Special Hearings — Children's Hearings — 1997-05-22

CHAIRPERSON: Our next witness is Mr Moegamat Williams and I would like him to come up to the stage with his briefer please.  Good afternoon Mr Williams.  You are our second- last witness this afternoon and I know it has been a very long day.  Thank you for your patience and your forbearance.  I am going to ask Mary Burton to swear you in and then hand you over to Glenda who will help lead your evidence.

MARY BURTON: Thank you.  Are you willing to swear the oath?

MOEGAMAT QASIM WILLIAMS: Yes.

MARY BURTON: Please will you stand and raise your right hand.

MOEGAMAT QASIM WILLIAMS: (Duly sworn in, states).

GLENDA WILDSCHUT: Moegamat, you have given us a written statement.  I know that you will talk to your statement.  You have had a very difficult, interesting, disturbing, all kinds of descriptions, youth, but it is not for me to talk about that, it is for you to tell us about your own story.  I believe you want to do something before you tell your story.

MOEGAMAT QASIM WILLIAMS: Yes, the thing I would like to do is, okay, I would first like to introduce myself like to the children over there.  I use to be Craig Williams running on the name Craig Botha.  I later joined up with an organisation the BMW.  It is, BMW stands for Bonteheuwel Military Wing and then at a later stage in life we joined up with the arms struggle, MK and especially to those children out there I just want to tell them, like, I do not think you will ever be able to understand our experiences that we had in life.  There was good times, there was bad times, but one thing in particular, it was very difficult times for us.  There are still a lot of people out there who does not understand what we went through.  There is still a lot of people, I mean grown-ups and what I wanted to do is, like, I wanted to give some kind of demonstration of why we really went to prison and I wanted to sing a freedom song to you.  I will interpret it myself into English after I am finished with the Xhosa version.  (Singing Freedom Song).  Thanks.

GLENDA WILDSCHUT: I did not know you were such a good tenor.  Alright, you want to start telling us about your statement and about your life both in the BMW and as you joined the military wing.

MOEGAMAT QASIM WILLIAMS: Yes.  I started to get involved in politics at the age of 11 and a half.  I was still then in standard four at Bergsig Primary School which is just opposite the high school that I attended as well and I had not even reached 12 yet, I was not even in standard five yet and it was when I became wanted by these people who called themselves the justice system, but we all know that they were the injustice system and I have sworn to myself that I will do it to the best of my capability to make the NP Government ungovernable.  I swore that to myself and I swore as well, irrespective I must lose my life in the struggle, I will do it, because I want my children and their children's children to live in a better society.  I mean, today we are in school, we fought against gutter education, but there is still gutter education in school.  I mean, I would like to send my children to school one day knowing that they are going to learn the peoples' history and not the history that they are learning us in school at the moment.
 At the age of 12 I had to leave my mother's nest, I had to leave the house, I had to fight to survive, because I was always on the run.  My brother is also sitting in the audience, he was not that heavily involved, but he supported us a great deal.  Then what happened, every second month the cops would have this, kind of like, idea, coming around to my mother's house to see if I was there and they would not get me there.  They found my brother there and they said to my mother, if we are not going to find Botha, that is what they called me, you know, to release your other son and it went on, it went on, it went on and, like, they could not, like, caught me at first and then at a later stage the same thing happened.  My brother was captured again by the security branch forces and they, calling themselves, the justice system.  I mean I was hiding in the house and I had, like, to hear something being told to my mother.  You say your son is only 12 years old, you are worse than a prostitute, you do not even know where he is, how do you care for your children and it affected me a great lot. Then I told myself to hell with these Boers, because we go to school, found there is a mass rally, we attend the mass rally, we did not want to do our school work, because we want to know what is happening and what is going on and now you become more like a target and in their eyes, the cops, was like if I cannot get you, I am going to kill you. 
 Then 1987, nearly the whole organisation that I represent here today was arrested.  I was still on the run, they could not find me and then what happened was some Boers told people in my organisation they are not really looking for me, because I was their informer.  These people came out knowing in their hearts and minds I have never been caught by these people.  I mean I have been with them every day, believing what these people told them.  What happened I was told, I was turned around on.  I was told, listen, we are regrouping tonight at the church, also in Bonteheuwel, and when I came there, there was only three brothers there.  I was the fourth one, not knowing what I was coming into.  
 The first thing that happened, my own brothers hit me over the head with a very heavy object.  I still do not know what it was.  I fell down to the ground, my clothes was ripped off, petrol were thrown over me and I was set alight by my own brothers who I believed in, but what this did inside of my heart, a build up, even a stronger grudge against the system, against the Boers and at that moment in time I forced myself, I told myself, this is my brothers that has done this to me.  I am not going to leave them, I am going to stick like glue to their side, because I want to show them, I want to prove them I am not a traitor, I am still the same person who started out with them.  Okay, the story went on.  
 I did exactly what I told myself to do.  I kept on going out with my brothers, kept on doing things with them.  I never pulled away from them once and today, still, whenever I hear a security branch officer's name being mentioned, I want to go out there and shoot to kill, because if it was not for that police on that particular Sunday night, I would not have been sitting here today.  I would have died at the hands of my own brothers believing in what these security branch people, who was supposed to be part of the justice system then, told them.  I was nearly killed.  I could not believe it.  My own brothers did this to me knowing I have not been arrested yet and what was more funny about it was, I have just been asked ...

GLENDA WILDSCHUT: Maybe I should just explain what is happening, that George is actually just helping you compose yourself ...

MOEGAMAT QASIM WILLIAMS: I know.

GLENDA WILDSCHUT: ... and not telling you what to say.

MOEGAMAT QASIM WILLIAMS: I know.

GLENDA WILDSCHUT: So, we are aware of that.

MOEGAMAT QASIM WILLIAMS: I have not been told, I have been asked.

GLENDA WILDSCHUT: Yes, so George is just giving you some support there.

MOEGAMAT QASIM WILLIAMS: Yes, the reason for why the people of the BMW did this to me, it was because these people who were looking for me, they told them I was their informer.  That is why all of them has been captured at the same time, me being the only one not being arrested, still on the run.

GLENDA WILDSCHUT: And Moegamat, sorry, you understood that as it happened and that is why you made the pledge to prove to them that you were not a spy?