Human Rights Violation Hearings — Cape Town — 1997-06-09

DR BORAINE: ... 10 years and more ago. I am going to ask Mary Burton to do the swearing in, because you will be under oath like everyone else.  Thank you.

MARY BURTON: Thank you.  Father Mfenyana, please will you stand to take the oath?

UNKNOWN: (Duly sworn, states).

DR BORAINE: Father Mfenyana, I am not going to ask you lots of questions, I am going to simply allow you to talk as you wish to, but we are now in your hands, and it is over to you.  Thank you.

UNKNOWN: I am going to speak in Xhosa.  I would like to say something before I speak.  I would like to mention a few names and organisations that were involved in what happened.  People like Bishop David Russel, who is in Grahamstown now.  Rev Sid Luckett from Natal.  Father Desmond Kyron, who is now based in Khayelitsha. Father John Frith, who is amongst us and Bishop Motolengwe, who was in my parish prior to my arrival.  And all the leaders of the churches that were named the mainline churches and other religions. Especially, including the Black Sash and other organisations, other community organisations that were sympathising with what was happening at the time.  The Muslims were also useful.  For example, they helped with the feeding schemes and money.  There were also people who were not just in organisations, who were also sympathetic and they would also help.
 Secondly, I would like to say the situation was a difficult situation.  There were different organisations.  Each organisation had its own leader.  I could liken it to the rural areas. The structures resembled so-called tribal authorities, because there were leaders who could be considered as chiefs, with the hope that some unity would be achieved.
 However, when they get this energy to do important things to promote their way to (indistinct), then there is a crack and this crack grows quickly, and that leads to quarrels and the choice of groupings that someone decides to go with one group and then even when the church ministers and other people who are taking - making some attempts to prevent this, they find that the people from the legal field, like the police, when there is a fight in circumstances like this, instead of things getting better they get worse.  Mostly if you choose one party, or one side, you find that instead of them becoming very useful, the legal people, the people from the law enforcement, they are the ones we prefer to be out of the same.  So that we can try as churches and community organisations who are interested in the elimination of and the solution of the problem without your help.  
 There is no way it can be denied, in my opinion, the fact that when this fire is extinguished, in other words, when the solution has been solved, you find that the following day you see that there is an eruption again on the next day.  And there is a tendency for one side to be set against another side, so that the one who was being truthful changes and takes and lead a group of people astray.  Then this leads to the escalation often and the increase of the number of people who are the cause of division instead of union.
 Usually the fights used to be between groups, as I have said, scored especially because of the differences amongst the leaders which would spread to the people that they lead and sometimes you find that the community splits and then the groups developed into two or one, et cetera.
 Churches, if I can get to the third part, they never played a part, through their leaders and other members being involved in this problem. However, they did something more than that, which was to attempt to ensure as much as possible, that there is no one who, when he or she comes to the church for help, will be denied that help.  Especially with regard to accommodation and food. Because the churches and the schools were filled with people who were running away from the fights that were going on, and they would stay there for months.  Maybe up to a year, people grouped in one hall, just like sheep or cattle in one kraal.  Without there being any privacy at all, and people wouldn't even be able to go to work because they would be picked up by the law enforcement people or eliminated in a number of ways.
 In my church on a number of occasions, people who were staying there, people who stayed for more than nine months in tents that we provided them with, on a number of occasions at night, it would happen that the police would come, trying to evict them from those tents so that they should go out in order for them to be easy to find them easy targets.  That caused that sometimes we would - people sometimes would, bullets would be fired to their hearts and we were forced to take our families away.  The children and my wife and I would come back home on certain occasions at night, unseen and with no one knowing where we were spending our night.  That time we were put up at Zonnebloem, we had a hide-out in Zonnebloem.
 The other fights which the churches tried to participate in very much, were the fights that were taking place in KTC mostly at the time, after people had moved out to go and get themselves some shacks.  Those are the fights in which it was clear that the differences were not amongst the people as such, but it was clear that there was a force that was attempting to divide the people.  So that they couldn't do anything for themselves together.  They could not be able to make themselves heard to the law-makers, because they were small divided groups.
 I would like to say on 1 December in 1986, if I am not mistaken, even those people who had taken some residence at New Crossroads, it was clear that there were some attempts to divide them.  So much that on the 25th of 1986 we spent a whole day as ministers, as eight ministers, trying to move between these two groups which were in conflict, because they were the people from the law-enforcement.  They would say this, on this one group and accuse the other group and then they go to the other group and say no, what we have been told is that this is the one side this is going to do this and this.  So that we discover that this two groups are under the impression that they are defending themselves each other, when in fact you could see that if you go to the law-enforcement people, the statements they give were not intended to promote peace, but rather to aggravate the situation.  So much that there were some policemen who were used to be pointed out as people who were going from one place to one place to stir trouble.  There was one who they said there was a small bottle hanging down his neck.  Wherever he went you would know, it was said, there would be a fight.  That policeman, as far as I know, is now deceased, because eventually I got to know him. 
 In those few words I would like to conclude my submission.

MARY BURTON: Father Mfenyana, I would like to thank you very much indeed on behalf of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  I think you have been very modest about the role that your church and your colleagues and yourself played, because those of us who were involved in a very marginal way, in arranging places for babies to be kept and women to be sheltered, I think remember very vividly what the church tried to do.  It exemplified the compassion of the church, quite possibly more than we have ever experienced before.  So thank you very much for being here, and for your contribution.

UNKNOWN: Thank you very much.