Amnesty Hearings — Durban — 2000-07-21

STEPHANIE MILLER: I confirm that I made the statement.

MS THABETHE: Do you want to make any clarifications with regard to the statement?

STEPHANIE MILLER: I would like to, in that I did mention on page 5, in paragraph 3.1 ...(intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: Sorry, I think just for record purposes, before you proceed Ms Miller, the statement is in fact an affidavit?

STEPHANIE MILLER: Correct.

CHAIRPERSON: It starts off like being a statement but it doesn't refer to making it under oath, but it has been attested before a Commissioner of Oaths.  And you confirm the correctness of the contents of this statement?

STEPHANIE MILLER: Well I'm speaking to that if I may.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes, ja, but you're not just confirming that you made it, you're confirming that what you made is, that it's correct, the contents are correct.

STEPHANIE MILLER: Well it's correct subject to what I'm going to proceed to cover.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.

STEPHANIE MILLER: In paragraph 21 I mentioned that after completing my contract with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, I handed in my investigation file and have not had sight of it since.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes, yes.

STEPHANIE MILLER: As a result, I am a little wobbly on some of the dates.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes, I understand that.

STEPHANIE MILLER: As a result of that and the last week having been present here and having access to some of the documents, there are two corrections I would like to make if possible, and that is that I mentioned in paragraph 3 that Ms Kubheka disappeared whilst her mother was away attending the youngest daughter's wedding.  In fact, it was after her mother returned from attending the youngest daughter's wedding.

MS THABETHE: Do you know when she returned, her mother?

STEPHANIE MILLER: I believe that she returned on or about the 10th or 11th of May, from Zambia.

MS THABETHE: Are there any other clarifications you want to make with regard to the statement?

STEPHANIE MILLER: The other clarification I made which possibly doesn't need clarification, was that I said that there were approximately 20 bodies which had been brought ...(intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: Is that paragraph 9?

STEPHANIE MILLER: Paragraph 9.  ... that had been brought in and in fact on having gone back to those records on Tuesday, there were 15 that I listed.

MS THABETHE: Mrs Miller, on page 82 of bundle 2, page 82 of bundle 2 there is a memo from you to ...(indistinct) Govender.  Do you confirm that this memo was written by you?

STEPHANIE MILLER: Yes, that's correct.

CHAIRPERSON: Sorry, page?

MS THABETHE: 82 of bundle 2.  Now in this statement you say you spent considerable time going through the records at the mortuary at Phoenix and found only one body that fitted all the criteria, can you give an encounter as to how this happened, why did you have to go to the mortuary?
MS MILLER
"When this case became a special investigation, we were able to devote much more time to the specifics and it became fairly clear that if the body could have been found, it would clarify where it had been disposed of, the cause of death, the approximate date of death, and it would verify or deny the veracity of the applicants' claims.
		It was our practice to spend considerable time going through records in looking at other cases, and this became part of a similar process and we looked at mortuary records fairly extensively throughout Durban and one of the reasons that this was so was, in the discussions that were had with the applicants and in their own applications it was not clear to me why they would have taken the body from Winkelspruit, where there was uniformity that she was killed there, all the way across Durban to the opposite side of the city to dump the body.  
		It was not as if the body was dropped really close to the home where it was found, which was what the reasoning was by the applicants, it was allegedly dropped a considerable distance away, which would not make it easy for the family necessarily to have found the body.  So I wasn't certain in my own mind that that aspect had been the truth and I had no way of knowing exactly where the body had been disposed of.  So we looked quite extensively at the mortuaries and ..."
...(intervention)

MS THABETHE: Which mortuaries did you look at?

STEPHANIE MILLER: Well we focused specifically at the Phoenix mortuary, because if the body had been disposed to the north of the city, in that area or in its environment, the body would have been taken at that time, 1987, to the Verulam mortuary, which had subsequently been closed and all the records had been moved to Phoenix.  So if that aspect had been true, then the body would have been found and taken to Verulam.  On going through the records for the period, and we looked - at that time we weren't sure of the date and we had either April or May as the possible date of abduction, and looked at those mortuary records from April right through for a year.

MS THABETHE: Okay.  Mrs Miller, I just want to find out, was the family involved in searching for their relative's body as well?
MS MILLER
"We had been in contact with the family, very specifically with Mr Themba Kubheka, and I had requested that he assist me.  I had gone to the mortuary, I had spent a considerable amount of time there.
		It was quite a slow process in that when you identify that an unknown woman was brought into the mortuary and there was any points of similarity, one would call for the post-mortem report which would be more specific and you would be able to see the height, the weight or any other descriptions, age, cause of death, whatever would be contained within the post-mortem report, and what I asked Mr Kubheka to do was to assist me by going through those selfsame records and seeing if he identified the same or different, as being possibly his sister.  Mr Kubheka did this and came back to me with an abbreviated list of the women who could possibly have been his sister, from the mortuary register.  
		Although I don't believe that Mr Kubheka did see any of the post-mortem reports in his search.  I subsequently compared that to the list I had, went back to the mortuary, called for the post-mortem reports, and after all was done and it took a considerable period of time, I isolated a specific register with a specific entry as being the most likely person meeting the criteria that, most of the criteria on the description of Ntombi Kubheka."

MS THABETHE: Okay.  Maybe just for the record, can you briefly go through which bodies did you identify, because in paragraph 9 you talk about the fact that you found approximately 20 women that ...(intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: That's been changed to 15.

MS THABETHE: Yes, 15.   ...15 women who could have been Ntombi.

STEPHANIE MILLER: Well there were three registers.  I believe the register numbers are 21 to 23, from the Verulam mortuary of that time.  The first one was number 293, which was a woman of 37, whose body had not been identified from Tongaat - the body had been found at Tongaat, the date was the ...(intervention)

MR LAX: Can I just stop you for a second.  We were given yesterday another sheet of paper which lists these entries.

CHAIRPERSON: Have you got that piece of paper, Mrs Miller?

STEPHANIE MILLER: That's correct, I'm reading from that.

CHAIRPERSON: Does everybody have it?  It's a single sheet with a number of entries, is that the 15?

STEPHANIE MILLER: That's correct.  May I just refer to that by number rather than go through each one?

MR LAX: Shall we call this K1?

CHAIRPERSON: I think if we could call this K1, let's call it K1, this document.

STEPHANIE MILLER: The first one which was in the earlier book, a woman had been stabbed.  I haven't entered her height or weight, it is on the post-mortem report, but it was prior to the date subsequently that we isolated, but it was in our initial search.