Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 1999-10-18

MS PATEL: Mr Dyasi states further that he had sent his son out that evening to go and collect his youngest daughter, meaning the deceased's youngest sister who had been at somebody's place down the road and they asked him to go and fetch the little girl and that is how he ended up in that vicinity?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: I would like to repeat, I cannot comment on the conversation that took place between the son and his father.

MS PATEL: All right.  Let's deal with your actions after the crowd dispersed.  You state that you were, if my memory serves me correctly, somewhere in Tusa Lane for about 45 minutes, yes in Tusa Lane, yes that you were in Tusa Lane for about 45 minutes observing the area, is that correct?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: That is correct.

MS PATEL: Were you with Mr Geldenhuys at the time?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: That is correct.

MS PATEL: The point from which you had carried out your observation, would that be just in front of the hall, I imagine?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: Yes, it was very close to the hall.

MS PATEL: Also very close to the police station, it is about three blocks down, three streets down, three, four streets down, not so?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: The police station wasn't very far away, I cannot remember exactly how far, but it was quite close.

MS PATEL: You make mention in your statement on page 9, well from page 8 to 9 of the Bundle, that you saw a vehicle in the street and that it had hooted and then went away and came back and then somebody was put into the vehicle, is that correct?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: That is correct.

MS PATEL: Can you say from what distance the vehicle was from you at the time more or less?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: I would say about two or three houses away from us.

MS PATEL: Can you tell us what the lighting was in that vicinity besides the one street lamp across from the hall?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: The street lighting was very bad.   That is also the reason why we could never ascertain what kind of vehicle it was.

MS PATEL: Okay.   Can you just give me an indication, the house where you eventually found the deceased, how far from that house was this vehicle?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: I cannot say exactly how far away it was, but it was approximately between one and three houses, away from us where this whole incident took place.   If I remember correctly the house where we found the deceased, very close to that, but I cannot say that the vehicle had been right in front of that house.

MS PATEL: You state that you imagined that somebody who was injured was put into that vehicle?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: That is correct.  That is as a result of the inference which I drew as a result of the noises coming from that side.

MS PATEL: Correct me if I am wrong, but the purpose in you carrying out that observation was to attempt to find some of the people at least who dispersed from the hall, not so?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: That is correct.

MS PATEL: And here you imagine that somebody who was injured, was being carried into a vehicle, but you did nothing about it at the time?  Can you explain why not?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: At that stage I also had a fear for my own life.  Earlier that evening shots were fired at police officials in the area in which we found ourselves and that is why I decided just to stay where I was, just remain seated behind the bush, it seemed to me the safest option at the time and I was actually afraid to go to the vehicle to see what was happening, and that is why we went back to the charge office and not to the vehicle.

CHAIRPERSON: Are you saying that you were hiding behind a bush?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: Yes, it was a hedge or a bush near one of the houses, we were hiding behind that.

CHAIRPERSON: Were you on some premises?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: At one of the neighbouring houses and you were hiding behind the scrub or whatever?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: That is correct.  And that is the point from which we did our observation, the purpose of which was to see whether the crowd would gather again and start their stone throwing again and then we would be behind them.

MS PATEL: Thank you honourable Chairperson.  Did Mr Geldenhuys agree with you that the two of you should do absolutely nothing at that time?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: I never spoke to Sgt Geldenhuys about this, what we should or shouldn't do.  I simply felt that we should remain there and I am assuming that he stayed there because I stayed there.  Because we were both rather afraid of what could happen.

MS PATEL: You were both quite heavily armed at the time, not so?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: Each one of us had a shotgun and also a service pistol.  I may also say to Ms Patel that we had nothing like armoured vehicles or bullet-proof vests or anything of the kind.  We simply were people in possession of firearms.  We were actually perfectly normal and it would have been very easy to hit us anywhere on our bodies, there were no bullet-proof vests at the time.

MS PATEL: But Mr Luff, you had had seven years' experience in the Police Force at the time that this incident had occurred?  Seven years is a long time?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: Seven years is a long period, and I agree, but it wasn't seven years of riot control.  At that stage, I had only had about five months of this kind of riot control, before that I had done normal policing duties and I had never found myself in a riot situation, I had never been trained to deal with it.   That only happened later.

MS PATEL: After you went to the police station to report this vehicle was there and what you thought you saw, did you ever return to that house where the vehicle had stopped and where the person had allegedly been brought from?  Did you ever follow up on that?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: Not at that stage.  Not immediately.  Later that night we went back there to see what had happened there, once it had quieten down.

MS PATEL: But why did you wait, here is allegedly supposedly somebody who could very well have been involved in an act of violence, who could have been arrested, is removed from a house and you don't go back to check immediately, why waste time?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: Once again I say that we were scared to enter that area because we didn't have armoured vehicles and we didn't have bullet-proof vests, that is why we didn't go back immediately.  We waited for it to quieten down in the area and only then did we go.

MS PATEL: The police station is down the road, it is within walking distance, why didn't you ask for backup?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: If I remember correctly, there were four policemen on patrol, four of us.  The reinforcements would have been very meagre.

MS PATEL: So the sum total is you didn't act because you were afraid and you were short-staffed at the time, yet you were not afraid when you entered the house of Ms Hardy, you didn't know what you were going to find inside there?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: That was late in the evening, late at night, it was perfectly quiet in the area and that is why we took the chance of going in there.  That is totally different to the situation that had reigned at the time of the incident.  I must add that at the time when we entered the home, we were still afraid, but because it was quieter, we made the decision to enter.

MS PATEL: How did you realise that Mr Dyasi was in that house?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: We didn't go to a specific house, we moved around in amongst the houses and peered in the windows to see what we could see and it was then that I saw the deceased laying behind a little corrugated shack at the back of the house.  We didn't go to a specific house.

MS PATEL: It was just you and Mr Geldenhuys who at that hour, been moving in and around all those houses?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: That is correct.

MS PATEL: There was a curfew at the time in the area not so?

MICHAEL PHILIP LUFF: Repeat the question please.