Special Hearings — Political Party — 1998-05-06

UNKNOWN: Thank you Mr Chairman, I will do that but Mr Chairman I still want to look into the question of necklacing, particular on page 11 Mr Chairman.  I am aware or I've heard the members of the delegation have responded to some of the questions I was going to raise but allow me to single out some of them just by way of clarity.  I will not repeat what has been said or ask of them to do that.
 On page 11 Mr Chairman, under the question:
"Was the issue of necklacing discussed by the UDF National Executive during the 1980's"?
and the answer there:
"The issue would have been discussed within the structures of the UDF and affiliates".
 Now I'm concerned Mr Chairman, by the statement: 
"The issue would have been discussed"
Now I should not be understood to be, in any fashion or in any way derogative of the delegation but if one says:
"It would have been discussed"
and this comes from the very then leadership of the UDF, it leaves me with a question mark because one would have expected the leadership to say: it was discussed or it would have been discussed and this is the way in which it was discussed.  
 Perhaps to trigger their memory, with respect Mr Chairman, the delegation will well remember or recall when Archbishop Tutu openly condemned these sort of actions and even threatened to withdraw his support for the UDF because of these actions.  Perhaps this will trigger something in the minds of the delegation as to what actually was being discussed about this issue by the UDF.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Cachalia?

AZHAR CACHALIA: If I could just make a point that on the triggering the memory my recollection is that the Archbishop was very concerned about what had happened but had made no references to the UDF at all.  In fact he threatened to leave the country but that's another matter.
 Why we say: "the issue would have been discussed", remember the difficulty, as Mr Boraine has indicated, we had limited documentation.  We were under a lot of pressure and the documentation that we went through to find out minutes, we weren't able to find a specific agenda item which said: "5 April: necklacing" alright?  But given time and given the fact that it had such currency we'd be surprised if we hadn't discussed it.
 I can recollect anecdotally some discussions and so on that we had, that's why say we would have discussed the issue.  And then it follows that generally - because remember our publicity secretary at that point, Mr Morobe would not have issued statements just on his own bat and he issued statements around necklacing because there was a clear UDF position on it and that is why he issued those statements so that is the only point we are making.
 Some of my colleagues in the police service seem to have some of the documents that I'm looking for and they haven't given it to me.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Morobe?

MURPHY MOROBE: Chairperson on the same page 11 immediately below the question under concern, the point is made there that the UDF disapproved of this practice and condemned its use on several occasions.  And this was communicated through the media and discussion amongst our affiliates.
 I personally was the subject of many an interview at the time, where this issue was constantly raised through the media and for us that was one opportunity which we had through which we could communicate our attitude to this particular act.
 I think an important thing - when I spoke about false flag operations earlier on which I really want to bring up to the fore here, is that there is a reason why this particular issue of necklacing began to loom large in everyone's mind.   In my recollection it wasn't as if everyone, someone was necklaced every second of the day in South Africa at the time.
 It is an issue where one must understand in the context of struggles for liberation, that struggles for liberation always have to contend with the activities of collaborators and impimpis who communicate information to the enemy.  And in struggle for liberation all over the world, we are no exception.  There's various ways in which people who engage in those activities get dealt with.
 Now, the question for me is, we're talking about necklacing here, there's many other people who have been shot for precisely the same act for which these others who were necklaced have been suspected for.  And the issue here is not so much the act, it's more to do with gruesomeness of the act, such that it became the one that attracted and drew the attention of people.  
 Even when we saw it in the earlier stages of it and not making too much noise about it, it was probably because we also were involved in the struggle and we basically saw this as a phenomenon in the context of ongoing struggles and people responding in ways commensurate to their own relative experiences or what they felt to be responsibilities.
 Now clearly, in some ways maybe there is some degree to which people who are revolutionaries begin to develop a certain degree of dispassionateness - Terror will correct me if that's not the right word, with my English master you know, there's a degree of passion or lack thereof that actually comes into the way in which people engage with activities and events. 
 We would actually be able to say and I think we do make the suggestion that perhaps if we had said something earlier, things would have been different in respect of the many victims of this particular method of killing. 
 Now the question for me would be, if they were shot through a sniper's bullet it would have been a much more preferable way for them to have gone rather than necklacing but perhaps that is not really the issue that you have to deal with.
 The point here is that here was a particular method that was applied.  At some point in the history of our country it actually reach such proportions of, certainly through the media and certainly as eventually fed by the State, by the apartheid government because at that time there was a whole notion of black on black violence.  And black on black violence was at the core of the JMC strategy to actually ferment the perception that there is this ongoing thing in the township and people are just killing themselves and that they are barbaric.
 Now the extent to which a lot of these things can be directly linked, to even influences of what UDF policy might be also becomes a mood point that needs to be looked into.  And it will probably be difficult because the chances are that even the operatives who got involved in those things would be in such a position that they would never be able to make the connection between an inference that they've drawn from what they perceived to be UDF policy or an instruction that actually was generated from the JMC's and eventually got to them as an inference of what UDF policy actually is.  Things became that complex in that point in time.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.  Mr Mpshe?

UNKNOWN: Thank you Mr Chairman.  Mr Chair, I'll move directly to page 14 under the heading
"Enforcement of Resistance Strategies"
This has to do with the discipline - once more I'm sorry to be taken this panel back but I'm following the submission as it.  I think it was Valli who read this portion as to discipline - I'm on page 14 paragraph 3 Mr Chairman and the panel, where he stated that marshalls or members of organisations that mistreat people were also disciplined.  
 And the type of discipline he mentions, like in Port Elizabeth members of PACO are isolated by being prevented from attending meetings, from wearing a PACO T-shirt.  Mr Chairman, I do not want to be understood to be saying that more than this could have been done for the sake of discipline but I'm saying, was this really sufficient by way of discipline, just to tell a member that we bar you from wearing a PACO shirt.   Couldn't the leadership have done something more that that given the circumstances under which this activist acted and what they did then?