Human Rights Violation Hearings — Durban — 1996-08-30

WITNESS:   Of course.  I had stayed with my gran for many years prior to Lennie - well, since I was a young boy, and we lived out in Isipingo Beach.  And since living with my gran I moved into a flat of my own, and often Lennie would come to study, and to - sometimes when I went to visit my mum he would come to me and say, "Listen, you know, I just want to cool off," and of course Lennie was never a person of many words, so I did to a certain extent understand what he was implying.  But we never believed that he was heavily involved in - or deeply involved in politics until the Security Branch started appearing.  And when all this started - when the Security Branch started coming and harassing us fortunately not many people knew that Lennie had another brother, and so I was - to a certain extent my place was almost a safe haven for him until later on, when he had to move on because of - there's again a few circumstances that came around where my mother confided in somebody about the plight of these - of course for one the families being harassed, and of course looking for Lennie.  And so I got home one afternoon - one evening, and there was this person there trying to talk to Lennie about this - you know, about giving himself up to the Security Branch, and apparently he said he knew people in the Security Branch, and he would make things easy for him.  And of course Lennie was adamant, because he would - it meant he would be implicating his comrades, and that was the last day that Lennie stayed with me.  The next morning he packed up and off he went, and then he was living wherever he could.

MR LAX: Now, eventually

MR LAX: Now, eventually he did leave the country.

WITNESS:  Yes.

MR LAX: He went and joined the ANC in exile.

WITNESS:   That's right.

MR LAX: And there's - that's not a secret, that's a well known fact at this stage.

WITNESS:   Yes.

MR LAX: It came out in the inquest.

WITNESS:   That's right.

MR LAX: Now, I want to take you to the time round about 1988.  It's a well known fact that Lennie and his three colleagues were the first group of people that were coming back into South Africa.

WITNESS:   That's right.

MR LAX: And they were coming from Swaziland.  They had two contact people with them, whose affidavits were presented at the inquests, and you'll know of that.  And they indicated in those affidavits that the four people were completely unarmed.  The one person actually sat with Lennie while he was packing his bags, and confirmed in an affidavit that he had no arms on him whatsoever.

WITNESS:   That's correct.

MR LAX: Now the four of them, accompanied by two others, were taken to the spot on the Swaziland border where they were to be met by the person collecting them on the South African side.

WITNESS:   That's right.  I believe that was a Lieutenant Mossais.

MR LAX: That's correct.  Now, previously there had been another person they were supposed to meet, someone by the name of Amos, who was their contact.

WITNESS:   Actually I am not - we're not very aware of that.

MR LAX: Familiar with that?

WITNESS:   Not familiar of it.

MR LAX: But that part of the story has been reasonably well researched.  And instead of Amos coming there this Lieutenant Mossais picked them up.  You're aware of what  happened after that.  They were driven by him in a

MR LAX: vehicle.

WITNESS:   That's right.

MR LAX: And at a police roadblock they were stopped.  Now, as you know from the inquest there are two different versions of what happened.

WITNESS:   That's right.

MR LAX: Eugene de Kock and his colleagues say that the vehicle was stopped by a Warrant-Officer Pienaar, that your brother came out of the vehicle with a firearm and started shooting at them, and they then opened fire and shot all four of them.  Somehow the driver of the vehicle miraculously escaped any injury whatsoever.

WITNESS:  That's right.  This is where we find these discrepancies within the inquest, and there's lot of these discrepancies that we found with the inquest.  I also find the - well, I also question the credibility of the Magistrate at that inquest.  In her judgment to many things, and how she wouldn't accept - at one time she wouldn't accept an affidavit from somebody that left the country with Lennie, by the name of Richard Valahoo, and he apparently was the last person to see Lennie.

MR LAX: Yes.  That is the person who sat with Lennie when he packed his bags.

WITNESS:   Packed his bags.  And so there again I - just the very credibility of that inquest is flawed in many aspects that we - because I saw through most of those days in the inquest.

MR LAX: Just for the record, how long did the inquest take?

WITNESS:   It carried on for about two years.  It was always off and on, a few weeks there, or sometimes just four hours and then they would adjourn for some or other reason, a postponement.

MR LAX: Your family was represented by Advocate Zak Yacoob, is that correct?

WITNESS:   That's right.

MR LAX: And Advocate Moerane represented the other families.

WITNESS:   The other three, yes, that's right.

MR LAX: Now, just to complete the picture, what was the inquest finding?

WITNESS:   Well, the inquest finding was that they couldn't hold the policemen accountable.  They felt that the police acted within their jurisdiction, and so in the result it was - you know, it was just that.  There was nothing they could do, not in any way.  And there again we couldn't - there was not much we could do after that.

MR LAX: Right.  Just as a matter of interest did your family bring a civil action against the police at all?

WITNESS:   No, not at all.

MR LAX: At any stage?

WITNESS:   No, not at any stage.

MR LAX: Okay.  Obviously you were waiting for the outcome of the inquest to see if there was any possibility of that.

WITNESS:   Yes, of course.

MR LAX: Now, obviously the other version that would have been mentioned at the inquest, and which is the one not accepted by the inquest Magistrate, but I want to place it on the record, and perhaps you can confirm it, is that the four people were in the vehicle, the vehicle was stopped, and they were then just murdered in cold blood by these police officers.

WITNESS:   That is what we believed happened, and there was also there again another discrepancy that it didn't really happen where the police said it happened.  And so it was there again again de Kock's way of trying to shift - or maybe putting his own justice in in a way, just moving things around all the time, taking the Courts for granted.  We had inspected one place, and it later emerged that the - I actually called it an ambush, the area where this happened was somewhere else, because our forensic people went in and found spent cartridges and things like that.

MR LAX: At the other place?

WITNESS:   At the other place.

MR LAX: Now, just one other aspect of this particular incident and then I'll get to the next incident, because there was an incident four days later.

WITNESS:   That's right.

MR LAX: Arnold Nafumela has given an affidavit in that inquest where he confirmed that his duty was to wait at the border and assassinate the two individuals who had accompanied the four of - the three people with your brother.   And we know that one of those people escaped, injured but alive, and subsequently spent a couple of years on Robben Island.  That was a Mr Sindane.  I don't know if you're aware of that.

WITNESS:   We actually - the stories are very sketchy to us.  There was some talk of it at one time, but it was never as if it was an official such.  I do remember Nafumela's input in the inquest, but I thought it - for some reason I felt his input was just as if to confirm Eugene de Kock's modus operandi.