP, train people in the Caprivi, do all manner of things? And that cooperation continues, I'm not talking about cooperation between the government and the IFP, I'm talking about between the secret services and particular persons in the IFP.
And then when you've done all this damage, you've put people on both sides, they are both your agents, and you say fight it out, we are going to present it as Black on Black violence. You then step back and say ah ah ah, Black on Black violence. I think it's irresponsible.
They need to tell the truth because this problem will be a continuing problem until we uproot these structures which they established. I am not saying, I'm not in the least saying that there was no conflict between genuine members of the ANC arising out of the sustained problem and they start shooting. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying to minimise the deliberate provocation, deliberate provocation of this conflict by the then State system, would be to make a grievous mistake in terms of understanding what is the nature of this conflict. And that's real, and that's very real.
Look at the entirety of this history, UWUSA, how does UWUSA get established? Is it some workers who stand up and say we align politically to the IFP and therefore we are going to set up UWUSA in contradistinction to COSATU, no. It's the bloody State, sorry, sorry. They set this thing up and they do all manner of things to provoke this conflict among the trade unions and then turn around and say, Black on Black violence.
We, I would not claim, that we understood the nature of this problem then as much as we understand it now. I wouldn't say for instance we understand as much then as we do now, there's linkages between particular persons in the leadership of the IFP and people in the secret services. We understood some of the roles of this kind of agent in our own ranks. For instance we've been talking about this question about IFP, you would find that in many instances your most militant, the person who presents the most militant positions against the IFP or AZAPO or PAC, let's take action to destroy these, I'm saying in many instances you'd find later you'd catch this person, this person is a police agent, he's an agent of the system, deliberately seeking to provoke, to move the organisation to take a particular position.
So it is necessary to get to the root of this, who in fact conducted this violence? Among the IFP I am saying, it's not the general membership of the IFP that was engaged in this violence, it's particular units. It's particular units that were involved, there is no general Black on Black violence. The particular units which were involved in this violence which were armed and trained and motivated in a particular way to achieve particular political purposes. There were people in the ANC, I'm saying like Sphiso Nkabinde, who was a great militant fighter against the IFP on the instruction of the Special Branch. It's not Black on Black violence, it's Special Branch violence against Black people.
There would have been, you see, a question - If there was something inherent, endemically wrong within the ANC and the IFP, what we should expect is continuing political violence in KwaZulu Natal. Levels of intolerance are inherent within these organisations, this culture is not there, I'm saying you would get a continuing problem, you won't get it, and the reason you won't get it is because serious progress has been made to smash these particular units which were armed and trained, prepared, motivated to perpetuate the violence. If they had not been there there would never have been this Black on Black violence.
That's where it comes from, it doesn't come from branch secretaries, one of the ANC here and one of the IFP deciding to box each other because they disagree about federalism, it doesn't, it came from somewhere else and people were prepared in the conduct of the armed struggle, as Jewel Natchitanje was explaining just now, we took a deliberate position on members of the National Party, never mind the IFP. We said you cannot treat the National Party as National Party as a legitimate military target. You can't go and blow up a National Party branch meeting.
So there would not have been inserted into the process of the political struggle the notion that you can use military force to crush a political party as such, if that hadn't come in from somewhere else. Or may be it might have come in to some extent, it would not have spread as much as it did, but we would contest very, very strongly the notion that among Black political organisations such as a level of intolerance, a lack of understanding of democracy, that inevitably you have Black on Black violence. It is wrong, we would contest that. This was deliberately done, this violence then gets explained as Black on Black violence and I'm saying Chairperson, it has to be dealt with because these people who were organised to carry out this violence, described as Black on Black violence, I'm talking about the organised units. They come from somewhere and they continue to exist, the persons, and some of those networks continue to exist. I'm absolutely certain, Chairperson, that in terms of some trials that are coming up, it will come up, just now in KwaZulu Natal all of this what I'm saying is going to be very clear, that even now 1997, we're dealing with instances of violence which happen because certain police officers, certain of their agents, even within the ANC who've been linked since the 1980's continue to be active. We need to uproot all of this.
So it's important that the National Party should cooperate to deal with this question. Let it assist all of us by coming forth with this information as to what structures existed, what persons and all of this, who got involved as organised units in this violence, so that we can deal with this matter once and for all, it's important. It doesn't help to be having some petty political battle with the ANC, why does the ANC not admit its own involvement in this Black on Black violence as a mechanism to hide the real killers who are carrying the guns? It is wrong, it's irresponsible and I think that the Commission should really make a very serious effort to get them to come out with the truth. It's coming out Archbishop in bits and pieces, it's coming out. You have this trial and then you have another trial, I'm quite certain that in some of the amnesty applications some of this information will come out, I'm absolutely sure about it, it's coming out in bits and pieces, but these bits that have not yet been found continue to do bad things.
Somebody, somewhere knows about all of this. It was all recorded, it was all nicely done, why is this truth not being told so that we can deal with this continuing existing problem and not hide behind some notion that you can perpetuate this concept of black on black violence and I'm saying by that means, continue to protect and hide the people who are the real killers?